YouthMappers Virtual Internship Program

Introduction

Welcome to the Spring 2021 YouthMappers Virtual Internship Program! This program is co-hosted by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) GeoCenter and YouthMappers and led by Adele Birkenes and Rory Nealon at the GeoCenter. Our Teaching Assistant (TA) is Natalie O'Dell, a senior at The George Washington University. We are excited to have the opportunity to work with you this semester!

Internship overview

The goal of this internship is to provide an opportunity for students from YouthMappers chapters in the United States to work with the USAID GeoCenter supporting Mapping for Resilience programs. The internship aims to build students' technical and leadership skills and increase their understanding of how open geospatial tools and data are used in international development and other industries. Each intern will also work on a final project to support the YouthMappers program.

Final project

The final project will have two components:

• Chapter-focused capstone: Supporting your university's YouthMappers chapter by developing and implementing a mapping campaign/project
• Network-focused capstone: Supporting the global YouthMappers network by creating and compiling onboarding materials for new chapters

We will be providing detailed instructions for the final project in Week 4 of the internship. Until then, please be sure to complete the homework assignments involving check-ins with your university's YouthMappers chapter!

Expectations

For the duration of the internship program (February 2 - April 14), you will be required to attend an hour-long virtual meeting with the internship cohort every Tuesday from 2-3 PM EST.

We have created Github pages for each of the weekly meetings. In advance of the meetings, please check the pages for information about homework assignments and icebreaker questions. These pages also include important resources related to the topics covered in the program, such as slide decks and links to tutorials.

Schedule

• Week 1: Internship kickoff (February 2)
• Week 2: Overview of OSM, iD Editor and HOT Tasking Manager (February 9)
• Week 3: HOT deep dive (February 16)
• Week 4: MapRoulette/OSMCha tutorial + final project overview (February 23)
• Week 5: Introduction to USAID GeoCenter career mentors (March 2)
• Week 6: Field mapping 101: Crash course in Field Papers + KoBo Toolbox (March 9)
• Week 7: GIS at USAID showcase (March 16 - 2 hour session)
• Week 8 Final project check-in (March 23)
• Week 9 pt. 1: Company showcase (March 30)
• Week 9 pt. 2: JOSM training with State Department (April 2)
• Week 10: JOSM validation training (April 6)
• Week 11: Internship reflections + close-out (April 13)
• Week 12: Final project presentations to USAID GeoCenter staff/YM leadership team (April 20)