Mapping lost homes
Mapping with Children
Several organisations have considerable positive experience with "Mapping with Children" for all sorts of purposes, including stress conditions.
Common Ground, based in Victoria, BC, Canada, works with communities around the world to make mental maps of neighbourhoods, specifically by, with, and for, children. The "Community Mapping Project" of Common Ground is supported by Canadian Government and IDRC. It encourages people to make a specific type of neighbourhood map called Green Mapping which concentrates on the positive and
negative environmental conditions of the community or
town. Children and schools get deeply involved in this, - and have fun in the process. (http://www3.telus.net/cground/) (http://www3.telus.net/cground/schools.html)
Another organisation making community maps,
based in California, is the Orton Family Foundation. (http://www. orton.org, http://www.orton.org/programs/ mapping)
Neighbourhood Mapping is an initiative of Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) based in Noida, near Delhi. The Neighbourhood Mapping approach is more technically advanced, because it uses GPS and hand held computers (iPAQs), and it is aimed at improving science skills in schools. Nevertheless they work closely with children to map places important to children in their neighbourhoods, including environmental and safety issues. The staff of CSDMS and "Neighbourhood Mapping" have considerable experience
in working with children's mapping in India. (Website
http://www.neighbourhood-mapping.org)
Conclusion
Of course pictures and maps are not everything, but recorded and preserved, they can be one part of the survival and recovery process and of an inheritance. The same therapeutic affects can be seen with adults, and another programme could address the mental mapping ´recovery´ of ´lost´ neighbourhoods
for adults. But this is obviously more difficult to organise. Adults have to be persuaded to do this, initially they might find it odd, they are extremely busy with rebuilding their lives and livelihoods, an appropriate place to do it has to be found,
and so on.
There could also be local people's (adults and children)
participatory maps made for other purposes as:
- Mapping of the former locations and patterns of natural resource sites and management. This is especially important for mapping the inshore fisheries, marine products and other resources of artisanal fisher people, which were probably never recorded before, and now, tragically, not so many people know them.
- Another use would be for participatory planning of preference areas and making selection maps for the new settlement sites. (In many places, survivors will now have to relocate 1 km. or more inland.) These maps would allow local people to reconsider and rearrange any elements of the locality because the spatial layout is starting anew. In this way, a sketch map accomplishes some documentation and planning tasks, and these maps can become participatory preference blueprints for their community.
- The community can be asked, where and how safety efforts should be included, not only protection from tsunamis, but from other natural disasters and environmental hazards and degradation the locality may be prone to.