The students in Portmarnock Community School, principally those travelling to Lesotho in 2016 have come up with a novel idea to raise funds for the trip. This idea is to spend an entire 24 hours mapping, gathering sponsors for the endeavour.

What is happening in the School is very exciting. Anbhu, Colin and Oliver who mastered mapping on openstreetmap last year are now demonstrating it to the transition year group, who will be the main Action Ireland Trust footsoldiers in Lesotho in February 2016.

[caption id=”attachment_573” align=”alignnone” width=”623”] Colette Cronin, Oliver, Anbhu, Cian, His Excellency Paramente Phamotse, Morgan, Colin, Grace and Niall FitzGerald[/caption]

The 24 Hour Mapathon is the brain-child of Mr. Niall FitzGerald and Ms. Colette Cronin in the school, with their students helping shape the idea and actively gathering sponsorship. All the sponsorship gathered will be directly used for the development of Ha Hlalele school in line with the plans for the projects in Lesotho.

The students will use the existing task manager tasks to improve the details on the map. Members of openstreetmap Ireland will attend at points in the day. There will also be a press conference held in the school in the afternoon to publicise the good work being done by the students and the numerous and profound benefits of mapping Lesotho.

[caption id=”attachment_579” align=”alignnone” width=”989”] openstreetmap activity heatmap created by Martin Reifer[/caption]

Now the entire school community is getting behind the idea and the sponsorship cards are being filled out and submitted. Both computer rooms and the the school wifi will be active with students completing even more detail on the map, and the basemap now very close.

What readers of the blog can do is shout out support for this initiative on twitter using #MapLesotho or join and help the students map as they fight off tiredness and improve the map.