Nicera Kimani.
Nicera wanjiru is the founder of the Community Mappers and a Slum Dweller living in the slums of Kibra in Nairobi Kenya.
Many are the times she heard from people, students and communities knocking her door to as ask questions about her self, her community and daily life but she was never at any given time told why she was being asked those questions and she never saw the people again.
After attending the FOSS4G 2018 Nicera saw several gaps in her community she was realized whatever was being reported on mainstream media and in big forums was outdated or rather not true at all. For her this needed to change and through the FOSS4G networks she founded the community mappers a grassroot organization that empowers community on data and lobby for services through their findings. The organization has grown and now its in Seven Communities.
Sessions
My name is Nicera a slum dweller living in Kibra and founder Community Mappers. At times walking in slums can be irritating for you have to step on all kinds of garbage, bare with the smelly stench coming out from the heaps of garbage that are scattered allover along the thin footpaths in the slum. when it rains some of this trash is swept straight to the river, some to broken and open sewer. houses along the river banks are swept away and this causes flooding in our slums which has led to lose of many lives in our slums, they say rains are blessings but for us its a curse. and for this reason my organization Community Mappers saw a need to conduct a trash study research in the slums and take it to the next level by negotiating with County Governments and local stakeholders of tangible solutions which will lead to no deaths and no floods in our slums. In this study we bring out a community based approach of solving its problems through research this was brought out through qualitative and quantitative approach in this communities. We are the communities and through data and proper research we can solve some of our problems.