October 5, 2012
Our second co-development workshop took place in Cambodia, during the week of September 24-28. Thanks to host organization Star Kampuchea and participants from NGO Forum, Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) and Open Development Cambodia (ODC) and other organizations who worked with us over an intense four day period.
All of these organizations are doing excellent work documenting land issues in Cambodia. The context in Cambodia has changed significantly since our first visit. Especially in relation to sharing and collaboration between civil society groups, which was very encouraging.
ODC's groundbreaking research to map and share open data on “economic land concessions” (ELCs) has gained momentum since March, and the Observatory was keen not to overlap but to look for where we could add value.
Much of the workshop centered around whether a crowdsourcing approach would work in Cambodia and if so, how it would work. Most agreed there is potential added value from crowdsourcing, in the sense that it could increase participation in monitoring ELCs and help generate a more dynamic picture. Participants did have some concerns about crowdsourcing in the Cambodian context - more detail about this will be forthcoming, when we share a presentation from the workshop.
For Cambodia, given ODC's great work research and mapping land concessions, we were encouraged to focus the development of the Cambodian version of the Observatory on impacts of concessions.
Additionally, many suggested a simpler interface is necessary, and all agreed a Khmer translation is a must.
Thanks to all who helped us to further develop the Observatory – you are indeed part of our development team! If you'd like to read about the workshop from the perspective of a participant, you can, thanks to CCHR Developer Nuon Pesseth who wrote a blog post. Thanks Pesseth!