#WhyIMap: Volunteering at the Indigenous Mapping Workshop

This blog was written for our Indigenous Mapping Workshop Australia audience.

Amy Kempton is a University student who is currently in the final semester of her Master of Geographic Information Science degree at the University of Western Australia. At the Indigenous Mapping Workshop (IMW) 2019, Amy volunteered her time and shared her expertise with workshop attendees through assisting in technical workshops. 

Nine months on, we caught up with Amy to reflect on her experience at the Indigenous Mapping Workshop and heard her views on the benefits of being a volunteer.

How did you first hear about the Indigenous Mapping Workshop?

A high school friend of mine is a member of the Indigenous Mapping Workshop team and given my background in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), she thought it would be a great opportunity for me to get some hands-on experience as a training assistant to help the IMW attendees settle into their lessons. 

I was excited to attend the workshop because I think it is an awesome way to bring Indigenous people into the GIS community and provide them with the digital skills they need to do their work.

What was your personal involvement in the workshop?

I volunteered for three full days at the IMW 2019, which included providing general assistance in classes and undertaking the role of trainer’s assistant for the ArcGIS and QGIS workshops. 

My role was to help people who were just starting out on the tools and ensure that they didn’t fall behind during the training. Some participants I met had specific questions that would have been difficult to ask within the wider class, so it was good to have volunteers close by to provide assistance discreetly.

Overall, it was a great experience that offered plenty of variety and I was also able to learn new skills from the different classes that I attended.

What were some of the new skills you learned during your volunteering experience?

Something that stood out to me was the use of Esri StoryMaps. I hadn’t heard of StoryMaps prior to attending the workshop and it was a strong focus for the workshop attendees over the three days. A lot of the groups at the workshop used StoryMaps to show the connection between names, places and stories on country. Now since attending the workshop, I have started to incorporate StoryMaps a lot more into the work that I do.

Were there any mapping practices you and the attendees had in common?  

There were environmental applications of GIS that some of the participants and I had in common. For example, I met groups using satellite imagery for fire scar mapping and mapping bodies of water, which is something I do as well. 

But there were applications of satellite imagery that I had not seen before. I spoke to one group in particular who were using satellite imagery to find ancient eel traps that had been world heritage listed ahead of the workshop. Because I’ve never had experience identifying waterways using Earth observations, I learned something new from that group - which was great!

How has volunteering at the IMW benefited you?

Volunteering at the Indigenous Mapping Workshop is truly a unique experience. There aren’t many opportunities for University students or working professionals to volunteer their time and knowledge to something that is so heavily focused on GIS. 

To me, this was an invaluable opportunity that allowed me to put my skills into practice in a helpful way. It was extremely rewarding to see participants sharing the skills that I had taught them with their peers, it confirmed to me that they had both understood and enjoyed what they were learning. 

If the Indigenous Mapping Workshop returns to Perth, I would love to volunteer my time again. 

Do you have expertise in GIS that you would like to share? Get in touch with the IMW Australia team to see how you can volunteer at the next Indigenous Mapping Workshop in Melbourne.