Open Green Map on a Roll!

The enthusiasm is building as the Open Green Map project goes into full-scale production. Already a finalist in the NetSquared Challenge and presented at Beyond Broadcasting and Where 2.0 conferences, this inclusive, participatory social mapping website will put thousands of hopeful green sites from around the world on the map! Open Green Map will also share the public's insights, images and impacts about each of these significant places.

Mixing social networking, familiar Google Map technology and Green Map’s award-winning iconography, Open Green Map will create a common platform for Green Mapmakers, Green Map users, and a global public that is becoming more and more adept at living green. Users of OGM will be able to select the themes they are most interested in, and explore the world from a fresh vantage point. They will also have quick access to the unique 'traditional' Green Maps published locally in each city, town or region.

We believe that every community has resources to help individuals build healthier, greener communities together. But up until now, too many people lack the awareness and access they need to find and connect with those resources. Open Green Map will energize the booming green innovation, ‘go local’, regeneration and ecotourism movements with social networking and interactive mapping, empowering widespread participation in critical local environment, climate and equity issues worldwide.

This season, a dozen dedicated staff members and interns in our New York office, alongside Green Map partners around the world, are hard at work (preview at OpenGreenMap.org). In July, we'll open the site to our network of locally led Green Map projects. We're targeting September for our public launch – you will be among the first to know the exact date!

Today is a great day to support Green Map!

Without your help, we can't do this work – developing this great new tool and continuously support new Green Mapmakers with our community participation and mapmaking resources! Contributions can be made online or by mail. We are also able to receive tax-deductible donations in the form of transferred stock or by bank wire. Does your company match your charitable contributions? Do you have unique sponsorship or other funding ideas for us? We'd love to hear from you!

Please contact Wendy Brawer, Founding Director, by phone: 212 674 1631 or by email: web [at] greenmap [dot] org. Click GreenMap.org/donate to donate online or mail to us at 220A East 4th Street, New York, NY 10009. Click here for more details, including our supporters to date.

Upcoming Events

On June 28-29, Green Map's global headquarters will be the venue for NYC's first Open Street Map party. OpenStreetMap.org is a kind of wikipedia for maps - a free editable map of the world to which anyone can add roads, bike paths and other geographic data. Around the world, parties are being held to spur data collection. The New York City party will be based at Green Map System, 220A East 4th Street (between Aves A & B in Manhattan's East Village) on Saturday June 28, 10am-4pm, and Sunday June 29, 11am-2pm. Find details at wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/New_York_City

On June 29, we'll be giving a 3 pm workshop about our expanded youth resources and planning for the NYC pilot Green Schools Green Map at CitySol, Solar One's annual arts and culture spectacular, held along the East River at 23rd Street from June 26-29. For more information, see CitySol.org.

A special thank you and congratulations to Santiago's Living City and Natura for publishing the boxed set of Green Maps and book as Version Zero of their Mapa Verde, as described in this blogpost

Get outdoors this summer and help our city become greener! Best wishes from everyone at GreenMap.org!