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ICT Toolbox for small NGOs

18 May 2021

The ICT Toolbox was originally produced in French in 2017 by CartONG in support of Agence des Micro Projets de La Guilde (available here). The translated version in English was published on the CartoBlog in 2018 (more information below). It was transferred to the IM Resource Portal in May 2021.

In 2017, CartONG published a study on the use of ICTs by small aid organisations in French as well as a toolbox to help them along in their use of ICTs. The toolbox was comprised of 26 good practice, tool tip & user feedback sheets which could be used by any small humanitarian and development organisations wishing to use ICTs and needing guidance to do so.

CartONG received very positive feedback from the humanitarian sector after the publication of the study and toolbox, and have been meaning to extend the outreach of these work tools, in particular in non francophone areas of the world. With the support of our volunteers, most of the toolbox is now available in English. Specifically, good practice & tool tip sheets can be found as individual one pagers below.

Good Practice Tip sheets

Good Practice Tip sheet 1 - Choosing your mobile device (“classic” mobile, smartphone, tablet…)

Good Practice Tip sheet 2 - Optimise the energy consumption of your mobile devices

Good Practice Tip sheet 3 - Share your connection with other devices

Good Practice Tip sheet 4 - Managing your project information

Good Practice Tip sheet 5 - Secure your mobile device

Good Practice Tip sheet 6 - Protecting beneficiaries’ personal data

Tool Tip sheets

Tool Tip sheet 1 - Using Dropbox to archive your project documentation

Tool Tip sheet 2 - Using What’sApp to make calls over the internet

Tool Tip sheet 3 - Sharing a photo (and geotagging it)

Tool Tip sheet 4 - Using Feem to share documents without the internet

Tool Tip sheet 5 - Scanning documents

Tool Tip sheet 6 - Using language apps

Tool Tip sheet 7 - Conducting Mobile Data Collection with ODK Collect

Tool Tip sheet 8 - Calculating surfaces with area collector

Tool Tip sheet 9 - Using Maps.Me to have access to an offline map on your smartphone

Tool Tip sheet 10 - Making your first online map with uMap

Tool Tip sheet 11 - Creating and visualising data with Google Earth

Tool Tip sheet 12 - Using a weather app to improve agricultural productivity

Tool Tip sheet 13 - Monitoring your water points with mWater Explorer

Tool Tip sheet 14 - Giving pregnant women access to advice with GiftedMom

Tool Tip sheet 15 - Identify and collect geographical information with OSMAnd

To download all Good Practice and Tip Sheets from the ICT Toolbox in one go, please click on the zip file below.

Good Practice and Tool Tip Sheets - ICT Toolbox for small NGOs

The user feedback sheets remain to be made available in English. In the meantime, the whole ICT toolbox for small NGOs is available in French here.

For more information on this topic, please check out this study compiled by CartONG and published by Agence des Micro Projets de La Guilde in 2017 (in French only).

About the CartoBlog

What is it?

The CartoBlog was the blog of CartONG up prior to this portal. It was originally launched in 2012 and featured a wide range of practical and guidance resources for aid practitioners covering the full range of Information Management topics, with a strong focus on Mapping and Geographic Information Systems as well as Mobile Data Collection. It will be decommissioned in early 2022. The vast majority of its content has been transferred to the IM Resource Portal.