Rio’s favelas are home to a third of the city’s population, but are almost invisible on maps — a situation five young women are trying to change with the help of GPS and the Internet.
Rafaela Goncalves da Silva, 21, has lived in the Santa Marta favela, a poor and dangerous slum, since she was two years old.
She is bringing up her son there and takes him to school each day by cable-car under the watchful gaze of the Christ the Redeemer statue that dominates the city’s horizon.
She is also among the five women recruited by youth organization Rede Jovem to use GPS-equipped cellphones to map and log the streets of Rio’s favelas.
“I start up the GPS at the beginning of the street, then I walk without stopping until the end,” she said.
The information is uploaded to the Wikimapa site, where is available for anyone to access. Some of the streets being mapped do not have an official name.
“I just ask the older residents what they call, the community calls the street,” she said, tapping in one such name — Paciencia Street — into her cellphone.
The mapping project goes beyond just street names, and includes details of local shops, clubs and meeting points.
On this street, Rafaela’s first stop is at Flavio’s, “whose fatty cakes are bad for your heart,” she said, sitting on the sidewalk.
She takes down the name of the shop, a little background, opening hours and a photograph. Within minutes, the information is available on the online map.
There is plenty more for Rafaela to document — football fields, cybercafes, shops, churches. She takes photographs and videos and little escapes her telephone.
Rafaela is one of five so-called “wikireporters” recruited by Rede Jovem.
The five young women, chosen because they are “less timid than boys,” will compete to see who can obtain the most information over the next six months.
The winner will receive a grant to study journalism.
Rede Jovem works to drive social engagement among underprivileged youth by facilitating their access to new information and communication technologies.
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