On behalf of “Geo for All” , we are happy to inform the renewal of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Open Source Geospatial Foundation and the International Cartographic Association (ICA) by Professor Georg Gartner (President ICA) and Jeff McKenna ( President OSGeo) on 16 July 2015 at FOSS4G Europe, in Como, Italy. Details at http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MOU_ICA
This builds upon the ICA-OSGeo MoU of Sep 2011 and reflects our expansion plans for the future. We thank the ICA Executive and the OSGeo Board for supporting the MoU and Professor Helena Mitasova for her efforts to get this MoU updated and renewed. We also thank Arnulf Christl (former OSGeo President) who took the initiative of ICA-OSGeo collaborations many years back. This is an excellent example of the power of bringing together communities on a shared mission – “Making geospatial education and opportunities accessible to all”.
This MoU renewal will be formally announced by Georg Gartner (President ICA) [1] at the 27th International Cartographic Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil next week and by Jeff McKenna ( President OSGeo) at FOSS4G 2015 in Seoul. This will further develop the GeoForAll initiative, through expanding partnerships. We welcome Governments, Industry, SME’s , NGOs etc who support Geo4All’s education mission and criteria [2] to join us as “Partners” and be part of a global network of Open Geospatial Science Research and Education ‘Labs’ and ‘Partners’ to expand more collaborations for the future [3] . We will work to bring together all key players (Government organisations, Industry, SMEs, NGOs) on the common mission of education and opportunities for all.
We started from nothing and it is 100 percent the dedication and efforts of all our colleagues globally which helped us .We are grateful to all our colleagues globally for their help and efforts which enabled us to build this initiative.
We look forward to working and building collaborations with all interested on this education mission. Access to quality education and opportunities is key for getting rid of extreme poverty and enable broadly shared prosperity for all.
[1] http://icaci.org/presidents-blog-ica-and-osgeo-renew-their-memorandum-of-understanding/