At SHARE Beirut event last weeked, Henry Addo, co-founder of Ushahidi, discussed Ushahidi’s work to map incidents of violence and peace efforts in different conflict areas based on citizen reports submitted via the web and mobile phones.

In this short interview, Addo explains the platform, how Ushahidi reaches volunteers, and how mapped data is used to more effectively target relief work and aid. The organization is developing several new mediums for collecting and mapping this information, including their new SMSSync platform.

"Ushahidi", which means "testimony" in Swahili, was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. The platform is built on the premise that gathering crisis information from the general public provides new insights into events happening in near real-time.

The platform is expected to help organizations marshal efforts to assist areas that are not well covered in the mainstream media.