{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreibmtpois4ipuhj55zyziwizoo6ce53ibdkhakeqdkgbgotsk5ufea",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:4tuge3k3comfj4nfvqnwkemn/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmii4mzk2zy2"
  },
  "path": "/user/Pradip%20Subedi/diary/408711",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-22T11:41:56.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.openstreetmap.org",
  "textContent": "I grew up in Nepal. Hills everywhere. Roads that don’t exist on any map. Communities that satellites can barely see through the cloud cover. When I first heard about OpenStreetMap, I thought: this is exactly what those places need.\n\nThat was a few years ago. Since then I’ve spent over 300 hours mapping, not because someone paid me to, but because I kept thinking about the person who might one day need that road to exist on a map before they could get help.\n\nHow I Started: Before I knew what OSM was, I was already messing around with maps, visiting new places, uploading photos to Google Maps, adding names, leaving notes about locations. I liked documenting places. That habit slowly turned into something bigger.\n\nA hackathon in college introduced me to humanitarian mapping. That’s when it clicked: mapping wasn’t just a tech thing. It was about making communities visible.\n\nMy background is electrical engineering. My job is in the cable car sector. Neither screams “mapper.” But when you work in mountain infrastructure, you see how much depends on accurate geographic data, withdrawal routes, access to remote villages, disaster response. The gap between what exists on the ground and what exists on a map is sometimes jarring.\n\nI’ve actually validated more tasks on HOT than I’ve mapped myself, which felt strange at first. But validation matters as much as mapping, maybe more. A wrong building polygon in a flood response map doesn’t help anyone.\n\nOn Women and Mapping: Most mapping events I’ve attended, online or in-person, are heavily male. So is the leadership in local OSM chapters. But whenever a woman shows up and starts contributing, the quality is often excellent. Careful, methodical, detail-oriented. And then they disappear. Not because they lost interest, usually because no one made space for them to stay.\n\nOpenHerMap changed something about that. I watched women across the Asia Pacific region build their own mapping networks, train each other, and take on projects the broader HOT community ended up relying on.\n\nI think about the Nepal Red Cross Missing Maps project, 65 tasks covering Bhajani Municipality. Remote, underserved, barely visible on any mainstream map. The communities there include women who walk hours to reach health clinics, children who cross unmapped rivers to get to school. When those paths get mapped, it’s not abstract. It’s someone getting somewhere safely.\n\nWhat Mapping Taught Me That Engineering Didn,t: Engineering taught me precision. OSM taught me that precision without inclusion is incomplete.\n\nA map built only by people who look like me, engineers, men, people with reliable internet, will have gaps. Not intentional ones. Just the natural result of mapping what you can see and know. Women map differently, not because of some essential quality, but because their daily routes, their safety concerns, their infrastructure needs are different. A market that women use every morning may not appear on a map if no woman was ever asked to trace it.\n\nI tend toward roads and buildings because that’s what humanitarian projects prioritize. But POIs, shops, health posts, water sources, safe gathering points, that’s where local knowledge matters most, and local women often hold that knowledge.\n\nWhere I Am Now: Today I’m an Advanced Mapper on HOT with over 300 hours of contribution. I still work in the cable car sector. The mapping happens in the margins, evenings, weekends, lunch breaks.\n\nThe theme of this competition is “Women and Mapping in OSM.” I’m a man writing about it. That might seem odd. But this isn’t only women’s work to do. Making open mapping more inclusive requires everyone to notice the gaps and then do something about them.\n\nThe map is never finished. That’s the point.\n\nPradip Subedi, Nepal, HOT Mapper, OpenStreetMap Contributor.",
  "title": "From the Hills of Nepal to the World: My Story in Open Mapping"
}