The most interesting thing i have done as a Local Guide is adding places to help local people and small businesses like SafeBoda a ride hailing company help its drivers and customers locate places using the google map feature.
What made me join the program:
I used to like playing around with google maps from my childhood. I remember I used to take my mother’s small Samsung phone (had java apps installed) and the first thing i used to launch whenever i accessed it was Google map. I used to locate places in my neighborhood on her small phone and this felt like magic to me at that childhood moment because the app was fun, fast and easy to use . But as I gained more experience in my later years I realized many places, and businesses were missing on Google maps in my small town Jinja Uganda so this motivated me to start taking pictures of small businesses, roads, banks, schools, restaurants, bars etc in my town and then upload them to places i had added to Google maps.
Here is a look at what i have added so far to google maps and the impact i have made:
I always take pictures of buildings, small business, schools, shops, pharmacies, hotels, bars and restaurants etc in my neighborhoods and new places i visit. One thing i like most is travelling though it’s hard to travel to every region or town as it requires a lot of money and time and it’s one of my major blocker to increase my impact on google maps. I have plans of travelling to more countries and capture more amazing places to increase impact and help many people around the world. But all in all I am so proud and so grateful that I have helped more than 180,000 people using maps.
For the last 15 months i have been working with Safeboda a ride hailing company in Kampala Uganda and one of the challenges drivers and their customers faced was using the ride hailing app with google map feature to locate places for pick up and drop offs. Most customers would randomly place their pickup and drop off pins at wrong places because there are no small shops, hotels, restaurants or landmarks listed at these locations on google maps.
I found out that this was a problem only a local guide could solve so in my journey with SafeBoda i started to add these places around the city whenever i visited or was dropped off to these places. With time as we trained more drivers on how to use Google maps and navigate places around the city it became easier and easier for customers and drivers to locate places using the ride hailing App. I am currently still adding more and more places to help the increasing number of customers and drivers who are using the app.