Hello from Lviv, Ukraine!
Lets get to know each other (since this is my first post here). This is me on a picture, Im Анастасія (Anastasya for English speakers. And dont be alarmed, its a Greek name and not that medical term you are thinking about).
I do not even remember the moment when I begun participating in the Local Guides program (or Local Experts as it says in my native language) 2 or 3 years ago. But now I`m on the level 7 and adding staff to Maps is still as exciting, still feels like a fun game.
As soon as I realized that the content on Maps is created by locals and people who trevel - everything has changed. Now I see Maps as a place for help and promotion.
As a local I try to share some tips&trics that only locals would know, and as a treveller I share some of my discoveries along the way, that would make the life of the person that is comming after me, at least a bit easier. Some kind of Pay-it-Forward I would say.
As of promotion, it has a special value to me, and I see Google Maps as an amazing tool to do it. But in order for you to understand this point, I need to give you some context.
I live in Ukraine my entire life. As I was a kid, no one in my family was keen on trevelling, so I barelly knew what was even outside of my hometown. Actually, Ive even thought that all cities around the world look exactly like my hometown, like if it was copypasted on Earth with some distances in between. Things were so bad, that even as we visited our distant family in the neighbour region-center city since I was born, Ive learned, that there is a huge lake in the middle of it only when I turned 14. Symply because no one cared to take me there.
So, when I got old enough to make my own decisions - I discovered a new hobby. I love to travel, even if its only a day trip to a close little city or village. I went wild. I dedicated almost every free weekend to go somewhere new. Around Ukraine, I mean.
This was when I discovered, that Internet has very little to absent information about a lot of my destinations. If it was a small town or a village - good luck finding any info about it, not even talking about the bus station or place to eat. You had to take your risks with some routs, not really knowing how to get back home after you will get there.
This is what promotion meens to me - adding information where it`s mission, so that other people would know that this place is worth trevelling, and that this trevel is doable. This is why I consider Google Maps my tool.
Ukraine has an amazing mix of all possible landscapes and views, rich history and unique architecture, and yet any people know about it. So I made it a mission to fill in those gaps.
This is what Local Guides means to me - a tool, an opportunity to promote my country in front of the whole world and share someting that only a local could share. Out of the greate love to my Ukraine.
