The journey of a thousand miles they say begins with a step. When I got involved with the local guides program, I felt a relief because I could finally assist in solving the problem I faced before with wrong and spacious mapping, and wished I had known about it and joined earlier. What made mapping fun, to accompany my passion and drive me to work is that I knew I get to share pictures of places in my local community and get points for doing that. It seemed more like a game, where I play with pictures and reviews, then get points to get to level up. But undoubtedly as I got more engaged in it, and started to do research on what the local guide program is all about, I got to realize that it was in line with my passion of helping my community in several ways, I looked at it beyond just pictures. I am Zolo Yvan, a 5th year medical student at the University of Buea, Faculty of Health Sciences. I left my home town, the capital of Cameroon-Yaoundé to Buea for studies. It was hard living in a completely strange place, its true it is in my country still, but this part of my country is English speaking unlike my French speaking hometown. As I struggled with language issues, getting to locations around was difficult since I didn’t have any friends yet. I considered asking google maps for help, to know restaurants and famous places in the city, unfortunately I realized that very little information was available regarding the places around, the truth is I blamed Google for not looking into the problem ,because as I usually watch in movies, a lot of information is on google map for the western world, little did I know that the Google I was expecting to add all this information on the map had an existing program for people like me and everyone else to create new places and make google maps very efficient. I got so frustrated one day when I decided to go to a restaurant I saw on google maps, but unfortunately when I got to that location, I realized that restaurant was nowhere on that location, it either was wrongly mapped or maybe they relocated or got permanently closed. When I learnt from my best friend, who just became a google local guide at that time that I could join the program and make a change, I decided that I will do all the work I can to develop my new home and stop pointing fingers at Google. So far I enjoy verifying and checking factual information on google maps and adding missing information. I wouldn’t say I like exploring new deserts or anything particularly. I just love putting every detail I can to make Google Maps better for everyone, Every type of person. Its true my medical studies keep me indoors studying and that’s why I haven’t attained a top level yet, but every little opportunity I get to go out and have fun or for a walk, you will find me taking pictures.
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Great write-up @ZoloYvan . @
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Hi @ZoloYvan ,
Was this your application post for Connect Live 2019? If so, please note that I adjusted the title of your post. A clear title will attract more views to your thread, as it gives a clear indication of the content of your publication. And last but not least, since your post isn’t written in French, I decided to remove the language label from it. This action will help avoid confusion among other Local Guides who are looking for publications in French via Connect.