Code for Ghana launches ‘Visuals for Gender’ project

Viz for Gender is an open data project launched by Code for Ghana.

The project seeks to develop both static and interactive infographics from gender-based data sets and make them accessible to the public.

It is a project that seeks to educate people and influence policy decisions in Ghana.

The key thematic areas the project will address are: Gender-based violence and Challenging stigma, discrimination, attitudes and laws.

The project activities include building the capacity of gender based Civil Society Organizations and Journalists, Advocacy and Hackathons for civic technologists, and open data enthusiasts.

According to Florence Toffa, the Project Coordinator, “this project seeks to expose the different forms of violent acts committed against vulnerable people and have proper measures of dealing with the culprits. This will be done by visualising data sets of gender-based violent acts. Through this project, we want policy leaders and citizens to understand the harm being caused to people in this bracket and its implications on socio-economic activities and the future consequences of such actions.”

The project will also provide a platform for victims of gender-based violence to share their stories. This, coupled with the data stories that will be done, are expected to bring to the limelight key issues that need immediate attention from policy makers.

Code for Ghana is an organization that seeks to encourage citizen participation in governance through open data.

The organization has done this over the last few years by developing interesting data visualizations using government data and building the capacity for both professionals (such as journalists, software developers) and young tech enthusiasts in data scraping,data analysis, data visualization etc. The Viz for Gender project is funded by Amplify Change.