In the third year of its Small Grants Program, the Global Spatial DataInfrastructure (GSDI) Association announces grants of $30,000 plus$13,500 in consulting services to fifteen organizations around theglobe. This year the cash grants were enhanced with the addition ofconsulting from GISCorps with an equivalent value of up to $2,500 perproject which allowed for both a larger number of grants and anincrease in the value of grants.

The grants are aimed at assisting member organizations in building keycomponents of their countries' emerging Spatial Data Infrastructuresand are awarded to SDI coordinating bodies (councils, committees) andGIS user groups. Priority was given to projects in developing nationsand countries with economies in transition. A GSDI Association team,including a representative of GISCorps, reviewed the 71 proposals andselected fifteen for grants.

Three grantees received $2,500 in funding from GSDI supplemented with voluntary services from the GIS Corps:
Institute for Ecology & Botany (Hungary) - Botany Portal
World Food Program (Mali) - SDI Application
Marshall Islands (Marshall Islands) - Metadata/clearinghouse

Nine grantees received $2,500 in funding from GSDI:
Columbia - Web Mapping Workshop
Observatoire Satellital des Forjts d'Afrique Centrale (Congo) - Biodiversity Database
Directorate of Land and Property (East Timor) - SDI Workshop
Foodlink (Kenya) - Workshop on Data Inventory and Agreement
Ministry of Lands & Environment (Jamaica) - continuation of existing work
Livestock (Kenya) - Data Inventory & Clearinghouse Development
Delta (Niger) - On-line Database and Clearinghouse
Information Management (Philippines) - Building NSDI, Technology Working Groups; Policies, and Database
Management of Health Services (Uganda) - SDI Workshop

Three Grantees received voluntary services from the GIS Corps:
Biodiversity (Namibia) - Biodiversity Database
Armenia - Web-mapping Volcanoes
Kenya - Coastal Resources Maps / Oil Spills

The GSDI Association supports the work of organizations in developingtheir own SDI initiatives nationally and regionally, and collaborateswith local, national, and international organizations to ensure thatgeospatial data, services, and metadata are accessible throughinteroperable standards-based services, systems, software, and productsthat operate in a web-enabled environment. The success of the GSDIAssociation depends on the quality of its partnerships with public,private, academic, and non-governmental organizations.
For more information visit http://www.gsdi.org.

GISCorps is an international initiative that offers GIS consulting anddevelopment services by qualified volunteers to civil societyorganizations.
For more information visit http://www.giscorps.org

For information about this announcement, contact:

Alan Stevens
astevens@gsdi.org