Mathias started @UN and won a United Nations 21 Award, recognizing “the outstanding work of colleagues who advanced projects with great impact and innovative potential”. For the past three years Mathias has worked for Sida and Ushahidi in Kenya, supporting ICT projects through the Challenge Fund; Making All Voices Count. Mathias recently moved back to Sweden and is now a Making All Voices Count Fellow, an Advisor to Ushahidi and has started his own podcast; Plurrify, which is about social entrepreneurship, innovation and social good with tech.

Ushahidi, which translates to “testimony” in Swahili, was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya during the post-election violence in 2008. This enabled citizens to stay away from violent areas, and the authorities to respond to it. Crowd-sourced crisis mapping was born.

In 2010 the UN system used it after the earthquake in Haiti. Since then the Ushahidi crowd-sourcing tools have been deployed and used to raise citizen voices in more than 150 countries. It has reached more than 20 million people, and the tool has been translated to more than 50 languages. Ushahidi is a technology leader, headquartered in Nairobi, with a global team. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made a point of visiting Ushahidi while in Kenya and US President Obama has referenced the organisation’s work.

More about Ushahidi and Mathias.