Cadasta is excited to welcome three new interns to our team. All three interns are based in East Africa and bring an impressive level of land administration and rights expertise as well as unique perspectives on regional and women’s empowerment issues. We can’t wait to see their work in supporting our partners and projects.
Deborah Haggith Jepkoech graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Geospatial Engineering. She currently works as a Land Surveyor using GIS to make informed spatial decisions. During her work with Cadasta she hopes to gain a broader perspective on land tenure systems. While using her GIS skills and knowledge to make a difference in her community. On the importance of land rights, Deborah says, “Land is a great resource tool and failure to secure its access to vulnerable groups has led to spatial inequalities especially in urban areas. In a digital age, Cadasta employs technologies that involve the community by using a bottom-top approach.”
Gundelinda (Linda) Ringo joins us from the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania after graduating with a Bachelor’s degree of Science in Geomatics 2015. She currently works as a surveyor and GIS expert with Geolink International. She has experience working with squatter areas and informal settlements and found that many citizens in these areas are not aware of their land rights and how to implement their land rights into practice. For example, community members need to know the land laws of buying or acquiring the land through consulting a professional land surveyor or a town planner. Linda is excited to help her community through Cadasta’s unique approach and develop an approach that favors the community’s land tenure systems. More specifically, she sees ways in which the Tanzanian Ministry of Lands is facing a challenge of encroachment and overlapping surveys that can hopefully be improved through new plotting and data strategies.
Diana Kyalo joins Cadasta with a Bachelor’s degree in Land Administration. During her undergraduate studies, she gained experience working with organizations in the land tenure regularizations program. These early exposures to the land sector provided Diana with a clear understanding of how land is important to people’s livelihoods and quality of life. Diana is excited to bring her skills and energy to Cadasta and learn more about how Cadasta effectively incorporates new technology into communities. She aims to understand more about how communities interact with their land and how this has broader implications for their wellbeing. Diana is passionate about secure tenure for all as she sees it as key to improving livelihoods and quality of life for the community more broadly. Diana even writes her own blog on land issues in Africa! She strongly believes that secure land rights is a path to reduce conflict in most countries, saying “ land is home to all of us and we deserve to feel safe at home.”
We are thrilled to welcome Deborah, Linda, and Diana to the Cadasta family. With their ideas, experience, and energy, Cadasta is poised to have a productive spring and summer advancing our work to put vulnerable communities on the map.