News and Events :: GHF in the News

New York (AP) -- Google Inc. launched an initiative Tuesday to help charities and other non-profit groups use maps and satellite images to raise awareness, recruit volunteers and encourage donations. The Google Earth Outreach program represents a formalization of ad-hoc partnerships with organizations using the free software to publicize their works.

Already, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has been using Google Earth to call attention to atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan. When users scan over Darfur, they see icons of flames representing destroyed villages and of tents for refugee camps. Clicking on one opens a window with details and links on how to help.

The U.N. Environmental Program, meanwhile, has used the software to show areas of environmental destruction. The Jane Goodall Institute shows locations of its research on chimpanzees and African deforestation. A Brazilian Indian tribe is working on ways to help stop loggers and miners from deforesting the jungle and digging for gold.

"There's nothing like the power of information to make people understand the urgency of action," said Kathy Bushkin Calvin, executive vice president for the U.N. Foundation.
Edward Wilson, chief executive of Earthwatch Institute, said the maps help people understand that "what they are reading is not happening some place out of sight, out of mind. Those places become places you can visit, you can actually see."

The launch party at Google's New York office, chosen for its proximity to leading philanthropic groups, came complete with beach balls sporting globe designs. Video monitors showed Google Earth's software in action. By turning these individual efforts into a formal program, the Mountain View, Calif.-based search company hopes to make its tools more widely available to non-profits around the world. The resources will be available on an open Web site, so technically individuals and corporations can tap into the program as well. However, one component of the initiative — grants to receive a free copy of Google Earth's $400 professional-version software — will be limited initially to certain U.S. non-profits certified by the Internal Revenue Service. Many of the features, though, are available in the free version of Google Earth, available as a download for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

Non-profits are "trying to tell a story and trying to move people emotionally," said Rebecca Moore, manager of Google Earth Outreach. "They are trying to inspire action, advocate on behalf of a cause and drive people to, for example, make donations, sign a petition or lobby your congressional representative. "They have somewhat unique needs. Therefore we have focused on helping them understand how to do these things."

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the launch of Google Earth Outreach, a new program designed to help nonprofit organizations around the world leverage the power of Google Earth to illustrate and advocate for the important work that they do.

The announcement was made at Google’s New York City office by Elliot Schrage, Google Vice President for Global Communications & Public Affairs, and John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps. Pilot Outreach partners including Jane Goodall, Founder, the Jane Goodall Institute; Kathy Bushkin Calvin, Executive Vice President, United Nations Foundation; and Edward Wilson, President and CEO, Earthwatch, were also on hand to discuss how their organizations are using Google Earth to tell effective and compelling stories about their work.

Google Earth Outreach enables any organization to quickly and easily get the resources it needs to create compelling stories through Google Earth layers. The program includes comprehensive online guides, video tutorials, and case studies about using Google Earth specifically targeted to the needs of nonprofit organizations. In addition, there are online forums connecting new participants to Global Awareness partners and experienced programmers who can assist in developing Keyhole Markup Language (KML) layers for Google Earth. These forums, actively moderated by Google Earth Outreach staff, serve to foster discussion and cooperation among organizations and the broader Google Earth community.

Organizations can also now apply online for Google Earth Pro grants (a $400 value); grantees will receive additional technical support from Google. Participating organizations may be highlighted in the Google Earth Outreach Showcase, an online gallery of the most compelling new layers, and a subset of those will be featured in the Global Awareness folder in Google Earth on a rotating basis. More details about Google Earth Outreach are available at http://earth.google.com/outreach.

"Google's mission is all about making information more accessible and useful," said Elliot Schrage, Google Vice President of Global Communications & Public Affairs. "With programs like Google Earth Outreach, we seek to help create a 'marketplace of ideas' in the growing not-for-profit sector that rivals and complements what we offer commercial enterprises. In a very practical way, Google Earth Outreach demonstrates that technology can inspire action by bringing seemingly distant problems closer to home."

“Our goal with Google Earth Outreach is to help public service organizations worldwide leverage our mapping technology to further their goals by providing tailored technical guidance and grants,” said John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps. “Now any organization can quickly and easily annotate Google Earth with pictures, video and information to tell visual, compelling stories of the work they do to over 200 million Google Earth users.”

"Only if we understand can we care. Only if we care will we help. With Google Earth Outreach, more people have the chance to see, to care, and then to act,” said Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE Founder, the Jane Goodall Institute, UN Messenger of Peace.

"Google Earth represents a whole new way for us to connect with the world," explains Ed Wilson, President and CEO at Earthwatch. "Not only can we inform people about key environmental issues facing the world today, but we can give them the opportunity to get directly involved. From our NGO and corporate partners to our dedicated researchers and volunteers, Google Earth provides us all with a centralized tool to communicate our mission--and maximize our impact."

As part of the announcement John Hanke also introduced three new Global Awareness layers for Google Earth:

• Global Heritage Fund (GHF) - The GHF Global Awareness layer explores cultural heritage sites around the world that GHF is working to preserve for future generations. From ancient Mayan Mirador pyramids buried in Guatemalan forests threatened by clear cutting to the crumbling Lijiang Ancient Town in China, GHF takes users to these endangered archaeological treasures of human civilization and details the efforts to save them in partnership with local governments and resources.

• Earthwatch Expeditions – The Earthwatch Global Awareness layer enables users to virtually visit more than 100 volunteer Earthwatch expeditions in Google Earth— from recording the activities of lemurs in Madagascar to determining the impact of climate change on grey whale populations in Mexico and Canada. Enthusiasts and would-be volunteers can explore scientific field research projects in progress around the world and learn how they can help collect field data in the areas of rainforest ecology, wildlife conservation, marine science, archaeology, and more.

• Fair Trade Certified - The TransFair USA layer introduces users to the over 70 Fair Trade Co-ops located throughout Latin America, Asia and Africa. Fair trade is an innovative market-based approach to sustainable development that helps family farmers in developing countries gain direct access to markets and develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google’s search service to make the world's geographic information easily accessible and useful. There have been over 200 million unique downloads of Google Earth since the product's launch in June, 2005. Google Earth can be downloaded for free at http://earth.google.com/.

NEW YORK — Google launched an initiative Tuesday to help charities and other non-profit groups use maps and satellite images to raise awareness, recruit volunteers and encourage donations.

The Google Earth Outreach program represents a formalization of ad-hoc partnerships with organizations using the free software to publicize their works.

By turning these individual efforts into a formal program, Google hopes to make its tools more widely available to non-profits around the world. The resources will be available on an open website, so technically individuals and corporations can tap into the program as well.

However, grants to receive a free copy of Google Earth's $400 professional-version software will be limited initially to certain U.S. non-profits certified by the Internal Revenue Service. Many of the features, though, are available in the free version of Google Earth, available as a download for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

"They have somewhat unique needs. Therefore we have focused on helping them understand how to do these things."

Many government agencies, hobbyists and other users of Google Earth already overlay maps with photos, video, text and links pinned onto specific locations.

"KML" files containing such overlays are distributed through websites, e-mail or the software itself. Once a user clicks on the file, icons representing those elements appear on the map.

Google will be providing online guides, video tutorials and case studies aimed at showing non-profit representatives how they, too, can use Google Earth's overlays.

Although Google also runs a mapping website, users will need the free Google Earth software to view the materials. Google says it has 200 million Google Earth users worldwide.

Google on Tuesday launched a new initiative to help nonprofit organizations communicate and present data using Google Earth.

Google Earth Outreach aims to provide information including help documents, video tutorials, and case studies that describe how to create Keyhole Markup Language (KML) layers for Google Earth. The project also includes online forums to enhance communications between nonprofit organizations and to put interested users of Google Earth in touch with experienced developers.

Examples of how nonprofit organizations can use geospatial data to communicate can be seen in the new layers, assembled by the Global Heritage Fund, EarthWatch, and TransFair USA, that Google added to Google Earth's Global Awareness folder.

In April, Google added a layer detailing the Darfur crisis to the Global Awareness folder, along with several other layers. The Darfur layer remains the only one turned on by default.

Other layers in that folder -- the United Nations Environment Programme Atlas of Our Changing Environment, the World Wildlife Fund's Conservation Projects, Appalachian Mountaintop Removal, and Jane Goodall's Gombe Chimpanzee Blog -- must be manually selected before they're visible on Google Earth.

Google also is offering nonprofits the opportunity to apply online for Google Earth Pro license grants. Google Earth Pro normally costs $400. Organizations awarded a free license also receive additional technical support and the opportunity to have their work featured in the Google Earth Outreach Showcase, an online gallery of new Google Earth layers.

"Google's mission is all about making information more accessible and useful," said Elliot Schrage, VP of global communications and public affairs, in a statement. "With programs like Google Earth Outreach, we seek to help create a 'marketplace of ideas' in the growing not-for-profit sector that rivals and complements what we offer commercial enterprises."

The power of satellite imagery hasn't escaped nonprofit organizations. Earlier this month at the International Digital Earth Symposium, Amnesty International USA introduced a project called Eyes on Darfur designed to monitor vulnerable villages in Sudan and to deter violence there.

Last week, Reuters reported that Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, saw online mapping software like Google Earth as a potential security threat, but acknowledged the technology could not be undone.

Since Google Earth debuted in June, 2005, it has been downloaded more than 200 million times.

At an event in Google's New York offices on Tuesday, the company unveiled a new initiative to make its Google Earth geography software a more accessible tool for nonprofit organizations.

"We're now officially launching a program called Google Earth Outreach," said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Maps. "Google is stepping up and validating this as a bona fide program that will be staffed in our group."

Google Earth Outreach is now live, and several downloadable layers from the program's inaugural partners--the Global Heritage Fund, Earthwatch and Fair Trade Certified--are now available online.

The new Outreach program came about, according to Google executives, because the company saw the diverse range of ways that the software was being used. "We just completely didn't see the majority of uses for Google Earth," Hanke said. "I think it's blown away everybody on the team."

Nonprofit uses, particularly those pertaining to environmental and humanitarian causes, have proven to be one of the most prolific uses for the software. "We think that the technologies we're developing can be an important catalyst for education, for sharing information, for advocacy, to address global and local issues that affect everyone around the world," said Elliot Schrage, Google's vice president of global communications and public affairs.

Organizations can now apply for grants for the Google Earth Pro program, which normally costs $400 per person per year, as well as technical support for its Keyhole Markup Language, which Hanke described as "the HTML of marking up the Earth. It's pretty easy to use," he added, "but it's a new thing, so it needs to be explained."

The wildly popular, information-heavy Google Earth software has not been without critics who have suggested that perhaps it's unwise to make so much detailed mapping data freely available over the Internet.

In response, Google has repeatedly stressed that the benefits of the Google Earth software outweigh the drawbacks. Over the past year, different organizations have utilized the tool as a way to promote tourism, animate the spread of a hypothetical virus and highlight architectural marvels.

In April, Google formally partnered with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to create downloadable map layers to help visualize the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.

It was the success of the Darfur layer, which Schrage described as "an incredibly vivid, powerful way of informing people what is going on in a faraway part of the world," that ultimately convinced the company to devote more Google Earth resources to the nonprofit initiative. "We believe that Google Earth can revolutionize the way people see the world around them," he added.

The announcement featured a videoconference appearance by legendary activist and humanitarian Jane Goodall, whose Jane Goodall Institute has been using Google Earth as a tool for some time now.

"When I began in 1960, my tools consisted of a paper and a pencil," she said to the audience. "That's putting the Jane Goodall Institute into a whole new era, and it's a very, very exciting era...it's certainly helping us hugely with our conservation efforts." Thanks to Google Earth, the Jane Goodall Institute now has a "geoblog" that's "a soap opera for wild chimpanzees."

Hanke said near the end of the event that footage of the conference will later be uploaded to the Google-owned YouTube video-sharing platform.

Google to help non-profits raise awareness, money, volunteers with mapping software

GLOBAL HERITAGE LAUNCHES GOOGLE EARTH INITIATIVE TO SAVE ENDANGERED WORLD HERITAGE

Global Heritage Network (GHN) Enables Online Monitoring of Threatened Sites and Collaboration by International Conservation Experts, Governments and Local Communities

New York, NY — (June 26, 2007) Global Heritage Fund (GHF) unveils a Google Earth mapping initiative to help save the world’s most ancient and endangered cultural heritage sites in the most impoverished countries.

As part of GHF’s ‘Saving Our Global Heritage’ campaign, Global Heritage Network (GHN) convenes online the world’s leading experts in heritage conservation, international development and sustainable tourism to plan sound solutions to save endangered global heritage sites in impoverished and war-torn regions. With high-resolution imagery, Google Earth’s advanced satellite mapping and 3D geospatial database, the GHN layer for Google Earth enables site conservation plans, threats and mapping data to be shared in real time online, facilitating collaboration, conservation, advocacy and participation from hundreds of experts, government ministries, local citizens and communities around the world to work together and help save global heritage sites.

Every year, we are losing many of our last remaining global heritage sites in developing regions throughout Asia, the Middle East, Central Europe and the Americas. Unprecedented looting, encroachment, unchecked sprawl, neglect and deliberate destruction of major archaeological sites and ancient townscapes are overwhelming resource-poor national governments and local communities.

“Global Heritage Network is enabling the world community to actively help reverse the loss of some of our most important global heritage sites,” says Jeff Morgan, Executive Director of Global Heritage Fund. “Google’s advanced collaboration and mapping technologies make it possible for a non-profit like Global Heritage to have a global impact, without major investments in technology, hardware and software. In the coming decades, this will greatly benefit not only conservation, but the economic welfare of the local communities around these sites.”

Global Heritage Network (GHN) in Action
Global Heritage Network (GHN) integrates Google Earth™, Google SketchUp™, Google Scholar™, Google Groups™, Picasa™ and YouTube™ into its online initiative to support conservation and sustainable development. More than 200 million Google Earth™ users worldwide can visualize and better understand the destruction of our global heritage currently unfolding, especially in developing countries.

Saving Our Global Heritage appears in the Global Awareness folder in Google Earth and is available now. GHF’s Saving Our Global Heritage campaign is raising awareness to stimulate global action to save our endangered heritage sites in developing countries.

"At Google we see great promise in the innovative ways non-profit organizations are using products like Google Earth to further their missions and reach new audiences," said John Hanke, Director of Google Earth and Maps. "By leveraging advanced mapping technologies to advocate for the preservation of the world's most ancient and endangered cultural assets, Global Heritage Fund has created an incredibly rich resource for conservation experts, government officials and Google Earth users alike to explore and utilize for the public good."

Global Heritage Fund (GHF) is an international conservancy that preserves and restores endangered world heritage sites in developing countries. 625 Emerson Street Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA 94301.
www.globalheritagefund.org Phone: +1.650.325.7520.