The Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association has announced the winners of its Small Grants Program for the year 2005. This is the third year of this program, which assists nations and countries with developing economies in building Spatial Data Infrastructures.

This year as a result of a partnership between URISA's GISCorps and the GSDI, an initiative spearheaded by Juna Papajorgji the GISCorps Co-chair and Co-founder, we were able to secure six projects in six different countries for our GISCorps volunteers, to be worked off-site.
The partnership with the GISCorps has expanded the GSDI program to allow for a larger number of grant awards and for an increase in value of others. The total value of the program resulted this year in $30,000 in cash from the GSDI and in $13,500 in services from the GISCorps. Juna has been working this fall with a team from the GSDI to review 71 grant proposals from over 50 countries. Following are the 15 final winners:

Recipients of up to $2,500 in voluntary services from the GISCorps

• Namibia - Biodiversity database
• Armenia - Web-mapping volcanoes
• Kenya - Coastal resources maps/oil spills

• Institute for Ecology & Botany (Hungary) - Botany Portal
• World Food Program (Mali) - SDI Application
• Marshall Islands (Marshall Islands) - Metadata/clearinghouse

• Columbia - Web mapping workshop
• Observatoire Satellital des Forêts 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 clearninghouse
• Information Management (Philippines) - Building NSDI, technology working groups; policies, and database
• Management of Health Services (Uganda) - SDI Workshop