Viz for Social Good and Bridges to Prosperity
Our most recent project was for Bridges to Prosperity and once again we wish to offer a huge thank you to everyone involved in the project, whether Viz For Social Good volunteer participants or the team from Bridges to Prosperity who willingly gave up so much time to partner with us.
Bridges to Prosperity are an organisation who build footbridges in developing countries that connect communities together who would often otherwise have no means of contact without extraordinary detours. We were delighted to partner with them to look at the impact of five such bridges in particular, all in rural communities in Rwanda.
Our participants never cease to disappoint, we had many volunteers to present their findings and visualisations to our client, first in an Australia/Pacific friendly event on October 3rd, and then in a follow-up virtual event on October 10th. It was humbling to be joined by Abbie Noriega and Oliver Bagwiza from the project. In particular, Oliver reacted to let us know that all of the community visualisations made her realise the impact of all of their hard work in the field:
“The data viz made me understand what we have been doing. It was worth it, and I’m super proud that we did it!”
The power of simple data visualisations added to the amazing hard work of international charities on the ground is really shown in such events. We worked with Bridges to Prosperity’s Catchment Survey data, where 3000+ surveys were carried out at just six of the project’s bridges. Abbie let us know that these bridges in Rwanda have helped over a million people. But having seen our presentations it seems that they may have been undercounting and the number is indeed many more!
Every visualisation submitted really helped amplify the story and helped those who read them to really understand the data and Bridges to Prosperity’s mission. This time, there was the unenviable task of choosing three winners that went above and beyond in their great storytelling visualisations — without further ado, here they are, starting with the two runners-up:
Sarah Hodges:
Sarah’s visualisation shows beautiful Sankey diagrams for each bridge. The main image below is just a snapshot, do click through for the full interactive experience. Congratulations Sarah!
Katie Kilroy
Katie’s visualisation is **long** form! The team loved how clear the viz looked, packed full of facts and information simply displayed. Congratulations Katie!
Mike Moore (overall winner)
Mike’s submission was the overall winner — Abbie excitedly admitted that this was shared all around the office when it was received! Scrollytelling at its best, again do click through for the interactive version, just one screenshot below doesn’t do it justice.
A fantastic mix of long form, storytelling, scrollytelling, static, interactive, Tableau and D3 — this project really showcased what our Viz for Social Good team had to offer.
And finally, a big thank you from the VFSG and Bridges to Prosperity team. Stay tuned for more project details coming soon!
