Chen Li is an information technology professional based in Olympia, Washington. His area of expertise is geographic information systems (GIS). He has over 10 years experience working with the GIS firm ESRI. Using his vacation time, he spent three weeks in April 2007 as a volunteer through GISCorps to share his IT skills on a project in Afghanistan. Chen served with the Afghanistan Information Management Services, a donor-funded local nonprofit that provides information technology services including GIS to organizations across Afghanistan.
Chen Li's volunteer service in Kabul gave him a great opportunity to work with a team of about 10 staff members from Afghanistan Information Management Services (AIMS). AIMS has been supporting a project and activity tracking system database at the USAID mission in Afghanistan. The database needed to be spatially enabled to provide interactive Internet GIS mapping functions. Most of Chen's time was spent training AIMS staff on GIS database management and Web Map application development. Chen and his team of GIS professionals and computer programmers designed the web mapping application. The new application can present locations of assistance activities, indicate budget or progress status, and present statistical results of activities by regions.
Chen was pleased that he also had the opportunity to get to know the city and meet the people of Kabul. He noted that most places in the city are within walking distance, or a cab can go anywhere very inexpensively.
Chen considers his volunteer service in Afghanistan memorable because he felt he really made a difference by helping the local Afghans he trained learn new IT skills. "They were smart, hard- working, and enthusiastic about learning a new technology; they made my volunteer work more meaningful. Thank you, GISCorps, for giving me this opportunity."
