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[Guest blog post: Sayon Dutta is an emergency medicine physician with prior training in aerospace engineering and currently is completing a research fellowship in applied technologies. His research includes GIS and mobile technologies in humanitarian emergencies and the utilization of medical informatics to improve patient care in the Emergency Department. He is a key contributor the the HSI simulation applied technology module. Jennifer Chan is an associate faculty member at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), an emergency medicine physician and public health provider. She is a technical consultant and field researcher for humanitarian NGOs with the Program on Humanitarian Effectiveness.

In the past few weeks, France 24 and Triple Bottom-Line have produced stories about Voice of Kibera, and both stories have been littered with inaccuracies about the project, including naming Ushahidi as the deploying organization, an issue that’s been addressed elsewhere on this blog.

This post originally appeared on the Digital Democracy blog, an NGO that educates 21st century citizens around the world and a partner of Ushahidi’s.
Violence is closely correlated to elections in the minds of many voters in young democracies. With elections and democracy correlated as well, there’s a dangerous chance that people will draw causation between violence and democracy.

Some information in this post has been updated.
Occasionally, in partnership with others, Ushahidi takes on projects that help test certain applications of the platform in order to improve the tool. Ushahidi will also take on projects on a consultancy basis from time to time; in the unique instance of Liberia, I will be acting as a consultant for Ushahidi, working with partner organizations on the ground to implement Ushahidi as each partner sees fit.  Over the next six months, I’ll be checking in regularly on this blog to provide updates on how Ushahidi is being used in the Liberian context by local organizations and networks of early warning actors.