In the northern tip of Colombia in the Caribbean municipality of Acandí, Department of Chocó, a close-knit Afro-descendent community recently took its first steps to map its members’ tenure rights, using Open Tenure through a specific hands-on training in the framework of the ongoing UN-REDD technical assistanceOpen Tenure is an open source software for data collection and processing developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). It helps communities, NGOs and other institutions to record tenure rights, guiding the user to collect information on the claimant, the documentary evidence of the tenure rights, and the geospatial boundaries of the claim.  

The training, primarily targeting community members and young people, included a practical exercise in the Peñaloza Consejo (local council) during which small teams used Open Tenure to demarcate several parcels of land owned by an elder in the community.  Participants also learned how to upload data and polygons collected in the field to a community-owned computer where the claims can be reviewed and edited as needed by designated moderators. This computer serves as the hub for tenure data and will be managed by the community itself. With the training phase coming to an end, now it is up to the community to take this work forward by rolling out the tenure data collection campaign in each of the 9 consejos.