The Second GIS Day Event in Afghanistan

Tuesday November 20th, 2007
Venue:  Geo Science Faculty

Afghanistan Information Management Service (AIMS) together with Liwal Limited organized the second GIS day event on Tuesday November 20th - 2007 at Geo Science Faculty, Kabul - Afghanistan. The program was welcomed by one of the professor’s in Geo Science Faculty, followed by the recitation of Holy Quran and the event agenda. A number of technical presentations regarding GIS, GIS usage and its impact in our day to day life were presented by various professors and participants. Subsequently, the presentations were followed by a question/answer session regarding GIS, its different functionalities and usage throughout the country. It was very encouraging for the host organizations to see the positive response of the university students concerning GIS. At the end of the program, the event was wrapped up by giving out free satellite image maps to the participants.

Main Objectives:
The main objectives of celebrating the second GIS Day were;

• To celebrate this day in public; in particular, Kabul University
• To introduce GIS to faculty students
• To bring local GIS professionals and faculty students together so they could breakthrough GIS with each other  and walk away with new ideas
• To promote and expand GIS concept to the public through faculty students
• To encourage the University students to take advantage of this system by having GIS classes in their university

Participants:
A total number of 15 GIS professionals and geography Professors representing different Organizations and Kabul University along with hundreds of faculty students attended this occasion.

Result:
Celebrating GIS day at Kabul University had a very positive impact on the students. As a result of that, AIMS continuously receives lots of requests for the basic and advance GIS courses intended for faculty professors and students from Kabul University. In addition, due to their keen interest, AIMS established a GIS lab for them in their university.

Next Meeting:
For further expansion of the GIS concept and the GIS day, this day will be celebrated in different organizations, general public, schools, universities, businesses, government and non-government organizations each year.  

The next GIS day will be celebrated in one of the above organizations in year 2008.

Annex - 1
Program Schedule

Annex - 2
Participants: