Ireland's Call - to return its global diaspora home

Our  Maps Make Sense Competition set entrants the challenge of creating a story map that informs and inspires.  The map that met and exceeded this criteria and was therefore selected as the overall wining map was Ireland's Call - to return its global diaspora home.  ‘The winning map was created by Rosita Mahony at SPACEial North West for Donegal County Council’s Diaspora Project. Rosita's idea for the map was inspired by her experience while working in the Research & Policy Unit of a Donegal County Council, under the guidance of Loretta McNicholas, and receiving requests from agencies, related to the recession and the implications that it has on emigration.

The development of the story map involved considerable research around the Irish Diaspora community and the hard economic facts and statistics to understand why they had to leave.  A keen desire to find out where the Irish born population now live, led to the discovery of the UN dataset which allowed the time enabled layer to be developed with the heat map depicting the global spread very effectively. Considerable data mining and mapping was involved from many sources to produce the ‘competitive house prices’ and  ‘global job prospects’ web maps and research into using the analysis tools to best visualise and symbolise the ‘healthiest towns’ and ‘shortest commute’. Now equipped with relevant information to base their decision on, there is a call to action to participate in the Donegal Diaspora Global Skills Locator to connect with job opportunities back home.

It is hoped this story map will reach the Irish Diaspora abroad, making available relevant information via a series of web maps, to those who are contemplating returning.  The story map brings emigrants on a journey with hard economic facts to understand why they had to leave but also, to inform them that economically, things are now improving and to visually present some factors to consider for their return home.  Also the data in this story map can be used to allow policy makers to know what particular jobs to target in the future based on the responses gleamed through the Global Skills Locator. It is envisaged that the novel and unprecedented approach to understanding the Irish Disapora community abroad through the Global Skills Locator, will be best circulated and marketed to a generation who are social media savvy.

Ireland’s Call is being presented to the Minister of the Diaspora Mr Jimmy Deenihan to showcase the potential via mapping technology, to globally reach out to the Irish Diaspora Community abroad.

You can explore the map here - Ireland's Call - to return its global diaspora home.  A timely, impactful and relevant map, Congratulations Rosita!