On the 19th and 20th of October 2013, a community-level workshop was held on the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) device to map community resources, to be claimed under the Forest Rights Act of 2006. The training was held in the village of Niapania in Keonjhar district in Odisha, India. Organized by Keonjhar Integrated Rural Development and Training Institute (KIRDTI), an NGO based in Keonjhar, in collaboration with Natural Justice, the workshop saw the participation of around 40 persons from different blocks within Keonjhar as well as from other districts of Orissa. Stella James and Kishore Kumar Patnaik (Fellows, Natural Justice) participated in the workshop and assisted in the coordination of the workshop.
Mr Adikand Ojha from Bhubaneswar, who acted as the resource person, started with a brief description of the GPS device to the participants, as well as of the advantages of using it. One of the advantages pointed out to the villagers was that while earlier people used to draw maps freehand, or use complicated manual methods of measurement, with a GPS, measurement of land becomes simpler and much more accurate. Moreover, once measurements are taken, the GPS also allows one to see the roads and other waypoints from any part of the world. 
