(Cross-posted on the Lat Long Blog)

We are excited to announce the launch of the Google Earth Outreach program in Canada. To celebrate the Google Earth Outreach team is directly engaging the Canadian non-profit and aboriginal communities through a week of exciting workshops and activities in Vancouver, BC. The program has been successful in helping non-profits around the world bring their stories to life through the use of Google’s mapping tools. To date, the Google Earth Outreach team has facilitated the use of mapping tools to stop mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, documented Darfur with USHMM, highlighted climate change with Al Gore, and most recently took Street View to the Amazon, just to name a few.

Both as a Canadian and Google Earth Outreach team member, I’m thrilled to bring these exciting opportunities home. Canada currently faces a wide variety of environmental and social issues that can benefit from powerful geographic visualizations.

With the launch of the program in Canada, the team aims to support the use of online mapping tools by public benefit groups seeking to address Canada’s most pressing concerns, such as the protection of the Boreal forest and Arctic regions, as well as other humanitarian and cultural issues. We are enabling organizations to quickly and easily get the resources they need to use Google Earth and Google Maps to tell visually compelling stories about their causes to millions of users. Watch the video below for a preview highlighting the work the David Suzuki Foundation is doing to protect Canadian oceans.

David Suzuki Foundation’s I Am Fish video is a great example of a Canadian organization using Google Earth to communicate their cause to a large global audience.

Eligible members of the Canadian non-profit community are now able to apply for grants of Google's tools and services including Google Earth Pro and SketchUp Pro. The launch of our Canadian website gives our Canadian users access to a plethora of resources to help them better develop their mapping projects through tutorials, a showcase of great non-profit maps, and an online community of other non-profit Google Earth and Google Maps users.

To jumpstart these mapping initiatives in Canada, the Google Earth Outreach team has partnered with Tides Canada to engage with Canadian non-profits face-to-face with two very popular and fully-booked events. Starting today, the Google Earth Outreach team will be teaching a technical, interactive three-day workshop and facilitating mapping projects among the participating non-profits and aboriginal groups. We’ll cap off our activities on Wednesday night with an exciting event for the larger Canadian non-profit community, with a keynote talk by our very special guest Dr. David Suzuki. This event will give attending non-profits a sneak peek at how other groups have used Google Earth and Google Maps to make a powerful impact on their communities.

To hear more about what we’re up to in Canada this week, check out our homepage for a different Canadian mapping example every day and follow us on Twitter. We hope these early Canadian partners will inspire you to use Google Earth and Google Maps to help tell your own story!

Maryam Ghofraniha, Google Earth Outreach