What is Map Around?

Why we map the world this way

The basic needs of life — food, clean water, shelter, health care, energy, schooling — are not scarce in the world as a whole. They are unevenly financed. A clinic that would pay for itself in one country can’t raise a loan in another; a good idea in one market often has no route to the places that need it most. To change that, you first have to see it, place by place.

So Map Around lays a grid over the entire world, dividing it into small areas called plots. The grid follows lines of latitude and longitude, and you choose how big a plot to work with — from 10° blocks the size of a chunk of a continent, all the way down to plots about 11 metres (36 feet) across, roughly the size of a house. (Separately, you can zoom the map in and out to look closer or pull back, just like any map — that changes your view, not the plot size.) The smallest plots are the unit we build the atlas from: one for every person, a picture of unmet need for every inhabited one.

Move around, freely

That’s the “map around” part — you can move about the grid however you like:

1. Walk plot to plot — step north, south, east, or west to the neighbouring plot.
2. Change the plot size — switch to a smaller or larger plot while staying over the same spot. (This is different from zooming the map, which just changes how close your view is.)
3. Jump anywhere — search a place by name (a city, a landmark) or type coordinates, and land right there.
4. Click to explore — click any plot to select it and see what’s there.

See what’s there — and what’s missing

Wherever you land, Map Around shows you the place: where it is, the weather right now, photos of what’s actually there, nearby landmarks, and how the surrounding country is doing on the goals finance is meant to serve. From each plot, a picture works outward — taking stock of the finance around it, which basic needs go unmet, and what capital and institutions are within reach. Exploring is completely free.

Once you know your way around the map, the next step is understanding the plots themselves — which ones you can hold, and what that means.

Why Globefin and Photosgraph, together

Map Around is a joint venture with Photosgraph — the world’s photo album, and the two share the same instinct: no place, and no person, left off the map.

Globefin maps the world to find where the finance for basic needs isn’t reaching. Photosgraph’s mission is to build a network of connected photographs from every corner of the world — linking places and people through images so that everyone is included. One works toward inclusion through finance, the other through photography; put together on Map Around, every plot can carry both a picture of the place and a picture of its needs. That’s why the photos you see on a plot come from Photosgraph, and why Photosgraph manages the sponsorships that back the work.