Ushahidi [oo-shah-hee-dee] is a non-profit technology company that specializes in developing tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories. In particular, the company develops free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. Ushahidi was initially developed to map online eyewitness reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout in 2007. Since then, the software has been used for a number of similar projects around the globe, and the name "Ushahidi" has come to represent not only the platform but also the people behind it.