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You walk past pieces of history every day without stopping to document them. A carved doorway, a ruined mill, a mural that will be painted over next spring. None of it appears on any heritage map yet. But you have the power to change that.
You are the person we need
Heritage documentation doesn’t belong to experts alone. The people who know a place best are those who live there, walk there, return to it year after year. You notice what guidebooks miss: the way afternoon light falls on a neglected palazzo, the exact location where a historical marker should stand, the event happening in your town square that no tourism board has recorded. UNESCO and ICOMOS have long recognized that community knowledge is essential to cultural heritage preservation—not as a supplementary layer, but as the foundation. You already have what scholars need: local presence, daily observation, and genuine investment in your neighborhood staying visible to the world.
What CHO actually wants from you
We’re building a global map of places that matter, and we need three things. First, photographs. A good photo of the north façade of your town hall. A close-up of an ornamental tile you passed this morning. These images appear in our guides and become searchable across the platform. Second, places themselves. You know the workshop of a nineteenth-century craftsperson, the stone bridge outside your village, the art deco corner building that’s been there forever. Write 150 words about it, add a photo, and you’ve documented it for the next generation. Third, events. A local festival, a seasonal opening, a guided walk—CHO maps cultural experiences as well as buildings. Visit /proponi/ to start contributing right now.
What contribution looks like in practice
Let’s say you live in a town with a nineteenth-century train station that tourists pass through but never really see. You go there on a regular day, take three photos: the main arched window, the ticket hall detail, the platform view. You write a short paragraph about when it was built, who designed it, what materials survive. You note the GPS coordinates using your phone. Then you spend ten minutes on our proposal form uploading the images and text. Within a week, a CHO editor verifies your facts, refines the wording slightly, and publishes it. Your contribution now appears in search results, on the global map, and in guides that travelers consult before visiting your town. Someone travels because they read your words. Someone takes a different photo because they saw yours first. This is not hypothetical—it happens daily across our network.
Where your contribution goes, and who finds it
Once published, your place card lives on the CHO map. It appears in city guides. It gets indexed by search engines. Heritage researchers find it. Travelers planning a trip discover it. Architectural historians reference it. Most importantly, people from your own community see their neighborhood documented with respect and detail. When you contribute to CHO, you’re not just adding data to a platform—you’re claiming cultural authority for the places you know. You’re saying: this matters, and I witnessed it. That claim gets backed by a global audience. The map grows more complete. The less-documented parts of the world become visible.
How to begin right now
Create a free CHO Ambassador profile. You’ll choose a username, verify your email, and set a profile photo if you want to. No subscription. No payment required. Then go to the propose page and choose what you’d like to contribute: a new place, an event, or a photo for an existing place card. Fill in basic details—location name, city, a few sentences describing what you see. Upload your images. Add GPS if you can. That’s the first step. After submission, our team handles verification: we check facts against published sources, confirm the location, and work with you if we have questions. Within days or weeks, depending on the queue, it publishes. Your name appears as the contributor. You’ve made heritage visible.
Sources: UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes (2011) emphasizes the role of local and indigenous communities in heritage documentation and management. ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites (2008) recognizes community knowledge as integral to authentic representation. See also the CHO global map for examples of contributor-documented places across 60+ countries.
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