About the Waze Belgium Community
The Waze Belgium Community is a group of volunteers who maintain the local aspects of navigation app Waze in Belgium. We are in direct contact with Waze, but we are no employees of Waze and do not represent Waze. Any information or opinions provided by us remain our own. Most countries have similar communities, as can be seen on this list.
The Waze Belgium Volunteers vzw
The Belgian Volunteer community split off from the Benelux structure in 2018. A non-profit organization has started, to support this volunteer activity with a legal structure. It has taken over the goals of the community in its mission statement:
Improving the quality of navigation and the effectiveness of socially supported navigation and mobility applications in general, and in particular supporting all voluntary activities related to the development, implementation, promotion and cooperation of navigation and mobility applications.
In practice, this will result in the following activities:
- Act as a contact point for public or private organizations.
- Facilitating participation in public or private events for map editors and other mobility volunteers.
- Provide support to map editors and other mobility volunteers in general.
- Organizing workshops and training sessions
- Participating in and organizing mobility-promoting events, projects, meetings, etc.
- Purchase of support material and subscriptions that improve the cooperation or the implementation and development activities by the volunteers.
While it was decided to keep the brand name “Waze” as part of the organization’s name, there is no link between the non-profit organization and a Waze Corporation whatsoever. The association welcome any other activity that improves navigation and mobility in Belgium.
Our association is mainly funded by volunteer activity towards mobility organizations and partners. If you would like to support or fund us, please reach out to:
Waze Belgium Volunteers vzw – www.wazebelgium.be – vzw@wazebelgium.be
Diestsesteenweg 507, 3010 Leuven – CBE 0753.776.607 – RPR Leuven – Bank: BE44 9733 9397 6345
What does the Waze Belgium Community do?
The main task of the local community is to maintain the navigation map. This means keeping the road data up to date, adding destinations, adding road closures, and so on. We only use public resources or data provided to us directly. We cannot modify the routing algorithm and are expected to map the road situation as it is. For this reason, we apply the road laws very strictly. This seems fair to both local councils and users of the app. It is not up to volunteers to decide where people may drive.
The community also resolves the issues reported by users via the app. As we do not manage the app, we can only forward these issues to Waze itself. For the purpose of being easily reachable, we have also set up several social media accounts. These accounts receive questions, but also allow us to spread news about our activities or updates to the app.
Additionally, the community makes sure that Waze remains legal to use within Belgium. We pass on relevant laws and law proposals to Waze Mobile Ltd. The volunteers also try to find opportunities for Waze to work together with other organizations, though we do not have any final say in this. We do sometimes work together with third parties on our own if the cooperation mostly involves editing the map.
Who are these volunteers?
As you can probably imagine, the exact answer to this question keeps changing. People come and go on a regular basis. Below you can find an image of one of our yearly meetups. We organize these meetups together with the volunteers in the Netherlands and Luxembourg (“Benelux”). Most active volunteers are actively interested in technology, but that is most certainly not a requirement.
The Waze Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg volunteers during the meetup near Brussels in 2019
Our current supporting partners
In order to run the community smoothly, we need a minimal financial basis. For this, we can rely on a couple of partners:
How to contact the Waze Belgium Community?
Getting in touch with us should be easy. The best method to contact us depends on the reason for contacting us. To report issues on the map, it is usually best to send a report in the app while you are near the issue. If you just want to ask a question, you could use our social media accounts. If you don’t want your question or request to be visible for most volunteers, you can use the contact form on the website.