This article conceptualizes how democratized modes of participation in spatial knowledge production via open source mapping platforms translate into educational praxis, detailing educational projects in the Global South using them. To do so, the article gathers findings from a critical discourse analysis of forum articles which discuss grassroots mapping and from digital participant observation work within Humanitarian OpenStreetMap (HOT). The former show how feminist and community-oriented approaches to mapping, which endorse an ethics of craft, care and cultivation over the corporate or outsider research paradigms, are at the forefront of the tactics and practices such articles describe. The latter show how projects such as Crowd2Map Tanzania, The GAL (Global Active Learning) School of Cusco, Peru, Map Lesotho, OpenStreetMap (OSM) Liberia, OSM Nigeria, Public Lab and its Grassroots Mapping Curriculum, and YouthMappers. It details such initiatives to document the mentorship of female students in digital mapping within educational contexts.