WikiForHumanRights 2024 in Africa: How you can organize around the theme and participate in the global campaign activities. 

Since 2019 the WikiforHumanRights Global Campaign campaign  has engaged thousands of participants across over 5 continents contributing to over 15000+ articles on different language Wikipedias. Previous years, the campaign had focused on the triple planetary crisis.

Excited to be back as your Anglophone Africa Regional Coordinator for the WikiForHumanRights 2024 campaign! This year, we’re building a powerful network of support. I’ll be working hand-in-hand with Valentin Nasibu, the Francophone Africa regional coordinator, dedicated country coordinators and awesome community organizers across the continent.  Together, we’ll be providing all the resources and guidance you need to make the  2024 campaign a huge success!

In the last edition, the African community gathered in an online call to respond to a survey on the sub-theme that speaks to the ‘’Right to a healthy environment’’ theme and is relevant for the region. This year, the Africa regional coordinators hosted the first regional office hour to hear directly from the community. 40 out of 56 participants engaged in a word cloud survey to share environmental and other issues that are dominant in their countries. Pollution and extreme heat ranked  42.5% and 27.5% respectively in responses, identifying them as key areas of focus for the African community.  

But here’s the kicker:  if your community finds it exciting to focus on other sub themes outside pollution and extreme heat, feel free to tackle that instead! The topic guide on the meta page can support you to use the SDGs and human rights intersection to find themes that inspire you to action.

We saw community interest in hosting a second office hour to explore how they can contribute to Wikidata, WikiVoyage, Wikimedia commons, and local language Wikipedia on these topics. We have learnt how open and safe spaces can empower the African community to lead impactful local activities for the campaign. And we want to continue to offer this support through weekly Friday office hours replacing the region’s ‘Notorious Wednesday’ sessions from the 2023 edition.

These weekly sessions would serve as conversation and empowering ground for local organizers and participants in addition to formal capacity building sessions tailored to equip the community to contribute on Wikidata, Wikivoyage and using the new event registration tool.  Please register your interest if you wish to be invited to the weekly Friday Office horse.

If you want to go beyond the regional perspectives and learn about the global changes happening on the campaign in the 2024 edition, you can read this blogpost. 

How can You Participate

You can organize local campaign activities in your community or join local events happening around you as a participant.  The community events table can help you to find activities around you to join.  The campaign’s series of global workshops is a great opportunity.  . Take advantage of them to learn something new through your participation. .

What is required of Organizers this year

• Create your campaign dashboard under the Wikiforhumanrights Program Dashboard. 
• Access resources from the handy communication kit.
• Explore rapid grant opportunities (March-April cycle).
• Organizers who have annual funds are welcome to allocate a portion of their grant to organizing this campaign in their community
• As part of the campaign this year, we will be piloting the event registration tool to understand organizers’ experience using the tool. To test out the event registration tool request for event page page creation rights.

Stay Engaged and Informed

Join the respective communication channels to get all the updates you need for a successful campaign

• WikiForHumanRights Main Telegram Group
• WFHR Africa Region Organizers Telegram group
• Wikimedians for a sustainable development Telegram group 
• Guide on topic identification
• Listen to the previous podcast and Join in this year’s episode coordinated by Romeo.
• Visit the List building Tools Library

Join us to make this year’s campaign a memorable and impactful one!