Inclusion is not a trend or buzz, it is a responsibility. July was all about action and impact. Building on the experience from June, I focused on content creation, capacity building and community support for my participants as we worked together to bridge knowledge gaps around climate justice and gender equity in Namibia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.
On capacity building, I hosted two virtual training sessions with a hands-on demo on: “Article translation using the content translation tool” and “Creating new articles on Wikipedia”. These sessions emphasized how multilingual contribution remains a valuable tool for knowledge equity. Also, participants learnt what qualifies for notability in the context of climate and gender equity, and how to create a well-referenced article. The feedback from participants was positive, especially from the new editors who had little or no experience with editing Wikipedia. I further provided support by hosting a general office hour, and one-on-one mentorship sessions with a few, offering guidance and answering questions.
In line with the fellowship goals, we created 16 new Wikidata items, including Every Girl Can, Equal Namibia, Zimbabwe Youth Biodiversity Network, and improved several existing items about climate and gender-related topics in Namibia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, with information from reliable sources. We also worked on translating 8 articles from English to Igbo language. The outreach dashboard and manual scoring system helped to track the progress and impact of all the edits.
With August in view, I plan to host more sessions on Wikimedia Commons, media file licensing, and structured data contributions. I also hope to recruit more participants as I intensify ongoing content creation efforts on Wikidata and Wikipedia. The vision grows stronger when we grow together. Follow our journey as we document climate, equity and gender narratives in Southern Africa that deserve global recognition.
Can you help us translate this article?
In order for this article to reach as many people as possible we would like your help. Can you translate this article to get the message out?
Start translation