Wikipedia Is 25. The Island Of Tawi-tawi Just Met It

Wikipedia is 25 years old.

The province of Tawi-Tawi in the Philippines, located at the far end of the archipelago had almost no idea it existed.

And somehow, that became the perfect way to celebrate Wikipedia’s birthday.

We went to Tawi-Tawi for a Wikiliteracy event, our first one there. And before we can even begin sharing Wikipedia, power interruption kept us immobilized for more than an hour. But, this opportunity is too good to pass upon. No electricity cannot stop us. So we just continued our sharing outside of the building and got to know each one of the participants.

There was simply too much to discover.

For many Filipinos, Tawi-Tawi is one of those places we know mostly from a textbook. We know it is in the southernmost part of the Philippines. We hear about its seas and marine resources. We know that it is home to Tausugs, Sama and Badjao communities and many other people whose lives have always been closely connected to the islands and the sea. It is the home to the legendary sea gypsies who rule the waters.

But that is about where my knowledge of Tawi-Tawi ended. I suspect I am not alone. So imagine our surprise when we started getting to know the place.

The people were warm and welcoming. They were curious about Wikipedia and eager to learn. More importantly, they were willing to share what they already knew. Their festivals, oral traditions, language, cultural practices and stories about their communities.

We arrived with a training program. We ended up getting a crash course in Tawi-Tawi.

Our partners at the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Provincial and Regional Office provided the venue and brought the participants together. WikiClub Zamboanga and Shared Knowledge Asia Pacific ( SKAP) helped with the Wikiliteracy training. We also wanted the participants to know that they were not joining some little project happening in one corner of the Philippines.

The program featured interactive workshop and community engagement activities that empowered 30 participants to explore, document, and contribute to the unique cultural heritage of Tawi-Tawi to the global knowledge ecosystem. Attendees learned the fundamentals of ethical and responsible knowledge sharing while gaining hands-on experience in contributing to Wikipedia.

The initiative highlighted the importance of community-driven knowledge preservation and how Wikimedia projects can help safeguard the Indigenous and local heritage of the Sama, Sama Dilaut, and Tausug communities, ensuring Tawi-Tawi’s stories and cultural identity are shared and preserved worldwide.

So before the training began, we played video greetings from the ESEAP region. Community members  from Wikimedia Malaysia and Wikimedia Indonesia, the ESEAP Hub and ESEAP Youth welcomed the people of Tawi-Tawi to the Wikimedia Movement. It was a simple thing, but I liked the moment. People in Tawi-Tawi were meeting Wikipedia for the first time while people from across the region were saying, essentially, welcome, you’re part of this too.

Then we started talking about editing. And this was where things got interesting.

Some of the participants had never heard of Wikipedia. Others had used it but had never imagined they could edit it themselves. There was a moment of disbelief when they realized that Wikipedia wasn’t just something they were supposed to read.

They could actually contribute!

Then they saw their photographs on Wikimedia Commons, that changed the room. The women entrepreneurs, the government employees, and the more mature participants were visibly fascinated to see their contributions bearing their usernames. Suddenly, Wikimedia was no longer some abstract thing on the internet. Their own photographs were there. The places they knew were there. And the things they were telling us could also become part of the open knowledge record.

For a province with such a rich cultural and natural heritage, this is important. Tawi-Tawi has Muslim, Christian and Indigenous communities. It has knowledge carried through families and communities, through oral traditions, language, festivals and everyday practices.

And yet many of these communities remain seriously underrepresented in open knowledge. 

We were not simply discovering another culture. We were encountering a knowledge system built around the sea. One that includes the remarkable breath-hold diving traditions of the Sama Dilaut, along with generations of knowledge about currents, reefs, marine life, boats and survival at sea. 

Tawi-Tawi has Muslim, Christian and Indigenous communities. It has knowledge carried through families and communities, through oral traditions, language, festivals and everyday practices. And yet many of these communities remain seriously underrepresented in open knowledge. 

That doesn’t mean the knowledge isn’t there. Quite the opposite.

It means there is a gap between knowledge that is alive in a community and knowledge that the internet can find.

That gap is what we came there to work on.And perhaps that is why this trip stayed with me.We were celebrating 25 years of Wikipedia, a project that has become so familiar that many of us take it for granted. Then we went to Tawi-Tawi and met people who were seeing it for the first time.

It was a useful reminder that 25 years on, Wikipedia is still unfinished.There are still places that haven’t been properly represented. There are still communities whose stories are missing. There are still people who don’t know they can contribute.And there are still places we know very little about.

For me, Tawi-Tawi moved from being a distant place on the map to something much more real in a couple of days. We went there thinking about Wikipedia.We came home thinking about Tawi-Tawi’s knowledge continuity. And somewhere along the way, we were glad the two finally met.

Happy 25th birthday, Wikipedia.

You have a few new editors in Tawi-Tawi now.

And I suspect they have plenty to tell you.