Image by Ana Huiza Capo for Rising Voices.
Global Voices, through its Rising Voices initiative, is pleased to announce a new collaboration with five Wikimedia affiliates and community groups in five countries to organize a series of Language Digital Activism workshops. Thanks to the support of the Wikimedia Foundation's Knowledge Equity Fund grant, this project will bring together speakers of the Igbo, Dagbani, Irish, Javanese, and Angika languages, who have shown interest in incorporating digital tools and platforms to help their language thrive in digital spaces.
Each of the five workshops was proposed by local Wikimedia communities, who are also using digital platforms to create open knowledge in the five languages, which reflects the broader goals of language digital activism.
The five groups with which we will be working are:
- Dagbani Wikimedians User Group
- Igbo Wikimedians User Group
- Wikimedia Community Ireland
- Wikimedians of Yogyakarta
- Angika Wikimedians
The two-day workshop will combine reflection on why participants with learning different platforms. The first part of the workshop will provide a space to reflect on why digital tools can be useful to help the participants make the change they want to see, explore practical and inspiring examples, and help them create a personalized plan aligned with clear and action-oriented goals.The second part of the workshop will focus on experimenting with different digital tools and strategies.
The workshop will incorporate elements and concepts from the “Digital Initiatives for Indigenous Languages” toolkit developed by Rising Voices in collaboration with UNESCO as part of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022–2032.
Indigenous, minoritized, regional, endangered, and other low-resource languages all have unique contexts, needs, and different resources available to them. That is why it was so important to partner with groups working on the ground, which understand the local context, are trusted in convening local communities, and have a track record of sharing their own experiences and knowledge with others interested in revitalizing and promoting their languages. We are excited for these five partnerships because we know that together we can support those that want to strengthen these languages in digital spaces.
Stay tuned for the announcements, workshop reports, and photos from the five workshops.
