Do you speak an Indigenous language of South Africa?

Do you work on a project or campaign to promote and revitalize your language using Internet-based tools or digital media?

Do you want to meet others that are promoting the use of their Indigenous language in digital spaces?

If you answered “yes,” we invite you to apply to participate in the Online Meeting: Digital Initiatives for Indigenous Languages of South Africa.

WHERE: Online

WHEN: Tuesday, September 17, 2024 (7:00 pm – 9:00 pm)

PARTICIPATE: Using the form below, you can take part in two ways:

1. If you have a project or campaign using the Internet or digital media to promote your language, please apply to present
2. If you are just interested in attending and listening to digital practitioners, sign up to attend

MEETING

Rising Voices, Siyafunda, Puku Children’s Literature Foundation, and the Bokone Bophirima Literature Focus Festival invite speakers of Indigenous languages of South Africa to be part of the Online Meeting: Digital Initiatives for Indigenous Languages of South Africa that will take place online on Tuesday, September 17, 2024.

The central idea of ​​this activity is to strengthen networks and facilitate the exchange of experiences and innovative ideas among Indigenous language speakers who are using digital media to revitalize their languages. The aim is to facilitate connections between people committed to sharing experiences and knowledge with other individuals and their communities. It also aims to deepen networked conversation about possibilities and success stories for creating participatory media in Indigenous languages in South Africa.

Rising Voices has been supporting similar communities throughout Latin America, including Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, and Ecuador through in-person and virtual gatherings designed to convene spaces for experience exchange.

Confirmed speakers:

Siki Dlanga is a coordinator of Indigenous Languages Action Forum which promotes the use and development of all indigenous languages of South Africa. Siki is a Strategic Communications specialist. This helps in the advocacy work of promoting indigenous languages to make the work more visible. ILAF is a grassroots organisation. It works with language practitioners, activists and academics. ILAF can be found in all social networks and has seen significant growth because of her passion and expertise.

Mashudu Ravele is an award-winning Indigenous author of two books, Tshisima Tsha Dora and Ndi Vhudza Nnyi. She is 22 years of age. She is an Alumnus of IIE Rosebank College, studied for an IIE Diploma in Journalism, and is furthering her studies doing my second year of Bachelor of Arts in Communication Science at Unisa. She says, “being an Indigenous author and embracing my language in everything I do is the crown that I own.”

Grant McNulty runs iAfrika Digital, which is making the web more African, one language at a time. It does this by providing digital access to cultural and educational resources in African languages, welcoming over 1.7 million annual users and counting. He has a background in research and language, with degrees in social anthropology and Zulu language and culture.

Nomsa Skosana is a Digital Humanities researcher specialising in isiNdebele at the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR). She is also the project leader for the SADiLaR-Wikipedia-PanSALB (SWiP) project. Her research interests include translation studies, terminology development, and the preservation of South African indigenous languages. With isiNdebele being an under-resourced language, Nomsa is committed to its advancement through research and resource development, focusing on creating corpora and digital tools to support and secure its future.

Lebogang Boemo is the Project Manager at SADiLaR, with a background in working with the National Skills Fund (NSF), which supports skills development, education, and training initiatives, including bursaries, scholarships, learnerships, and work-based learning programs. Projects she has managed include the DHET Language Resource Audit at all 26 HEI. She is currently managing the SADiLaR-Wikipedia-PanSALB (SWiP), open call projects and the node projects.

Sheila Drew is a Senior Programme Specialist – ECD with Saide which supports access to quality, open learning and teaching in blended environments. Sheila has many years of experience facilitating collaborative partnerships, between ECD NGOs, universities and government, for programme and materials development and resource provision. Sheila has been a South African in-country co-ordinators of African Storybook, a Saide initiative increasing access to and use of children’s storybooks in African languages. Sheila has worked in South Africa, and across Africa. Sheila holds a BA (Wits), BEd Hons adult education (Wits), and Montessori Diploma (St. Nicholas, London).

IsiXhosa.click is an open educational resource and online dictionary for isiXhosa and English. This student-led project at the University of Cape Town aims to create a free, open-source and easily usable dictionary for learners of the isiXhosa language. The initiative was first established as a hobby and passion project by the team in 2021 because they felt that none of the existing dictionaries fulfilled their vision of a free, open, community-driven and easily-usable isiXhosa-English dictionary

Melvin Kaabwe is currently working as a volunteer in the Puku Children’s Literature Foundation to efficiently create Book metadata for Children’s books in our local indigenous languages to improve our Children’s reading for Comprehension where SA performed poorly in the latest PIRLS reading benchmark. PUKU Children’s Literature Foundation which was the 2021 recipient of the UNESCO Literacy Prize for it’s work in “Using digital technologies to promote children’s literature in South Africa’s indigenous languages” Melvin is currently the Project Lead for Puku's Metadata Project which aims to make more children's books in local languages discoverable to parents, librarians, teachers and ultimately children as confident readers. Melvin was appointed as a member of the Book Policy Task Team, a Ministerial Advisory team for the National Book Policy of South Africa by the Minister of Arts and Culture in 2022.

Siya Masuku founded Siyafunda Online in 2016. This is an online platform for independent publishers to sell picture books of indigenous languages. My first independent publication was the alphabet book, Siyafunda: isiZulu (2016).  Siya has written and illustrated graphic novels for children and teenagers in isiZulu (my mother tongue), Setswana, isiXhosa and siSwati. He has been contributing to local and international literary organizations as a volunteer, picture book reviewer and designer, writer and illustrator, and researcher.

Lebona Mafisa is a Lecturer and Language Activist promoting Sesotho with over 20 years experience in teaching at both Secondary level and Tertiary institutions. His main interest and contribution is in Grammar & Literature with the intent to assist Sesotho to find expression and presence on digital platforms in order for students and general public to have access to the rich content the language provides.

About the meeting

The meeting will be a space to share experiences with using these technologies to promote Indigenous languages in digital spaces. Each attendee will have ten minutes to present their digital project and receive questions to advance and strengthen the work of activists on social networks and to listen to the presentations of others.

The online meeting will be held on Zoom, but will also be broadcast live on various online platforms so that those who have not been selected can follow the presentations. The presentations will also be recorded and participants will have the option to upload them for further sharing.

We invite participants who are able to present in English to do so, in order to reach an international audience, however, we also encourage those who feel more comfortable presenting in their own language to do so.

Sign-up to attend: