We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded a grant from Global Voices to co-organize local workshops with Rising Voices, focused on digital activism for Indigenous, minoritized, or low-resource languages.
Rising Voices is a Global Voices outreach project that supports underrepresented communities who want to tell their own stories using digital media. By offering training, resources, microgrants, and mentoring, the initiative helps these communities, especially those speaking endangered or indigenous languages, join the global conversation and share their perspectives online.
We will be joining a diverse group of Wikimedia Affiliate Groups to co-organize local workshops with Rising Voices, focused on digital activism for Indigenous, minoritized, or low-resource languages.
These workshops will incorporate elements of the Rising Voices – UNESCO toolkit project “Digital Initiatives for Indigenous Languages,” which has been adapted to a number of virtual and in-person workshops over the past several years.
The objectives of these workshops are to:
- Support speakers of Indigenous, minoritized, and endangered languages in defining their own strategies for using digital tools to promote and revitalize their own languages, through strategic planning and the exploration of various approaches.
- Expand the community of language speakers expressing interest in digital activism by engaging and inspiring new participants to promote their languages in digital spaces.
The other groups we will be collaborating with for this initiative include:
- Dagbani Wikimedians User Group (Ghana)
- Igbo Wikimedians User Group (Nigeria)
- Community of Angika Wikimedians (India)
- Yogyakarta Wikimedia Community (Indonesia)
“Wikimedia Community Ireland is excited to be involved with this global initiative that aligns closely with our Irish Language outreach goals. Vicipéid, the Irish language Wikipedia offers a valuable place for the Irish language to thrive in a community setting in the digital space. Irish is considered to be at risk of digital extinction and was listed by the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger as definitely endangered. We hope that theses workshops will help to inspire speakers and advocates of the Irish language to get involved in digital activism work through Wikimedia Projects. We hope that this project will also connect us with similar language communities to facilitate learning and knowledge exchange.” – Sophie Fitzpatrick Project and Communications Wikimedia Community Ireland.
