Wikimedia Heritage User Group Nigeria/Vision and Mission
Vision
The Wikimedia Heritage User Group's Vision is to see that Nigeria's heritage is well documented and preserved, ensuring accurate dissemination of information, proper representation of cultural heritage sensibilities and sensitivities, and enhanced global reach of Nigerian tangible and intangible heritage, leveraging UGLAM in Nigeria.
Mission
The Wikimedia Heritage User Group's Mission is aligned with Wikimedia's mission, explained across the six pillars below.
The group plans to curate, digitize, and archive heritage archives, maps, films, photographs, and negatives across the country, and then digitize important original handwritten documents that hold historical relevance to Nigeria, making them available through open-source wiki platforms to enhance the reach of Nigeria's heritage and culture.
The group plans on training students in higher institutions and local community residents to increase local community participation, especially in areas where heritage sites are located, and to enhance participation of local community residents, custodians, Wikimedia Heritage User Group Nigeria members, and members from other user groups both within and outside the country.
Training covers Pattypan for batch uploads and editing on Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikiversity, and Wiktionary. The group plans on creating a tech arm for heritage work as part of its productivity and retention strategy.
The group plans to hold webinars, seminars, heritage conferences, trainings, and workshops for community members both in the country and globally to ensure contribution is sustainable rather than a one-off. Collaboration with language user groups will help translate edits, uploads, and archives into local indigenous languages, a major part of Nigeria's heritage.
The user group plans to support policy advocacy through the projects it carries out, involving community leaders in the conversation and effecting change from the ground up. The impact and reach of the user group will make it easier to start conversations for better, sustainable policies affecting open-source technology in Nigeria, especially as it pertains to sustainable heritage.
The activities of the user group aim to promote gender equality by putting out the works of both genders through archives on Wikimedia Commons and other wiki projects, enhancing the reach of the voice of underrepresented genders in the country.
After careful analysis, it has been discovered that there is a shortage of heritage materials available on the internet that support research. The user group aims to bridge this gap in the availability of heritage information such as articles, digital files, audio, video, and photography that can aid research and promote knowledge dissemination in Nigeria through projects like research writing, article writing, and audio/video/photography/digital media uploads (2D and 3D).
The Wikimedia Heritage User Group Nigeria promotes diversity and inclusion, covering a wide range of participants and users, with no segregation based on age, color, skill, gender, height, sexuality, region, location, or tribe. The goal is to promote unity via all-inclusive representation and participation of all members.
The user group plans on enriching wiki projects with heritage information that may or may not already be available on wiki projects.