Yoruba Wikimedians User Group/2020 Report

The Yoruba Wikimedians User Group was recognized as a Wikimedia user group on the 3rd of August 2019. This report outlines the accomplishments and activities supported by the group between 3rd of August 1, 2019 and 2nd of July , 2020.

Key Programs and Activities[edit]

Advocacy[edit]

The Yoruba Wikimedians User Group has been involved in some advocacy programs to promote the Yoruba Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in Nigeria. This advocacy programs have not only improved the readership of the Yoruba Wikipedia but has led to an increase in the number of contributors to the Yoruba Wikipedia and other sister's project such as Wikimedia Commons.

Yoruba Wikipedia Offline Awareness Campaigns was a campaign organized in November 2019 to promoting Yoruba Wikipedia at the Yoruba language department of Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education. The campaign was attended by more than 100 students, faculty members and academic staff members. We moved and danced around across various departments in the institution with drums and microphone. Many people left their various activities to watch the students dancing and singing. We believe thousands of people were reached in the process.

After the awareness campaign, our team met with the Head of the departments, some senior lecturers and the students representatives under the umbrella of Yoruba Student Association of Nigeria to discussed further collaboration to promoting Yoruba Wikipedia.

AfroCuration Campaign for COVID-19 was organized in collaboration with the Moleskine Foundation and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. The campaign aim was to make available to 300 million people the relevant COVID-19 related articles to help spark creative solutions to the Covid-19 pandemic in African languages. As part of the campaign we are creating a promotional video that would include information on COVID-19 how volunteers are working to ensure that COVID-19 related information are up to date and accessible in Yoruba language. The video featured Joke Muyiwa, a veteran Yoruba film actress. This awareness campaign is ongoing and this report would be updated as soon as it is completed.

Capacity building[edit]

In March 2020, we organized a training for the students of the Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education as a fall-out of the Yoruba Wikipedia Offline Awareness Campaigns. The training was declared open by the Provost of the institutions and in attendance were the Dean of School of languages, the Head of the Yoruba Language Department. Other dignitaries present were the institution's Bursar and the Chief Librarian.

Students and some academic staff members were trainined on the basis of Yoruba Wikipedia editing and translation from other languages to Yoruba Wikipedia. More than 80 editors participated in the training and over 100 articles have were created or improved by the participants

Conferences[edit]

We supported and participated in the WikiIndaba conference 2019 held in Abuja between 8, 9 & 10 November 2019. Three of our members participated in the conference and our advisor Isaac Olatunde/User:T Cells held a joint presentation on the State of African Wikis: What Are The Challenges Facing African Language Wikipedias? Any Potential Solutions?. The conference provided us with new opportunity to learn more about the Movement Strategy, Partnerships and the movement diversity.

We were actively involved in the development of the African Language Wikipedias Working Group, a working group that primarily focuse on promoting the growth and development of the African language Wikipedias.