My name is Sichelesile Similo Ndlovu. I am a new Wikipedian from Zimbabwe and part of the Wiki Loves Women Focus Group. The group’s aim is bridging two significant gaps in Wikimedia projects – women and Africa – both in terms of content about these subjects and participation by people from these groups.
Together with my dear friends who are also Wikipedians here in Zimbabwe, we will be hosting a campaign between January and March 2023. We are endeavoring to create our very own ‘Zimbabwe Wikimedia User Group‘. The focus is to encourage and train people and organizations to create, preserve and share open knowledge, and to provide readers with easy access to knowledge and perspectives that relate to Africa.
We were inspired by the 2021 SheSaid campaign as many people had questions about what Wikimedia is, and had no idea that they could edit articles on Wikipedia.
In the training we will look holistically at Wikimedia Foundation, — what it is, its expectations — and then concentrate on the key projects, namely: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiquote, Wikimedia Incubator and Wikitoungues.
The two sessions that we have already held have been a great success, and the participants are keen to learn new things. Librarians particularly have been encouraged to be very active, especially with the addition of Zimbabwean content as they see the gaps on their reference desks in libraries.