Joy Yeboah Agyepong is a social entrepreneur, multitasked and vibrant lady who has an aim of becoming one of the most influential persons in the world. I am a Ghanaian from Obo Kwahu in the Eastern region. A graduate of University of Professional Studies, Accra and past Women's Commissioner for the Association of Business Administration Department 2014-2015 academic year. I speak Twi as my native language and English language as my lingua franca. I am also a volunteer with the Wikimedia User Group Ghana and Wikimedians for Sustainable Development User Group
Feminism & Folklore: A new Dive to bridge the gender and cultural gap on Wikipedia
Have you ever thought of indulging in diverse ways to help bridge the gap on the largest online repository of Knowledge sharing?
With waves from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, we are embarking on a new journey which seeks to clamp all cultures and feminists globally.
Feminism and Folklore was birthed as a result of in-depth inclusion of writers, curators and creatives around the world to make Wikipedia rich with diverse content. Feminism and Folklore provides an opportunity for the local folklore enthusiasts and conservationists to document their local rituals, folk cultural activities, and songs improving the coverage on various cultures and new forms of heritage that haven’t otherwise been documented so far.
Since 2019, we have added a multilingual Wikipedian contest to the Commons contest and chosen to place the project on meta allowing inter wikis, inter-lingual and inter-project cooperation, to foster the true aspect of our global wiki love movement. The articles provided must match the theme, which means that most users will be able to find several pertaining subjects close to the theme, from women in folklore professions and mythology to articles about festivals, dances, cuisine, clothing, or daily life routine emphasizing on folk culture of that area. You are free to choose an article from our working list or pick up a topic of your own provided it is in relation to the main theme and focusing on closing the gender gap. Intangible cultural heritage has different meanings for different groups thus it looks at enhancing content, helps with intercultural dialogue, and encourages mutual respect for other ways of life. It also brings forth cultural diversity knowledge for user consumption.
Since 2019, we have been organizing a multilingual Wikipedia contest and chosen to place the project on meta allowing inter wikis, inter-lingual and inter-project cooperation, to foster the true aspect of our global wikilove movement. In the 2020 edition, content about women in folklore and mythology has been created in 18 different languages covering the regional personalities and mythology with over 4000 articles.
Theme for 2021
This year’s concept was basically to increase the quest to bridge the gap between women, folks and women folk on wikipedia. Hence, for the whole month of February and March the theme is leveraged on Women in Folklore, a continuation of our 2020 edition. In addition to the theme of women biographies about women in folklore professions, the campaign is targeted at protecting the world’s intangible cultural heritage and invite participants to write about their local folklore including, folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, folk activities, folk games, folk cuisine, folk wear, folktales, folk games, folk religion, mythology.
The basic aim of the competition is to collect articles on human cultural diversity in the worldwide free encyclopedia Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. This year we focus on folk culture around the globe, with a particular attention to closing the gender gap, as we are partnering with other affiliates and groups across the world.
Diversity and Culture Gaps
It is a known fact that there is a huge gap of cultural content across Wikipedia. Hence the need to actively address these gaps by shelving adequate translations and accurate curation of content on these projects.
Read here on these gaps and the need to curb it by including linguists and language gurus across the world. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2018.00054/full.
How to contribute?
Starting 1 February through to 31 March Wikipedians, Wikimedians, folks, Glam advocates and Cultural enthusiasts can help bridge the knowledge gap on documentation on the theme folklore and Women in Folklore. You can participate in the contest by submitting your articles on these project pages for different language editions. If you wish to submit articles in languages outside than the ones in the list, then you can add your article in the Results section under your name. Click here to know more about rules of submission.
If you are interested in participating in the international photography contest, then start photographing your local culture and get ready for the photo campaign happening on Commons in the month of February. Click here to learn more about the photo contest and its prizes. Connect with us via wikilovesfolklore@gmail.com.
Get your cameras and smartphones ready! Wiki Loves Folklore (WLF) is back with the bang with our sixth edition starting from 1 February to 31 March. This campaign allows people to share their local culture with the world and we are thrilled to invite you all to contribute to this annual media contest!
Women play crucial roles in folklore professions, often serving as storytellers, custodians of oral traditions, and keepers of cultural knowledge. Their contributions are integral to preserving and transmitting folklore across generations. Creating biographies of these women on Wikipedia not only recognizes their invaluable work but also helps combat the gender gap in historical and cultural representation.
With an amazing five years journey of making history to consistently project folklore activities from around the world, Wiki Loves Folklore (WLF), an annual international photographic competition hosted on Wikimedia Commons, a media repository of free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media, is back with a bang.
Wiki Loves Folklore (WLF) is an annual international photographic competition held on Wikimedia commons during the month of February, organized worldwide by Wikipedia community members with the help of local Wikimedia affiliates across the globe
Korpusik, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
