Dear African Wikimedia communities, 

I am excited to share an update on the recent partnership between AfLIA and the WMF. [1] This partnership was secured as part of an outreach strategy for 1Lib1Ref: facilitating Wikimedia community access to libraries who offer expertise and access in national and continental knowledge, and often make great allies for other local activities like editathons or GLAM partnership.

The cooperation includes several projects aimed at introducing librarians to the Wikimedia community as well as ensuring librarians can support our communities across Africa. As part of this partnership we piloted a localized version of 1Lib1Ref (African Librarians Week) [2] which exceeded our expectations and is currently engaging more than 842 librarians. Thanks to our regional ambassadors (Georges, Pamela, Ingrid & Ayo) who played a key role in the success of the May campaign.

We realized early on that AFLIA was eager to train more of their community. We supported them to apply for a project grant, because we knew how resource intensive it could be to develop successful, large scale library training.[3] The grant has been approved and AfLIA is looking forward to working closely with our communities to provide training and onboarding librarians within their networks into the respective Wikimedia communities on the continent. 

We want to make sure that all of the existing Wikimedia community groups throughout the continent benefit from this partnership. The goal is to train librarians so that they can become part of all our communities, the partnership will likely continue to bring: 

• Opportunities to advise on the training in the grant, and use the professional training materials

• Connections with regional and national library associations 

• Connect with enthusiastic library leaders in your context

The team for the project is hiring a Wikipedian in residence (WiR) and a Curriculum Development Consultant.[4][5] Please follow the links to apply for any of the roles if interested.

Reach out to me or Alex Stinson (astinson@wikimedia.org) if you would like to be part of the conversation with AfLIA and take advantage of their network in your respective countries.

Best,

[1] - https://web.aflia.net/

[2] - https://twitter.com/hashtag/AfLibWk

[3] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/AfLIA/Wikipedia_in_African_Libraries

[4] - https://web.aflia.net/job-opening-wikipedian-in-residence/

[5] - https://web.aflia.net/job-opening-curriculum-development-consultant/

--

Felix Nartey

Community and Partnerships Coordinator, Campaigns

Wikimedia Foundation

fnartey@wikimedia.org

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