At a Wikipedia training session held at the Ajamako campus of the University of Education Winneba, 23 newly trained Gurene students pledged their commitment to digitize Gurene on Wikipedia.
This forms part of the Gurene Wikimedia Community’s goal to increase Gurene Wikipedia editors and support ideas to archive the language on Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia.
The physical training held on Saturday, 23rd April 2022, exposed the participants to Wikipedia, and its sister projects. The participants comprised Gurene students and a Kusasi student.
Gurene, a local language spoken by a cross-section of people in Togo, the Upper East region, and Burkina Faso, is currently not an examinable subject at the basic and second cycle level in Ghana.
The Winneba Hub Coordinator, Joseph Akakiri, who doubles as the Language Advisor at the Gurene Wikimedia Community, applauded Wikipedia for its continuous support of indigenous communities.
Addressing the declining rate of Gurene students in UEW, he called on Ghana Education Service and stakeholders to fast track the process of making Gurene language an examinable subject at the basic and second cycle institutions. According to him, this will whip the interest of students to pursue the program at the university.
He added that, due to it not being examinable, students graduating from SHS have to wait till they turn 25 to be qualified to write the mature exams before they are enrolled.
Speaking to a co-founder of Gurene Wikimedia Community, Daniel Abugre Anyorigya who led the training, he encouraged the students of various dialects of Gurene to be active in telling their stories since Upper East Region to prove the rich culture.
About Gurene Wikimedia Community
The Gurene Wikimedia Community is an indigenous community affiliated with Wikimedia Foundation with an objective to digitize the Gurene language and its people. This includes translating English Wikipedia, training new editors, undertaking trips, etc.