Organizers of Wiki Green Conference have highlighted Wikipedia as a tool to boost science communication in Ghana.
The conference held at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT trained participants on how to contribute to the Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia as well as its sister projects; Wiki Commons, Wiki Data, etc
The conference, an initiative under Wikimedia Foundation, seeks to court the support of the Ghanaian populace in contributing to Wikipedia as this will increase African environmental and human rights literature on the platform.
A Wikimedian and Founder of Daby Foundation, Stephen Dakyi in an interview explained that the “We realized there is a gap in effectively communicating the science associated with the triple planetary crises to the ordinary person who though experiences the impact of the crises cannot fathom the changes in his/her environment.”
“The Wiki Green Conference sought to bring together people in the climate and sustainability space to further broaden their knowledge on how to leverage on the Wikimedia projects to create awareness of the triple planetary crises,” he added.
Founder and President of Eco Warriors, Otuo-Akyampong Boakye, stated that “We expected to see young people and professionals in the climate and environmental space interact to explore means of addressing the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution in a local setting, coming up with specific actions. We wanted the experts to break down the rocket science to everyday English for young people to understand the urgency for restoration. And this was exactly what we saw with Wiki Green Conference.”
Assessing the impact of the program, Associate Trainer at OFWA and Climate Advocate, Maxwell Beganim added that “we received overwhelming acceptance and participation by young people in this event. Young people and industry players have really shown a sense of readiness to address the triple planetary crises. The oversubscription for the wiki green conference confirms it all.”
He added that, “the conference highlighted the impact of Climate change and Environmental Pollution on Human rights and how Wikimedia projects can be leveraged in providing solutions.”
The organizers of the conference include Founder and President of Eco Warriors, Otuo-Akyampong Boakye, Wikimedian and Founder of Daby Foundation, Stephen Dakyi and Associate Trainer at OFWA and Climate Advocate, Maxwell Beganim.
