 and librarian information in associations and institution, which very many of you refer to as AFLIA. And we have a big network of librarians, but I choose to call them information workers. So we have a big network of information workers and information institutions under the umbrella of AFLIA. Trained, very legit skills, looking for places, looking for new opportunities in which they can apply their knowledge. And then we also have this grant project from the Wikimedia Foundation known as One Lib, One Ref. So where is the connection? Wikipedia has gotten a bad rap over the years for a number of reasons. So One Lib, One Ref, the basic premise is if every librarian could add just one reference to the resource that is Wikipedia, then it would be a more reliable source. And AFLIA has thousands and thousands of information workers under its umbrellas, who some were curious, some were very skeptical about Wikipedia, but then here was an opportunity. So I need you to imagine some central characters in this story. I need you to imagine the staff at AFLIA, Dr. Kim, Doreen, and Stanley, very good researchers, very convincing people, very focused people, but I also need you to imagine Felix Nati representing the Wikimedia Foundation. And these are some of the reasons that each party is giving. As AFLIA, we had noticed that when it comes to how African information on Wikipedia is represented, there's a positive, there's very little information. And then that that is represented is underrepresented for a number of reasons on the world's largest electronic Wikipedia. And then there was a noticeable lack of local participation, and this could then correct the narratives that were out there. Yeah. We as AFLIA also had access to a large network of practicing information workers on the continent, information workers who have been trained and are very legit when it comes to their knowledge, and referencing and reliable sources are key, are things that are really key to their professional knowledge, and they know these things, but we also needed to get African information workers into the open access conversation. To come onto that table, share what it is that they knew, let us know what they did not know, and how we could come together to then use, look at all these factors combined, and then be able to see how we can then participate in terms of contributing to one-lib, one-ref. So that is how one-lib, one-ref came. Now, you may think, it may give the impression that we were the first to do it. We have colleagues all over Africa that had been doing it through their individual library associations or through their local Wikimedia communities. And I need to acknowledge our colleagues from Code Devo for leading the way, as well as Ingrid Thompson in South Africa who had been doing local one-lib, one-ref outages through Liasa. But then these were efforts that we knew about, but they had never been an effort to engage everybody on the continent under one single participation. So enter the African Librarian's Week. And this was the first, the first edition was held during the first lockdown. Not only were people looking at what to do, but it was also a good time because people had some time on their hands, time to attend learning sessions, time to ask questions, but time to also think about their future in relation to their jobs. So between the 24th and the 30th of May, we had our first edition. Then last year we had the second edition of the African Librarian's Week. And as I speak, just this May, we concluded the third edition. And these are the results, ladies and gentlemen. This is no joke. We let the numbers speak for themselves, but our results and the things that we have done are not only in numbers. These are the numbers because you can always go and check them online, but many of you in the audience are going to attest to the fact that somebody in your community, or if not even you, was able to start a local Wikimedia initiative after coming from the African Librarian's Week. So in 2020, we see that only 19 articles were created, but we went ahead to add 10,000 references and I'll be able to speak on that later. Then we moved on to 2021. Still growing in numbers. People are now recognizing that they have to tell their stories. So they create articles and they also clean up Wikipedia 4,200 times. We move on to 2022. People are still, the momentum is still on, it may have slowed, but we still have people creating articles. We still have photos being added and we still have references being shared. These are our statistics on the dashboard. You can check them out, but we have other ways to show you how successful we have been. And during the course of participating in the African Librarian's Week, we got a lot of feedback, very constructive feedback that we have been able to use to incorporate and to make further additions much better. So in our first foray into One Lib One Ref, there was a lot of, we contributed more than 10,000 references, but then the feedback was that the quality of our contribution, while numerically it was sound, it was not that good in terms of the quality of references that were added. So after that, we went back to the drawing board, looked at the reasons why the quality of contribution could have been negatively affected and we realized that much as we had trained our librarians, that training was only specific to the time that they would then be participating in the African Librarian's Week. So later in the year, the Wikimedia Foundation was kind enough to consider our application for fans to facilitate the Wikipedia in African Libraries course and we trained over 300, like actually 400 librarians. It was a very comprehensive course, teaching them about Wikipedia as a resource, as well as hoping that the knowledge they gained from the course would empower them to participate. And if you will look in the following years, it is the same trained librarians that are actually leading the change and the participation in their countries. And then there was also diversity and inclusion. Initially we restricted the contribution and the participation to Aflia's working languages which are English, Portuguese and French. But we also need to consider that there are other languages, one of the things that we really emphasize as Aflia with the African Librarian's Week and even in our dealings is we have to tell our stories and some of our stories are best told in our languages. So we have still maintained English, French and Portuguese and in 2022 we considered Arabic. As we grow and I know that we will, we will then be looking at including other languages so that people can participate in the languages that they know and also enrich the content in languages that are understood by their communities. And our participation can be valuable to the communities that we represent. But we've also been considering other Wikimedia projects, for example, contributions to Wikidata because Wikidata is now beginning to really look at references. And then we looked at the dimension of mobilization and participation. Aflia is headquartered in Ghana, but Aflia has a network that is spread all over Africa. In very many countries in Africa, Aflia is the de facto, you can mention it, they'll know their library associations and then their library associations will say, have you subscribed to Aflia? So that is the power of the network that we have. But much as we have a network, people need champions that they can listen to, people that they can relate to one-on-one and people who are easily accessible to them. So in comes the country champions. And I would like to move a vote of thanks to our country champions because we would not have been able to witness the activity that we saw had it not been for the efforts of the country champions, mobilizing the local information workers. So we have a network of country champions and they include trained community members, community members, meaning members in the information associations there as well as local weekend medians because each one has something to learn from the other. And these normally act as local points of contact. If you're not able to get to Aflia, then your country champion is able to be, to sort you or maybe direct you to where you should be able to address whatever challenge it is. Then during the African librarians week, we always have coordinated trainings before and then office hours. It is one week of concerted activities, but we wish to support you further. So we have the office hours. And when it comes to mobilization and participation, we found that an aggressive communication drive that encourages local creativity was very key to the success. And then people say, so why are we participating? I mean, what is in it for me? Away from the fact and the individual pride that you have communicated to information that's valuable to your community. We also have rewards and recognition that we provide for top and outstanding contributors and a number of information workers have been beneficiaries and some even outdid themselves. But I would like to go back to some of the things that contributed to our success as I've mentioned. I have mentioned the country champions. So we have a screenshot of one of our country champions. He was actually a student in the African librarians week, sorry, in the Wikipedia in Africans course. And then we say that the aggressive communication drive that allows for creativity. So in the middle, you see a collage of posters, different librarians from different African countries committing themselves to participating and to contributing to the eventual success. So normally we encourage you to, you know.