GLAM/Newsletter/May 2018/Contents/Portugal report

This Month in GLAM – Volume VIII, Issue V, May 2018

Portugal report

FEM's GLAM and Guinea-Bissau

One of the outcomes of last Art+Feminism Wikimedia Portugal initiative was starting a collaboration with Associação Presença Feminina (FEM), a Portuguese NGO deeply involved in the protection and rights of women, as well as disfavoured minorities living in Madeira Island, in particular the African expatriate communities.

As the organization has partnerships and projects in Guinea-Bissau, among other Portuguese-speaking African countries, and a number of their members are often in that country, we come up with a common project to develop content related to Guinea-Bissau in the Wikimedia projects, a country where actually it's not easy to find information and contents on the Internet, at the same time involving Guinean communities, both in the country and abroad.

As FEM was organizing an event for Africa Day, celebrated worldwide every 25 May, we arranged for a thematic workshop a few days earlier presenting and explaining the project to a number of members and friends of FEM, already starting to develop some content. The project was presented to a broader audience at 25 May, during the Africa Day celebrations at FEM, with the presence of Dr. Abdul Carimo Baldé, from Porto's Guinean Students Association, among many members of the local Guinean community, as well as other PALOP countries.

On the 26 May, Helena Pestana, FEM's president, donated to Wikimedia Commons more than 1000 photos she took in Bolama, Bissau and Bissorã on the course of FEM's missions in Guinea-Bissau, many of them already uploaded and available at Commons.

At the same time, a broader project on Guinea-Bissau was started. Hundreds of Public Domain files about Guinea-Bissau are being uploaded to Commons and used in the projects, new articles on Guinea-Bissau are being created every day, and using that content and information the OSM maps of Guinea-Bissau are being built, corrected and updated. Places as Bolama, which until a month ago had no available map on the Internet, now have not only a map, but a map with information and images on Bolama streets, buildings and cultural heritage, all from the Wikimedia projects, mostly Wikidata and Commons. The copyright and FoP information about Guinea-Bissau was also researched, compiled and added to Commons.

New communities are being involved and starting to take part on the project, among them Guinea-Bissau communities, until now without any noticeable Wikimedia presence. In particular, cooperation has been established with a group of teachers in Bissau, from São Paulo school, one of FEM's partners. Building a Wikimedian community in the country is one of the objectives of the project. Tabanca Grande, the biggest war veteran community from the Guinean 1963-1974 war, has also stated their interest in participating actively.

Some of the FEM's GLAM images of Island of Bolama, former colonial capital of Guinea-Bissau, part of the Bolama Bijagós UNESCO biosphere reserve, and aiming at being Guinea-Bissau first World Heritage site: