The Year’s First Quarter with the Igbo Wikimedians User Group

The Igbo Wikimedians User Group (IWUG), as a community, began the year 2026 with renewed energy and enthusiasm, continuing its journey to promote the Igbo language, culture, and heritage through the world’s largest encyclopedia and its sister projects, from community training and global campaigns to grassroots innovation through micro-grants.

The first quarter of 2026 was a period of growth, learning, and impact, which demonstrated the strength of community-led collaboration and the growing capacity of volunteers to organise impactful projects and events that address knowledge gaps while promoting the visibility of Igbo language, culture, and heritage online, and we are excited to reflect on these milestones achieved through the collective efforts of Igbo Wikimedians.

2026 Quarter 1 at a Glance

The impact of IWUG’s activities during the first quarter can be summarised through a number of key milestones. These figures represent the collective efforts of volunteers, trainers, organisers, facilitators, and project leaders who worked tirelessly throughout the quarter to advance Wikimedia’s vision of knowledge equity through:

• Capacity Building Webinars
• Global Wikimedia Events and Campaigns
• Community-Led Micro-Grant Projects

The IWUG Capacity Building Through Webinars and Workshops

Building capacity remained a core priority for IWUG, and during the first quarter, through a series of workshops and training sessions, community members gained practical skills needed to contribute more effectively across Wikimedia projects.

A screenshot of participants during the Visibility of Communities in Nigeria on Wikidata 2.0

A major highlight was the January and March editions of the 72-Hour Virtual Marathon Edit-a-thon, one of the community’s flagship recurring projects. Across both editions, volunteers worked collaboratively to improve content quality on Igbo Wikipedia. Together, participants fixed 1,426 articles with reference errors, added DEFAULTSORT templates to 1,479 biography articles, and strengthened article discoverability through the addition of Wikidata sitelinks.

The community also organised training sessions on the User page, event page and metapage creation, Diff blog creation, Wikimedia category creation, etc., with the sole aim of helping contributors better organise and document their Wikimedia activities. These sessions provided practical skills that support both content contributors and future project organisers. Beyond technical training, these workshops created opportunities for mentorship, peer learning, ensuring that both new and experienced contributors continue to share their knowledge and grow within the movement.

Connecting Local Impact to Global Wikimedia Campaigns

The Wikipedia 25th Birthday cake The participants of the in-person event in Abuja (Wikipedia @25) The Wikipedia @25 birthday celebration

With each month of the year 2026, the community members actively participated in and celebrated several global Wikimedia campaigns, such as:

* Wikipedia’s 25th Birthday Celebration

* Wiki Loves Mother Tongue 2026

* Wiki Loves Folklore 2026

* Feminism and Folklore 2026, and 

* Wiki Loves Africa 2026

These campaigns provided contributors with opportunities to document culture, language, history, and underrepresented knowledge while connecting local efforts to global Wikimedia conversations.

Participation in these campaigns not only improved content across Wikimedia projects but also, through celebrations like the Wikipedia 25th birthday in-person event, provided an opportunity for community members to celebrate their individual contributions to our collective mission while also fostering networking, collaboration, and stronger community bonds physically.

Empowering Community-Led Innovation Through Micro-Grants

One of the most impactful aspects of Quarter 1 was the implementation of the IWUG 1st Quarter Micro-Grant Program, which empowered community members to design and lead projects addressing specific knowledge gaps within their immediate communities.

These funded projects covered a broad range of themes, including women’s representation, public health, language preservation, education, digital literacy, literature, and structured data and through these projects, organisers engaged students, educators, nursing mothers, language enthusiasts, and experienced Wikimedians in activities that expanded participation and increased content contributions across Wikimedia platforms.

Beyond content creation, these projects strengthened leadership development within the community by providing organisers with practical experience in project management, community engagement, reporting, and volunteer coordination.

The Quarter’s Community Highlights

For the 2026 first quarter, several activities by the Igbo Wikimedians User Group stood out for their significant contributions and impact, and these include:

• The Health Translation Project, a collaborative project between the Igbo Wiki Fan Club, Alvan and the Igbo Wiki Fan Club, IMSU, resulted in over 400 health-related articles being translated into Igbo, helping to improve access to health information for Igbo-speaking audiences.

• The World Poetry Day Celebration brought together over 35 participants and resulted in the creation and improvement of hundreds of Wikiquote entries while celebrating poetry as a tool for preserving and promoting the Igbo language.

• Through the Celebrating African Women Through Quotes project, contributors created 38 new articles and improved approximately 180 existing articles on Igbo Wikiquote, increasing the visibility of African women and their contributions.

• The Naija Book Bank project enriched Wikidata with over 130 new items related to Nigerian publications while introducing new volunteers to structured data contributions.

• The inaugural Wikisource Loves Proofreading Campaign engaged volunteers in preserving Igbo literary works through collaborative proofreading, resulting in 334 proofread pages and more than 1,200 edits.

Meanwhile, these projects focused on language preservation achieved remarkable outcomes through the creation of audio-enabled Wiktionary entries, documentation of Igbo proverbs, expansion of lexicographical data on Wikidata, and the upload of hundreds of pronunciation recordings to Wikimedia Commons.

These activities collectively demonstrate the diversity of IWUG’s work and its commitment to preserving language, improving knowledge access, and strengthening community participation.

Looking Ahead to Quarter 2

As the Igbo Wikimedians User Group enters the second quarter of 2026, the community looks forward to launching additional trainings, supporting a new cohort of community-led projects, deepening partnerships, and increasing contributions across Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikisource.

The achievements recorded during the first quarter reflect what is possible when volunteers come together around a shared vision of knowledge equity, language preservation, and community empowerment, and with this, we look forward to achieving even greater milestones in Quarter 2 and continuing the contribution to the sum of all knowledge.

You can learn more about these projects on the IWUG 2026 Activities page.