International Roma Day

International Roma Day (or known as International Roma Day Edit-a-thon) is an international editing event organised on the occasion of April 8^th, which is celebrated as International Roma Day. Initiative had the first edition in 2020, organised by the Wikimedia Serbia. After four successful editions, edition in 2024 will be supported as well from the regional Wikimedia CEE Hub.

This edit-a-thon and/or contest takes place on the respective language versions of Wikipedia, in which Wikipedia volunteers around the world will write and improve articles on Roma minorities, their identity, history and culture. This year, activities will be expanded on other Wikimedia sister projects, such as Wikidata and Wikiquote. International Roma Day aims to support article creation and improvements in order to combat still-too-common barriers of prejudice and discrimination that Roma people face too often while accessing employment, education, health care, public and social services and other areas of life.

Initiative is organised around the International Roma Day on April 8^th, usually with more days before and after the day. This year, activities towards this day will be held in between April 1^st and April 15^th.

Organisation of the International Roma Day is run by the Wikimedia Serbia and from 2024 largely supported by the Wikimedia CEE Hub, along with the local coordinators/organisers per joined community. Local coordinators prepare an editing contest on their home wikis. The duration of the contest is not strictly defined; thus local contests can have different dates than the international ones.

Background

The International Roma Day is a day to celebrate Roma culture and raise awareness of the issues Roma people face daily. It was officially declared in 1990 in Poland.

Editions

-226 days to International Roma Day Edit-a-thon 2024
Update

Objective

The main objective of the International Roma Day is to increase the number of articles written about Roma minorities, their identity, history and culture, but at the same time to improve the quality of existing articles.

Tasks

Participants

Guide for participants

During the editing contest, participants are expected to:

create new articles and improve existing ones; as inspiration for writing new articles, article lists exist for different topics connected with the Roma people
add credible external links to articles; and
add images to articles to make them more vivid.

Local coordinators

Guide for local coordinators

Prior and during the editing contest, local coordinators have to prepare the following:

create separate project pages for the International Roma Day and their separate editing contest on their home wiki;
use the international articles lists for the Roma people, or to define an own list;
inform the community and active editors about upcoming event on their home wiki; and
promote the contest and give additional information about the contest through sitenotice, social media, blogs, or other ways.

Example site notice

Below you can find example of the site notice, that you can use on your home wiki.

From 1 until 15 April join and participate in International Roma Day Edit-a-thon 2024
Write articles and win prizes!

Prizes

As local coordinators create separate editing contests on their home wiki, they usually determine the prize funds for most active participants.