Community Spotlight: Meet Abdisa from Ethiopia

Welcome to our Community Spotlight series, where we bring to you real stories from members of the global Crowdsource community.

Today, we are excited to shine a spotlight on Abdisa Bancha Jara. He is a social entrepreneur who has been leading the Crowdsource community in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia, one of the two countries in Africa untouched by colonization, is a melting pot of languages, cultures and identities. Having been in the eye of a political storm, Abdisa realized early on the power language asserts across national, cultural and political boundaries. He decided to dedicate his life and his expertise in the technological domain to bring languages like Afaan Oromo, Tigrinya, Amharic, Somali and many more to the world stage.

In this blog post, Abdisa shares his personal journey and experiences with Crowdsource. Meet the social influencer who believes strongly in the identity a person projects via the languages they speak.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I am a social entrepreneur but my journey started very differently. I graduated from the prestigious Haramaya University with a degree in Information Technology. Joined a software company based in the US as predictably as any other IT expert.
I got an opportunity to join Ethio Telecom where I was able to work with a wide range of languages. In 2015, five of us branched out independently to develop language applications from the basic to advanced levels to cater to different kinds of markets. Oromo was foremost on our minds when we were doing that.This was also when I realized the power of languages and how we can develop our local languages to bring Ethiopia to the world stage.

Tell us about how your journey with Crowdsource began.

My association with Google started before Crowdsource, so let us begin there. I was one of the lucky few who got an opportunity to be sponsored by Google Africa Developer Scholarship. In six months I picked up a lot on the technological front. Then when my tryst with languages began, some of my friends introduced me to Crowdsource.
To contribute in the Oromo language on Google, I was advised to post my request on the discussion forum of Crowdsource. Slowly I started contributing and knowing the community better. I am aware of many such platforms, but Crowdsource keeps me more engaged and we are visibly seeing the effects.

What does Crowdsource mean to you? What motivates you to be a Crowdsource influencer?

On Crowdsource, language and culture is the identity. If you do not have an identity, you do not have a voice to speak. It is the best environment to develop our languages. Simple and not stressful. We have been able to create a unique global identity for the community
After 4 failed attempts to get Oromo accepted into Google fold of recognised languages, when we actually gained acceptance, I will never forget that moment - when Oromo was called out in an international forum with many other world languages, it was truly a fulfilling experience. Not only for me but also our community. It has only motivated us to work towards having more of our languages gain recognition.

What makes your local community special?

Language is a part of our national identity. To get our cultural identity centerstage we need to coordinate with experts from all realms (language, culture etc). We need experts who are aware of our community and our history. It is not easy to coordinate with challenges and resource constraints.
During the early days of the Oromo community, though we had campaigned hard to get our voice heard, we were at a loss of how to collaborate and achieve our goal. We lacked structure, processes, people, infrastructure, networks and the know-how. The way we faced this first challenge defined who we were to become. The local community is very special in that regard.
Today we have been able to raise awareness, rally the youth to our nation’s cause and scale these efforts across regions and local communities, and have been able to bring other lesser known languages into the fold. I believe in challenging the challenges.

What comes to your mind when you hear Quality Contribution (on Crowdsource)?

Quality contribution is a must. Getting the language to business is prime and without quality content we cannot sustain the boost we are getting currently. For example, let us take the yearly festival, Irreechaa, which attracts tourists from all over the world. With Crowdsource, we were able to get our content out there in Afaan Oromo and this helped the tourists immensely to travel, interact, transact and engage with the local community seamlessly.
This would not have been possible if our contributions lacked quality and consistency. The quality is definitely still not top notch, but we are trying to organize our community even better.

What is the one thing you’ll do this year to spread awareness about quality contribution in your local community?

We have been able to take Oromo to the world stage, but I'm not happy with just that. We have about 90 languages spoken in various parts of Ethiopia and we want to develop them one after another.
I believe in the power of the youth and I want to bring in more of our future generations into our Crowdsource community. I would like to provide more opportunities for the youth via Crowdsource translation and validation. I want to make sure that those who are making quality contributions are recognised for their effort. We are also collaborating with the government and other enterprises in the country to pave the way for job opportunities for the youth.