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Preserving Stories, Rebuilding Roots
Preserving Stories, Rebuilding Roots
What is WebAnansi?
WebAnansi is a collaborative digital library dedicated to preserving the histories of marginalized communities. Inspired by the wisdom and storytelling of Anansi from African lore, WebAnansi empowers communities to gather, digitize, and protect their own stories, ensuring they are never erased, forgotten, or filtered through outside authority.
Like Pinterest, users can collect and organize items of personal or historical significance.
Like Wikipedia, it is open, collaborative, and community-driven.
Through WebAnansi, families, researchers, and communities can uncover roots, reconstruct histories, and connect threads of the past — creating an enduring archive of resilience.
WebAnansi works hand-in-hand with our A4H Urgent Data Rescue Deployments.
Rescue Teams go into archives, cemeteries, and institutions to digitize fragile records.
WebAnansi becomes the safe, community-owned home where those records live on — protected and accessible for generations.
When you support Action4Heritage, you are rescuing today’s archives and building tomorrow’s digital legacy.
Why We Built It
Why We Built It
For centuries, Black, Brown, and marginalized histories have been lost — not only through neglect but also by design. Fragile archives, oral testimonies, family records, and community collections risk being destroyed, misrepresented, or made inaccessible.
WebAnansi is our answer: a safe, redundant, and inclusive platform where historical materials can be scanned, stored, shared, and connected. By preserving these sources in a community-controlled library, we ensure the evidence of lives, kinship, migration, and culture remains accessible to everyone.
What We've Achieved
What We've Achieved
A developing platform with a dataset of 26,000+ people already included.
A web-based interface featuring migration maps and visualization tools (graphs, trees, timelines).
AI/ML prototypes for summarization, entity resolution, and intelligent search.
Initial digitization and storage workflows in action.
What's Next (Our Needs)
What's Next (Our Needs)
To complete WebAnansi and scale its impact, we need:
To complete WebAnansi and scale its impact, we need:
Resilient Infrastructure: Torrent-based distributed storage for redundancy and security.
Inclusive Design: Expanded UX/UI for accessibility across all ages, abilities, and communities.
Scalability: Balanced cloud + community hosting for affordable growth.
Partnerships: Broader collaboration with descendants, archivists, and grassroots groups.
Funding: To sustain infrastructure, digitization drives, and outreach to communities.
How You Can Help
How You Can Help
Volunteer With Us
Volunteer With Us
Lend your skills in programming, UX/UI design, data curation, AI/ML, or project coordination.
Fund Our Project
Fund Our Project
Your contributions fuel infrastructure, secure storage, and expanded digitization efforts.
Partner With Us
Partner With Us
Collaborate with us to preserve collections, share data, and grow the network of stories.
Join us in weaving the WebAnansi — a living archive where every rescued story has a place, and every community can preserve its truth.
Join us in weaving the WebAnansi — a living archive where every rescued story has a place, and every community can preserve its truth.
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