Social impact

It is common for social scientists researching disadvantaged populations to develop advocacy agendas alongside their scholarly work. I count myself among them. The stark disparities between the communities I study and my own “home” have always been a powerful call to action. Early in my career, this manifested in unplanned, instinctive efforts to provide socioeconomic support—actions often rooted in mitigating personal guilt. Over time, I recognized the potential of my research to foster more collaborative and sustainable initiatives, developed in partnership with the communities themselves. Among these, two stand out for their impact: Pig for Pikin and virALLanguages.

Pig for Pikin

Lower Fungom, Cameroon, 2016

In 2016, I made the first experiment in this direction through “Pig for Pikin”, a Cameroon Pidgin expression meaning “pigs for children”. In the rural area of western Cameroon where I carried out most of my work, i.e. Lower Fungom, schools are primarily supported by the local community, but many farmers struggle to pay school fees due to economic fragility, leading to underfunded education. Together with local community members, we saw a potential solution in introducing pig farming, as the area's elevation is well-suited for animal husbandry. The idea of raising pigs communally at the level of entire villages and using income generated from selling their meat to support local schools required a keen understanding of the local social dynamics—which is where my work and the collaboration of key local actors proved key. The project had strong foundations and managed to raise enough funds in Europe and the US to run for several months—enough to start the local economic cycle—but was eventually discontinued due to the outbreak of conflict between armed separatists and the Cameroonian army. In the years that followed, the majority of the local population fled, seeking refuge elsewhere in Cameroon. As of December 2024, some villages are reportedly deserted and the whole area is significantly depopulated.

Find out more about Pig for Pikin at the project website (last updated in August 2016!).

virALLAnguages

Global, 2020

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a global infodemic spread alongside the virus, amplifying misinformation through social media and disproportionately impacting vulnerable populations. In areas where trusted information is typically shared orally in local languages, government messaging often lacked credibility, highlighting the need for multilingual, culturally sensitive communication strategies. My research on cultural scripts in postcolonial, multilingual settings, such as rural Cameroon, informed virALLanguages, a project I co-founded with Mandana Seyfeddinipur (ELDP) and Jeff Good (University at Buffalo) and led between March and December 2020.

VirALLanguages empowered community members to create video and audio messages in their own languages, using locally appropriate styles, after receiving accurate information about viruses and COVID-19. This initiative prioritized emergency health literacy and community-based risk communication, engaging 49 communities across Cameroon, Pakistan, and Indonesia (with support from Bradley McDonnell and his students at the University of Hawai’i). Collectively, these communities produced about 100 resources, still accessible on YouTube and the Internet Archive.

The project’s key insights are detailed in two peer-reviewed articles and two blog posts.

o Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Bradley McDonnell, Lisa Vahapoglu, Jeff Good, and Katarzyna Kordas. 2022. "Public health information for minority linguistic communities". Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 100,1:78-80. (download).

o Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Leonore Lukschy, Sydney Rey, and Vasiliki Vita. 2022. "The virALLanguages project. How documentary linguistics can contribute to crisis and risk communication". Linguistics Vanguard (special issue COVID-19). https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0021

o Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. 2020. Message- vs. community-centered models in risk communication. Language on the Move (blog).

o Vita, Vasiliki. 2020. Bridging new and traditional media in the fight against Covid-19. Language on the Move (blog).

Among the key volunteers that made this project possible: Katarzyna Kordas, Lisa Vahapoğlu, Vasiliki Vita, Sydney Rey, Leonore Lukschy, Zubair Torwali, Achuo Christopher Ikom, Ndokobai Dadak, Margaret Chenemo.

Minawao Internet-in-a-Box

UNHCR camp of Minawao, Cameroon, 2025–ongoing

Working in a refugee camp brought the questions raised by Pig for Pikin and virALLanguages back into focus, but with even higher stakes. The residents of Minawao are themselves displaced, Nigerian citizens fleeing their homes because of Boko Haram attacks in 2013-2015. Extreme poverty, trauma, and mobility severely constrained by legal uncertainty over refugee status and return make it hard to ignore the question of what research actually gives back to the people it is about.

My answer, this time, was infrastructure. I designed and built a network of local Internet-in-a-Box mini-servers, giving camp residents free, offline access to video recordings of their own community members and elders speaking their endangered languages — no data connection required, which matters enormously in a camp with little to no reliable connectivity. Sustaining this without regular in-person access to the camp meant securing key partnerships: Wiki Project Med and Thika Alumni Trust UK provided equipment and resources, while Tim Moody, Adam Holt, and Shanti Bhardwa guided the technical design and implementation.

The infrastructure has since taken on a life of its own, enabling community-driven responses to problems well beyond the project's original scope — including efforts to draw attention to months of unpaid salaries for teachers at Minawao's secondary school. That work, presented as a poster co-authored with Garba John, won the Wikimania 2026 Content Quality Poster Award.

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