Host: The Seed Company
Dates: Monday 3rd to Friday 7th March, 2025
Trainers: John Ventress and Roman Meszaros
Website managers trained: 8
Websites created: 6
The workshop
Part of an IT internship programme that equips individuals within Bible translation organizations to support their teams. We were invited to teach the first week. Workshop leads were Emilee Johnson (Texas) and Francis Meyof (Yaoundé).
The location
eMseni (Place of Grace), a Christian conference centre surrounded by nature in a safe suburb of Johannesburg. It was close to airport, mall and amenities; food and facilities were excellent; staff were helpful and friendly.
Participants and sponsors
Eight participants came from a variety of organizations across the region: Wycliffe South Africa (2, including 1 from Mozambique), Bible Society of South Africa (2), Bible Society of Namibia, Bible Society of Lesotho, Bible Society of Zambia, and The Zambia Project.
Some of the participants were Bible translators themselves, while others were support staff not directly involved in one specific language project, but working closely with translators.
Since one of the Wycliffe SA contingent was from Mozambique, it was gratifying to be able to set up a Portuguese interface for him, and provide additional support in Portuguese as needed. This turned out to be essential, as he was by far the participant who needed the most one-to-one support.
The workshop started with the ambition of producing 8 websites. It soon became clear, however, that the SA Bible Society was not happy for their participants to publish a website with Bible Society material, citing IP issues and inclusion of “unvetted content” from other sources, so both students were re-assigned as helpers on other projects.
IP issues arose again when the Zambian Bible Society asked for audio downloads to be disabled in the FCBH audio player. Thanks to Daniel, we were able to oblige with a CSS injection!
Teaching schedule
Overview
The flow of the workshop was largely as expected, but time spent on each topic was much less than at a standard workshop. About half the group was able to keep up with the pace, while the other half needed a lot of intensive support during work time. Having Emilee and Francis available to help with coaching made a big difference.
Days 1 and 2
Day 1 was spent outlining key concepts, planning and creating the menu structure, and preparing media files. Image Resizer and Quick Accent in Power Toys were a revelation.
On Day 2, we looked at web design, wireframing, and all aspects of adding images and text, including image with text, galleries and slideshows.
We also gathered Paratext files for Mashi (Zambia) and sePulana (SA).
Days 3 and 4
We finished all the main content on Day 3, focusing on audio, video, and pdfs and downloads. Thanks to Dan Neville, OSAs were ready to add to the Mashi and sePulana sites, much to the students’ delight!
Day 4 was given over to planning and building the Home page. This was a good time to teach buttons and other links, separators, how to copy and move content, adjusting backgrounds and margins, etc.
Day 5
Participants spent Day 5 responding to our audit feedback, doing outstanding page and interface translations, and making a start on the Copyright page. We agreed with Emilee that there would be some time in week 2 for finishing touches.
Wycliffe SA director Alan Webster joined us for the end-of-workshop celebration, and several Seed Company colleagues watched via Zoom. Participants proudly walked through their sites in some detail, and it was striking just how much they had achieved in only 4 ½ days!
Celebration time!
Although not all participants were able to create their own websites as planned, all took full part in the training, and all contributed to creating and presenting a website.
Left to right: Matimba (Makonde, Mozambique); Marc (Mashi, Zambia); Vee (sePulana, SA), Gabriel (SA, helped on Nsenga site); Johannes (Ju/'hoansi, Namibia); Angelo (SA, helped on sePulana site); Emmanuel (Nsenga, Zambia); Ziggy (seSotho, Lesotho)
Websites
Each website was close enough to completion to demonstrate on the final day, but all had a few tasks outstanding at the end of the workshop, despite some additional work during gaps in week 2.
Work has continued little by little via WhatsApp and Zoom since the workshop, and all sites are expected to go live in April. Domains are already configured as follows.
mashibible.com (Mashi, Zambia)
nsengabiblecommunity.org (Nsenga, Zambia)
sepulanabible.com (sePulana, South Africa)
basothobible.net (seSotho, Lesotho)
jugobabis.com (Ju/'hoansi, Namibia)
ntengawambone.com (Makonde, Mozambique)
Photo gallery
