The Central Bicol State University of Agriculture (CBSUA) officially launched Literary Festival 2026: Room to Dream, a vibrant university-wide celebration that promotes creativity, literary excellence, and digital knowledge production.
This year’s festival features 11 dynamic literary events designed to cultivate writing skills, critical thinking, and collaboration. Among the highlights are article writing and translation initiatives on Wikipedia, as well as quotation contributions to Wikiquote. These activities encourage students and faculty to contribute to global knowledge platforms while strengthening research, referencing, and digital literacy skills.
The festival formally opened with an online orientation held on February 16, where 81 participants from three CBSUA campuses attended the Introduction to Wikipedia Content Translation and English Wikiquote workshop. The session equipped participants with foundational skills in content translation and introduced them to the value of preserving impactful quotations through Wikiquote.
Building on earlier capacity-building efforts, CBSUA previously conducted the Intro to Wikipedia and Wiki Referencing Workshop in December. University students from the College of Education, alongside faculty members and personnel from the University Extension and Services Office (UESO) and the Knowledge Management Center (KMC), participated in the hybrid training held at the main campus in Pili and online. The workshop emphasized proper citation practices, responsible editing, and collaborative knowledge-building, which are core competencies in today’s academic and digital environments.
These initiatives are anchored in the CBSUA Wiki Education Program (2026–2030), which aims to create, enrich, and share accessible knowledge in English, Filipino, Philippine, and other Asian languages through active participation in Wikimedia projects. The program advances open knowledge, digital literacy, and cultural preservation across instruction, research, extension, and production functions of the university.
Through workshops, seminars, edit-a-thons, and collaborative projects, CBSUA fosters a learning environment that empowers students, faculty, and community members to contribute meaningfully to global knowledge repositories. The initiative seeks to develop informed citizens who value inclusive knowledge-sharing while preserving the country’s rich linguistic and cultural heritage.
Under the leadership of Associate Professor Jerome Hipolito, the CBSUA Wiki Club serves as an extracurricular organization that supports new contributors within the university. The club recruits and mentors student editors, organizes edit-a-thons, and facilitates training sessions focused on editing fundamentals and proper citation practices. Participants engage in global campaigns such as #1Lib1Ref, #SheSaid, and Feminism and Folklore, and receive certification upon completing Wikipedia Training Modules.
The university’s growing Wikimedia engagement builds on the success of LitFest 2025: Cabinet of Curiosities, where approximately 100 participants completed Wikipedia training modules. The campaign generated 130 submissions from 53 participants, alongside 476 articles created during the Philippines’ participation in the Feminism and Folklore 2025 campaign from February 1 to March 31.
The CBSUA Literary Festival 2026 is co-organized by the College of Education of CBSUA-Calabanga, PhilWiki Community, CBSUA Teacher-Education Students’ Society, and the CBSUA English Educators Hub.
Through Room to Dream, CBSUA continues to strengthen its commitment to literary excellence, open knowledge, and community-driven scholarship—transforming creativity into meaningful contributions to the world’s largest collaborative knowledge platforms.
Banner photo: CBSUA Wiki Training Completers 2025 during the culminating and awarding activity at CBSUA-Calabanga; Left photo: Wiki Referencing Online Session on December 19, 2025 as part of the CBSUA Wiki Education program; Right photo: Introduction to Wikipedia Content Translation and English Wikiquote during the orientation of LitFest 2026: Room to Dream at Central Bicol State University of Agriculture (Photo by Filipinayzd, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Spreading the Spirit of Free Knowledge 