The Welsh Women’s Peace Appeal needs volunteers to help transcribe the 100-year-old petition. Women of Wales united in 1923 to create a petition for peace, five years after the horrors of World War I ended.
They gained 400,000 signatures and in doing so plotted a social and political map of Welsh women from a century ago.
To find out more about the petition, volunteers are being called to help digitise the 100-year-old signatures to create an online searchable resource.
To gain interest and spread the word about the petition which on 5 April 2023 had its 100th anniversary, an event will be held on 14 March to share the history of the petition at Machynlleth.
Sian Howys, community outreach officer for the Women’s Peace Petition Project, run by the Welsh Centre for International Affairs, said: “We want to get the story out about this forgotten piece of history. By bringing the petition to Machynlleth, people will be able to discover who in their house or on their street signed it or who in their family signed the petition.
“We’ll do some live searches of the petition during the talk and hopefully recruit some transcribers.”
The petition was presented to the Women of America in 1924 where it was kept in its original oak chest at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC until 2019. After significant fundraising it was finally brought home that year to the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.
The task to transcribe the full text, said to be seven miles long, is being undertaken by 200 volunteers to help digitise, the 390,296 women's names and addresses who signed, but Sian says they still need more: “It sounds like a lot and we’ve had a great response, but we do need more volunteers because of the sheer volume of the exercise.”
Those who volunteer as transcribers will be sent scanned copies of the petitions to transcribe, one name at a time.
The talk will share the story of the petition and the women behind it on Thursday 14 March at 6.30pm at the Community Hub/ Hwb Cymunedol at the Taj Mahal on the town high street.
To find out more, attend the event at the old Taj Mahal 21 Heol Pen'Rallt, Machynlleth SY20 8AG. Tea and coffee will be provided at the bilingual event.