# Izwi Labadala: Voice of the Elders
Submission for the **AADHIH Reclaiming African Voices Hackathon**.
Izwi Labadala is a consent-first oral-history archive for preserving elders' stories in South African languages. It focuses on African knowledge preservation, community ownership, POPIA-aware consent, low-data access, multilingual UI, and the right to withdraw stories from the archive.
## Review These First
1. Demo video
A 2 minute 16 second narrated walkthrough of the working prototype.
2. Written narrative PDF
The submission narrative mapped to the hackathon rubric.
3. Static prototype build
A production build that can be unzipped and served with any static web server.
4. Source app
Vite + React + TypeScript prototype source code.
## What The Prototype Demonstrates
- Consent-first story capture
- Prepared transcript and translation workflow
- Story archive cards
- Memory map view
- English, isiZulu, and Sesotho interface toggle
- Large text and high contrast accessibility modes
- Community-controlled licensing
- AI-training consent flag
- Right-to-withdraw flow
## Running From Source
```bash
cd app
npm install
npm run build
npm run preview
```
## Submission Documents
- Email cover note
- Submission README
- Demo script
- Final brief audit
- Rubric self-score
- Submission pack
- UI/i18n QA notes
## AI Disclosure
AI tools were used to assist with planning, coding, writing, testing, and generating the synthetic text-to-speech narration in the demo video. The attached demo video shows the actual working prototype and its real user flow.
## Ethics Note
The demo uses clearly labelled sample stories and prepared transcripts. This is intentional: it avoids collecting real elder recordings without full consent while still showing the complete product loop that would be used in a community setting.