Democratizing development through Wikipedia

Translate This Post

Opening knowledge and sharing information are among the principles of the Wikimedia projects. Wikipedia’s spirit is that if you open knowledge, you can build a better encyclopedia and help more people in the world.
For many years, we didn’t see Wikipedia especially as a way of development, but people outside the Wikimedia movement see our experience and work more and more as such a model.
The Wikimedia Foundation and some Wikimedia chapters are involved in projects to use Wikipedia as a way to help development and education, by sharing Wikipedia content, supporting communities of wikimedians, and building educational resources.
The World Bank opened its data and resources and released them under a free license some months ago. The goal is to allow reuse and work with this open content.
During Wikimania 2012, the World Bank and Wikimédia France have organized an event to hear from organizations that are creating online and offline open source solutions to close this digital divide.
Participants at the event include:

  • Cyril Muller and Michael Trucano from the World Bank, which is involved in a policy to be more transparent and give access to its data to improve research and control.
  • Asaf Bartov, Head of Global South Relationships, Wikimedia Foundation, to speak about the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects in the Global South.
  • James BonTempo, Thought Leader, ICT4D, Jhpiego, about development projects in impoverished countries
  • Adrienne Alix, Director of Programs, Wikimedia France, about Afripedia, the initiative by Wikimedia France to make Wikipedia content in French more widely available offline.

Follow this link for more information about the event, taking place Wednesday morning, and to participate online.
Adrienne Alix, Director of Programs, Wikimédia France

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

Can you help us translate this article?

In order for this article to reach as many people as possible we would like your help. Can you translate this article to get the message out?

2 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Thanks, but now you’re missing a period after “educational resources”.

Bonjour Adrienne, Am I correct that you are also working on content in minority languages? This would seem to merit mention. Jimmy Wales’ vision of Wikipedia in everyone’s language is very democratizing and can be turned to practical advantage for development in its fullest sense. Merci et bon travail!
Don