Wikipedia:WikiProject WikiFundi Content/WikiFundi:Credits
WikiFundi has been conceptualised, developed and launched by Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood at Wiki In Africa (http://www.wikiinafrica.org). WikiFundi was developed in collaboration with Kiwix and Wikimedia CH. Its first version was supported by the Orange Foundation that has an ongoing commitment to digital education in Europe and Africa, especially through the "Digital Schools" Program and its second by Wikimedia Foundation, the host of Wikipedia.
All the associated projects were designed to support the WikiAfrica movement and Wikimedia volunteers across Africa. WikiFundi, WikiChallenge Africa Schools, WikiPack Africa, WikiAfrica Schools and their documentation are licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Team leaders
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Florence Devouard, Project lead and co-project Manager
A Wikipedian since 2002, Florence Devouard (User:Anthere) is the former Chair of Wikimedia Foundation and founding member of Wikimedia France, Florence Devouard born in France, where she currently lives. She is a public speaker and a consultant. She helps organisations to discover and implement new internet-based tools. Above everything, she loves to share her knowledge of new practices and online communities. She cares for language diversity and multicultural dialogue, and is a supporter of the open-source and free knowledge movement. Since 2013, Florence is the co-leader of projects related to Wikipedia and Africa, such as Wiki Loves Africa (photographic contest in Africa), Kumusha Takes Wiki (citizen journalism to collect and create freely-licensed content in Africa), or Wiki Loves Women (content liberation project related to African Women). She also participate as Scientific Collaborator at SUSPI to the Wikipedia Primary School SSAJRP research programme (developing and evaluating a system to assess Wikipedia articles for primary education in South Africa).
Isla Haddow-Flood
A Zimbabwean by birth, and a Capetonian by adoption, Isla Haddow-Flood (User:Islahaddow) is a writer, editor and project strategist who is passionate about harnessing communication technology and media platforms for the advancement of open access to knowledge; specifically, knowledge that relates to and enhances the understanding of Africa via the Open Movement (and especially Wikipedia). Since 2011, Isla has been working to activate Africa. Working with members of the WikiAfrica movement, she has conceptualised and instigated #OpenAfrica, Kumusha Bus and WikiEntrepreneur. She is also the co-leader of projects related to Wikipedia and Africa, such as Wiki Loves Africa (annual photographic contest) and Kumusha Takes Wiki (citizen journalists in Africa collecting freely-licensed content). In 2016, Florence and Isla initiated Wiki Loves Women (content liberation project related to African Women), Wikipack Africa (an action kit for Wikipedians across Africa), WikiFundi (an offline editing environment that mimics Wikipedia) and WikiChallenge African Schools (that introduces the next generation of editors to Wikipedia). In 2017, Florence and Isla established Wiki In Africa and has been working on WikiAfrica Schools, Wiki Loves Women, and WikiFundi 2.0 under its umbrella.
Writing and Translation
[edit]Christine Welthagen, WikiFundi V1 Christine Welthagen, (User:Cwelthagen), French born, has been working in the UK and Middle East for many years before settling down in Cape Town. Former Head of Foreign Languages Department in various International Schools where she started to familiarise herself with Wikipedia as a teaching tool, she now works from home and dedicates her time to translation work.
Wikipedia Editors around the world
This project could not be possible without the thousands of hours and dedication of Wikipedians around the world how have developed and written Wikipedia to what it is today. The article you will be reading as examples are compiled over thousands of hours. This project would like to acknowledge their effort.
Administrative suppport and product owner
[edit]Wiki in Africa
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Wiki in Africa is a non-profit organisation that is based in South Africa, was founded in November 2016 as a financial and legal structure that operates global initiatives in support of the WikiAfrica movement. Our objective is to empower and engage citizens of Africa and its diaspora to collect, develop and contribute educational and relevant content that relates to the theme of Africa under a free license; and to engage in global knowledge systems by encouraging access to, awareness of, and support for open knowledge, the open movement and the Wikimedia projects, working in collaboration with like-minded organisations.
Wiki in Africa is the editor (= publisher) of WikiFundi.
Technical support
[edit]Kiwix
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Kiwix is a Swiss non-profit.
The world has a connectivity issue. In many places internet can be slow, unreliable or even censored. Kiwix is an offline solution that allows people to access educational content like Wikipedia, the Wiktionary, TED talks and many others on any computer or smartphone - without the need for a live internet connection.
Kiwix was responsible for the tech development of WikiFundi V2.
MediaWiki: The software platform
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MediaWiki is free server-based, open licensed software that is designed to run on a large server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day. It is an extremely powerful, scalable software and a feature-rich wiki implementation that uses PHPto process and display data stored in a database, such as MySQL. Pages use MediaWiki's wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily.
When a user submits an edit to a page, MediaWiki writes it to the database, but without deleting the previous versions of the page, thus allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming. MediaWiki can manage image and multimedia files, too, which are stored in the filesystem. For large wikis with lots of users, MediaWiki supports caching and can be easily coupled with Squid proxy server software. Wikipedia and all the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are run on Media Wiki, as is WikiFundi.
Software development
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Renaud Gaudin, Software development WikiFundi V2.1
Renaud is a Mali Information Management Expert. Specialist in all-fields of Information management, from infrastructure to Decision-level dashboard, through Data Collection and Trainings. Renaud took care of the technical development of the 2021 version. User:Rgaudin on Wikimedia project. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rgaudin
Florent Kaisser, Software development WikiFundi V2
A programmer and hacker since a very young age, Florent Kaisser is passionate about computers and very attached to the free softawares, to Commons in general, and the university world. After a PhD in Computer Science on mobile networks field and few years working in a research laboratory, he is now freelancer as a developer and consultant looking for interesting projects and in keeping with his ideals. Wanting to combine intellectual and physical work, he created in 2016 a bicycle delivery cooperative in Lille (France) where he lives since 2010 (http://lille.bike).
Emmanuel Engelhart, Tech project manager and WikiFundi Software development
Emmanuel Engelhart (User:Kelson) has been a Wikipedia editor since 2004, but is most well known for the inspirational development (with Renaud Gaudin) of Kiwix, the offline Wikipedia. Emmanuel believes that access to information is a basic right that the whole world should be entitled to. “Water is a common good. You understand why you have to care about water. Wikipedia is the same; it’s a common good. We have to care about Wikipedia.”
Offline Projects Planning UserGroup
[edit]The goal of the Wikimedia movement at large is to make knowledge freely available to all of humanity; currently, however, the content knowledge available via the Wikimedia projects is mostly confined to those who have access to a broadband Internet connection – or less than 5% of the developing world. It is critical for the reach of the movement to proactively consider ways to make the information available to the offline majority of the global population. In order to achieve the greatest scale of impact possible, Wikimedia must intentionally focus on the largest demographic segment of the world in order to address the steadily increasing “digital divide.” The offline work is geared to expand the reach of the collective knowledge and broaden participation in the project.
The Offline Projects members have provided support and inspiration.
Financial and human support
[edit]The Orange Foundation
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The Orange Foundation is at the heart of the Orange Group’s philanthropic activities and social responsibility. From its inception in 1987 to the present day, it has been proactively involved in a natural extension of the company’s mission: helping everyone to communicate better. Since 2005 the Orange Foundation has supported philanthropic projects across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, mainly focusing in the countries where the Orange Group operates. This work is done through 16 local foundations that work in close proximity with the local population. Currently the Foundation is concentrating on digital solidarity, by implementing major programmes in health, disability, education and culture. WikiFundi and WikiChallenge African Schools is part of the Orange Foundation's Digital Schools programme. The Orange Foundation distributes digital tablets to schools, that have no books and no internet connection, in Africa. Those tablets include educational contents such as school books, khan academy lessons, the Wikipedia encyclopaedia, Wiktionary, the Gutenberg digital library, MOOC on live teaching etc. In 2016, more than 130 000 children have access to essential educational content using those tablets.
Links:
- Digital Schools (Programme) : http://www.fondationorange.com/The-Digital-Schools-programme-2487
- Orange Foundation : http://www.fondationorange.com/en
The Wikimedia Foundation
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The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual, educational content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, a top-ten internet property.
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.
Wikimedia CH
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Wikimedia CH is an officially recognized non-profit organization and the official Swiss Chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The association exists to promote the free dissemination of knowledge in Switzerland and beyond. It aims to support and promote Wikimedia projects, such as the free online Encyclopedia Wikipedia, the multimedia database Wikimedia Commons, the offline version of Wikipedia Kiwix and many more open-source projects. In partnership with different educational and cultural institutions. They are focusing our activities on three main areas to reach as many people as possible: Education, GLAM and Community and Outreach.
Wikimedia CH was founded on 14 May 2006 and was officially recognized as a national chapter by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2007. We nevertheless remain a financially and legally independent entity, obeying Swiss rules and leadership. Wikimedia CH does not host any of the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation and has no special publishing rights on them.