Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipack Africa Content/WikiFundi:Credits

WikiFundi, WikiChallenge African Schools, and WikiPack Africa have been conceptualised, developed and launched by Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood, in collaboration with Emmanual Engelhard and Wikimedia CH. The projects are supported by the Orange Foundation that has an ongoing commitment to digital education in Europe and Africa, especially through the "Digital Schools" Program. WikiFundi is designed to support the WikiAfrica movement and Wikimedia volunteers across Africa. WikiFundi, WikiChallenge Africa Schools, WikiPack Africa and its documentation is licenced under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Team leaders

Florence Devouard, 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, Co-Project Manager

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 developed and runs 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).

Software Development

Emmanuel Engelhart, 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.”

Writing and Translation

Christine Welthagen, WikiFundi and WikiChallenge

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 and to participating in projects such as Wiki Loves Women and Wikipack Africa.

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.

Financial and human support: The Orange Foundation

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
• Digital Education : http://www.fondationorange.com/Digital-education
• Orange Foundation : http://www.fondationorange.com/en

Administrative suppport: Wikimedia CH

Wikimedia CH is an officially recognised non-profit organisation and the official Swiss Chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. They exist to promote the free dissemination of knowledge in Switzerland, and support the many volunteers, which make that happen.

Wikimedia CH was founded on 14 May 2006 and was officially recognised as a national chapter by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2007. They 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 to them.

MediaWiki: The software platform

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. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_contribute