It astonishing that the WMF and affiliates are supporting a conference
in Tunis. The country is not safe for LGBT+ people, including
tourists, despite what promotional holiday and travel websites imply.
I urge anyone who is LGBT+ and booked to go to this conference,
including WMF employees, please reconsider and cancel your attendance.
You will be putting yourself at unnecessary risk.
It speaks volumes that on the one hand the WMF wishes to fund travel
and accommodation for a diversity working group, but then chooses to
hold the meetings in a country where this year there are cases of the
courts officially forcing anal examinations on suspected homosexuals
to "prove" they are homosexuals, deny the existence of trans people,
and where there has been a case of a foreign tourist going to prison
for their homosexuality.
Thanks,
Fae
--
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
WM-LGBT+ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT+
On Tue, 17 Sep 2019 at 20:26, Ad Huikeshoven <a...@huikeshoven.org> wrote:
tl;dr Wikipedia can engage millions, billions of people to achieve the
Sustainable Development Goals by 2030
Wikimedians and Wikipedians around the world have been involved with
Wikimedia 2030 since 2015. The strategic direction is to build the
essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge. Back in
2015 a
total of 193 members of the United Nations agreed to the 17 Sustainable
Developments Goals to be reached by the year 2030. Last August many of
you
were in Stockholm, Sweden for Wikimania. The theme this year was
“Stronger
Together: Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development
Goals”.[1]
Michael Edson, founder and director of UN Live, the Museum of the UN in
Kopenhagen, Denmark held a keynote and asked Wikipedia for help. The UN
isn’t able to reach millions, billions of people on its own to have them
work on achieving the SDGs.[2] Wikipedia reaches half a billion people
each
month. Millions of people have contributed to Wikipedia.
Of course Wikipedia can spread the knowledge about the SDGs and how to
solve them in each country, and in each language. We can make a very good
case for an “open access knowledge sharing project related to the
Sustainable Development Goals that uses Wikipedia as a tool”. A lot of
knowledge will have to be gathered locally about local solutions to local
problems. We as a free knowledge movement have done so succesfully in the
past. We can do succesfully now.
The one big reason to step upto the challenge is in the vision of the
movement: “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely
share in the sum of all knowledge.” Imagine every single human having
access to how to solve each of the Sustainable Development Goals in their
locality, in their language.[3]
Another reason is part of our mission: to empower and engage people
around
the world to collect and develop educational content.[4] Might people
involved with the movement be able to educate people why and how to solve
global goals locally?
Knowledge about SDGs is just a small subset of all knowledge. It would
be a
big step for mankind to have exactly that knowledge available well before
the year 2030.[5] It won’t impede anyone to collect and share knowledge
outside that subset, however.
To make it happen imagine having a small office with a handful dedicated
people in each country. People with the capacity to build partnerships
with
NGO’s, universities, research institutions, government agencies, groups
of
citizens who are already involved with the SDGs.[6] People with the
capacity to organize SDG themed writing contests and SDG themed
edit-a-thons with participants from interested parties.[7]
As written above, it has been agreed to build the essential
infrastructure
of the ecosystem of free knowledge. Why would it be worthwhile to invest
50
million dollar a year to build such an infrastructure?[8] With those tiny
offices in each country we it can exactly be done what Michael Edson
begged
us to do: get millions (or billions) of people working together on global
goals and share the knowledge they gathered. To connect people everywhere
and catalyze global effort toward accomplishing the Sustainable
Development
Goals.
The Wikimedia movement has the capacity to raise the necessary funds
through banners on Wikipedia on top of what is now already collected, and
alreadt spent each year.[9] After a long period - over four years - of
mainly inward looking activities of board and working groups, the time
has
come to look outwards. The works of our movement have influence globally
and can have global impact. Not impact measured as number of articles, or
number of editors retained, but impact on the real social life of seven
billion people, by sharing knowledge how to end poverty, how to end
hunger
and so on.[11]
Imagine a world where there is no poverty and zero hunger; with good
health
and well-being, quality education and full gender equality everywhere.
There is clean water and sanitation for everyone. Affordable and clean
energy has helped to create decent work and economic growth. Prosperity
is
fueled by investments in industry, innovation and infrastructure, which
helped to reduce inequalities. Living in sustainable cities and
communities, and responsible consumption and production are healing our
world. Climate action has capped the warming of the planet, and life
below
water is flourishing, and there is abundant diverse life on land. There
is
peace and justice through strong institutions, and long term partnerships
for the goals have been built.[12]
In the coming weeks I continue to have talks with people to get an “open
access knowledge sharing project related to the Sustainable Development
Goals that uses Wikipedia as a tool” or Wiki loves SDGs project started
and
launched. People willing to get involved, please contact me through
private
message.
Next week will start a strategy sprint in Tunis, with members of working
groups present, the board of the WMF, chiefs of the WMF office and some
people of WMDE to finalize the recommendations for Wikimedia 2030. Have a
look at the SDGs and think about what you can do for the SDGs, and not
what
the SDGs can do for you.
Regards,
Ad Huikeshoven
[1] https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania (Thank you,
Wittylama)
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2019_Keynote_address_–_Michael_Peter_Edson.webm
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission
[5] https://www.sdgnederland.nl/sdg-moonshot/
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Partnerships/Recommendations/Nutshell
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Capacity_Building/Recommendations/Nutshell
[8]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Resource_Allocation/Recommendations/Nutshell
[9]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Revenue_Streams/Recommendations/Nutshell
[10]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_Groups/Roles_%26_Responsibilities/Recommendations/Nutshell
[11]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Learning_and_Evaluation/Logic_models
[12] https://www.thenewdivision.world/the-global-goals
