Hello, I've been trying to float up an NGO that will run by the philosophy of "If rural india won't go to wikipedia, take wikipedia to rural india".
Here is a mail I'd written to Wikipedia. Please go through and let me know how you can be of help. thanks, -Suraj ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suraj Kumar <su...@sunson.in> Date: Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 1:35 PM Subject: Bridging the gap between rural india and wikipedia To: i...@wikimedia.org Hi, I'm looking for helping rural india using Wikipedia and helping enrich wikipedia using rural india's unique knowledge that is typically not part of Wikipedia because the current contributors to wikipedia are from urban parts of India. There is no denying, Wikipedia is probably the single most useful asset of all of humanity's knowledge on the Internet. But there are limiting factors for accessing and contributing to Wikipedia: 1. Internet connection 2. Computer Literacy I strongly believe, its worth my life in enabling rural india to 1. Benefit from the knowledge available on Wikipedia 2. Contribute to Wikipedia and enrich it with rural india's knowledge 3. Extend this to allow global rural societies from across the world to share knowledge Ideally, we would have a computer kiosk where people can access wikipedia. But besides Internet connection and Computer Literacy being limiting factors there are other practical problems of Rural india - Frequent power supply failures, 'fear' amongst rural india's peoples to use computers, etc., So obviously, doing it through a computer with internet connection is out of question here. *Solution* Imagine a book lending library: There is one computer which relies on an average internet connection and doesn't really depend on being continuously powered. There is an NGO worker in this library. To start with, this library keeps locally translated printed versions of what-would-be-useful topics from Wikipedia. Locals are free to enter this library, use the books (maybe borrow the books too if they are members) and even make photocopies for a nominal cost. To adhere to the spirit of wikipedia, they are also allowed to write new physical paper books in the local language and hand it over to the librarian (NGO worker) OR make corrections to existing books OR even just sit with the librarian in contributing to wikipedia. Content will be published using wikipedia guidelines. Most importantly changes go back to wikipedia web. The library 'learns' what is locally relevant and prints those topics as book. This is what this project is all about. *Software* One of the core things that will power this library is a software. Its a software that need not be run continuously nor does it need to be connected to the internet all the time. Its a simple client application that sends some logs / data to a central server and gets a list of 'eBooks' in return from the server. The idea is to print these eBooks and store at this library. The data being sent would be 1. The list of topics that are in demand (both available, lent books as well as topics that people came looking for but couldn't find in the library) weighted by the number of times each topic was referred to. 2. Available paper / money. The central server in turn returns a type-set, indexed set of e-books that this library can now print and keep. Printing will be done locally by the library using local resources (use a printer if there is one donated, find a local printer who can print this, or maybe if the local govt is willing to help, use their resources - in short, use the best local means of doing it). Infact, if the central server knows of several libraries nearby, then help print in bulk and provide information on where to collect the books meant for this library. Implementation can be worked out - but I hope you get the idea: *Centralised decision making and resource planning; Distributed information disbursement and collection*. *Library as a communication platform* The library can also become a platform for other NGOs to reach rural india. As an example, let's say there is an NGO which wants to encourage villagers to switch to sustainable agricultural practices (getting back to crop rotation, organic farming practices, permaculture, educating them about effective water use, etc.,) - they might either just want to educate them, in which case - they write wikipedia articles and fund our NGO to make the books available OR they might want some data from the villages (ex: crop yield using fertilizers vs crop yield using organic methods) - in which case the NGO worker can help collect the data, feed it into wikipedia and help the associated NGO use the data. Additionally, they can even fund us in creating local language video presentations or lectures for educational purposes and these videos can go into wikimedia. I can also imagine, some creative uses such as one of the volunteers creating a mini project (an arbitrary example: a simple crude electronics device to help use water efficiently for irrigation?) and using wikipedia to document it so that other villages across india (or the world) can start building the same. *The NGO Worker* Each library will have an NGO worker. The responsibilities of the NGO worker will be as follows: 1. Create awareness amongst locals about this effort by providing them relevant, useful, practical information that the locals would find helpful (ex: if the local economy is mainly to do with cloth weaving, educate them about weaving practices used across the world, goverment's benefit programmes, etc.,) 2. Help translate relevant local topics that are in english into the local language 3. Write locally contributed / "observed" local language articles into Wikipedia 4. Print books as and when money / raw materials become available. 5. Improve usefulness of the library - Find local source of funds and volunteers - is there another NGO that will benefit from us? What are the local people's needs? Any schools nearby to benefit from this? *Misc. Sources of revenue* - Library as a wikibook publisher: Authors who are willing to write free wikibooks can benefit from cheaper operating costs, better reach into rural india and thereby tapping a new market for selling their books. *Related Projects *The Govt of India, I hear, started a project called "VKC" (for Village Knowledge Centers) - a govt run non-profit with the aim of turning about 600,000 villages into knowledge centers. However, I'm unable to find folks in the VKC project. Their website is gone and all I could find was a mailing list with no activity after 2004. I'm not even sure what's the status of this effort. Secondly, their goal is not to collect all of humanity's knowledge and is indeed a high ambitioned, high technology project. We might benefit from their infrastructure and I don't see why they would not like to host our project. But until we find out further, we can safely assume we're on our own. Now... how can Wikipedia help this effort? :) thanks, -Suraj PS: A bit about myself: I'm 28 - I work at Yahoo! - I've been an ardent free software enthusiast. I used to run the 'd...@schools' project to help create awareness of Free Software to school children (but that was a long time ago!). Now, I live in Bangalore with my wife and my parents live in Thanjavur, a small town in Tamil Nadu, India rich in agricultural activities. -- Home: http://sunson.in/ -- Home: http://sunson.in/ _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, email ilugc-requ...@ae.iitm.ac.in with "unsubscribe <password> <address>" in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
