Behind the Screen is an initiative of the Movement Communications team of the Wikimedia Foundation that aims to celebrate tireless Wikimedians who make free knowledge possible. It brings to the ‘screen’ stories from different regions of our global movement, in a multilingual format with a simple aim of sharing, honoring, and celebrating impact across regions.
As a movement we are no strangers to sharing knowledge, we contribute to free and easily accessible knowledge on a daily basis. But for a diverse, decentralized, and devolved movement like ours, sharing our own stories and spreading knowledge of our movement within the movement is critical to celebrating our shared impact. We need to celebrate the humans (and the bots!) behind the screen!
Our journey to uncover and share the stories of our movement’s impact started last year in Africa where we heard about the community efforts around youth and leadership development. We then went to Latin America where we heard firsthand about the on-ground creative work and programs on Gender and Education.
Then we moved to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region where we all got inspired by the individual impact and origin stories of our community. The Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region told us about their impact and focus on campaigns in the region.
The East, Southeast Asia, and The Pacific (ESEAP) told us about the Depth, Diversity, and Collaboration of the movement in ESEAP. We ended our journey in South Asia where we heard from community members about their lives, inspirations, journeys, and impact. We also heard about their work on merging the needs of our content contributors with the tech developers.
These stories were narrated and told by members of our community who have been working to achieve impact. The series featured both old and new voices from thousands of editors, contributors, developers, organizers, and volunteers.
These stories are not only important to share and celebrate but also give us unique perspectives from community members who dedicate themselves to a mission far greater than just the communities they serve. In order to ensure we are able to reach a wider audience the stories have been translated and subtitled in over 13 languages apart from English (Arabic, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Nepali, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Serbian, and Ukrainian.)
Click here to view all the stories under Behind the Screen
This video is a quick recap of some of the stories captured in our journey Behind the Screen but there are many more Wikimedians across the regions and their impact stories that must be told. In order to continue celebrating the amazing people behind the screen, the Movement Communications team has recently launched Wikicelebrate, a collaborative project in which we pick an exceptional Wikimedian and celebrate their contributions on a monthly basis.
We hope both Behind the Screen and Wikicelebrate will inspire us all to continue in our journey of contributing to the sum of all knowledge.
Watch the full video to see the snapshot of Behind the Screen from across the Globe.
Subtitles are Available in Arabic, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, and Ukrainian.
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