Making new direction through supporting Wikimedia activities for Neurodivergents

In January 2024, Wikimedia Korea and the Korean Research Centre for Guardianship and Trusts (KCGAT) signed an agreement to support people with mental disabilities and neurodiversity on Wikimedia. This agreement aims to encourage their continued participation, create new communities, and strengthen social unity.

After signing the agreement, the two organizations developed an activity plan for the partnership. One of the key strategies was to hire a neurodivergent person as the project manager. This was to ensure that the project could be effectively promoted to the neurodiverse community and that participation in events would be maintained.

In the early days of the project, we had difficulty funding the project, but in July 2024 Wikimedia Foundation recognized the purposefulness of the project and we were able to begin operations. This paved the way for us to begin supporting neurodiversity activities on Wikimedia in earnest.

Creating neurodiverse community by frequent events

As part of the project we organized consecutive editathon events to keep neurodivergent people engaged. We called the event as “인피니티 에디터톤”(Infinity Edit-a-thon). We recruited neurodiverse people and actively promoted the event to the community, and seven people attended the first event.

They practiced the articles in their sandbox in the beginning, but later they successfully created the articles in Korean Wikipedia such as “세바다” and  “무뎅”, making one step forward.

Photowalks for neurodiverse people

We also organized a photo walk event for neurodivergent people in November in Chuncheon, South Korea. The concept of a photo walk is still new in Korea, and participants were not sure how it would work before the event, but after participating, they realized that uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons is not difficult.

I enjoyed the photowalk today because of the weather and scenery, and it wasn’t too difficult to post photos once I actually did it a few times. It was also nice to talk to people and learn about things I didn’t know. I’d like to do it again next time.  – Participant A

I used to be distant from the act of writing wiki articles, but after participating in the last Chuncheon Photo Walk, I became more willing to contribute to Wikipedia articles. – Participant B

After the success of the first photowalk, we organized the second event and the signup process closed in just one day. As they were already familiarizing themselves with Photowalk and Wikimedia Commons, participants took several photos of places not on Wikimedia Commons and uploaded them. 

Planning sustainable activities

Building on these activities, neurodiverse community members are taking the initiative to propose ideas and drive the project forward. Currently, the Editorathon is regularly held on the third week of every month, and the photo walk has been held twice. In 2025, we plan to continue to hold monthly editathons and quarterly photo walk events. We will also continue to organize novel events to increase participation in Wikimedia by people with neurodiversity.