Last year I had the privilege to coordinate a community project that I’ve in mind for a long time. I imagined a rather small and grassroots community project that would break down borders of languages and countries and unite people who want to create awareness by discussing, researching and in the end providing knowledge about topics of sociopolitical relevance. Out of this idea came “Wikipedia for Peace,” which took place in Vienna (Austria) in August 2015.

The project turned into a collaboration between Wikimedia Austria and the Austrian branch of the peace organisation Service Civil International (SCI). Together, we found and gathered 12 volunteers from different European countries and created a two-week workcamp, in which we were allowed to discover the many different layers of contributing to Wikipedia and its sister projects in 9 different languages. We lived, cooked, learned and worked together.

The outcome of “Wikipedia for Peace” was more impressive than I expected: even though almost everyone involved was new to Wikipedia, soon after the camp started all of us had found topics we were passionate about to work with and explore. Our group had many more women and a much lower average age than Wikipedia commonly has. This shaped the interests and perspectives we wanted to add to articles or write about. We wrote about, among other topics, asylum seekers in Austria, masculinity and feminism in Bulgaria, the Irish humanitarian missions in the Mediterranean Sea, non-violent resistance, and peace museums. Thanks to our focus on peace issues in combination with the promotion of the access to open content, the Austrian Commission for UNESCO took the project under its patronage.

One of the best aspects of “Wikipedia for Peace” was to have the opportunity to get to know more about several other Wikimedia projects.

One of my favorite moments of the project was when we, people from all over the world, explained to locals in Vienna that the tree in their garden or backyard is officially registered as a monument, and that we would like to take a picture of it.

I would love to see the spirit of our last August being kept alive by people interested in contributing to a culture of peace and open content. Maybe in the countryside to have a more relaxing environment than a city? Maybe with a more specific key topic such as migration, arms trade, or gender equality? Maybe with more picture hunts and more collaborative writing? The potential is huge and waiting to be explored.

Get access to details:

– The produced video
– A short description for the video
– The full article of Thomas