Grants:IdeaLab/Wiki Rickshaw

Idealab

Wiki Rickshaw

To provide training sessions on some Internet basics along with Wikipedia especially to women and kids across the country

idea creator• Dineshkumar Ponnusamy

community organizer• Commons sibi

volunteer• Commons sibi• AddisWang

this project needs...

volunteer

community organizer

created on06:53, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

Wikipedia, especially Tamil Wikipedia does not be awarded by Indian general public. The growth of these Wikipedias are highly depends on popularity. For example, a Tamil social media account account, which opened in 2014, has attracted more than 7200+ users. It's an important for Indian community to improve the popularity for the development of these Wikipedias.

What is your solution?

Inspired by the idea of Google Bus, the idea of Wiki Bus could be a good way to attract people's attention and rapidly improve the popularity of Wikipedia. Wiki Bus is not only a fancy idea to catch people's attention, but also a solution for students those rural areas of India, which has poor or even no Internet service, can try to use Wikipedia and know about Wikipedia. Then, the student interest on Wikipedia could motive then to use the offline Wikipedia in their school's computer, which will installed during the bus visit. (For most rural schools, there is only one computer available in entire school).

Wiki Rickshaw, a small experimental project of Wiki Bus, will use the rickshaw, a popular Indian transportation, with equipped a few laptops of tablets and internet service.

Goals

Scope

1. Improve the popularity of Wikipedia in area using Tamil area, since the Wiki Rickshaw will based in there. (Majorly in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, depends on project organizers.)
2. Install Kiwix, the offline Wikipedia, on rural schools' computers, and teach student how to use Wikipedia and learn knowledge from the Wikipedia.
3. Promote student who has big interest of Wikipedia as a Wikipedia ambassador in his/her school to teach his/her schoolmates to use Wikipedia and even try to edit Wikipedia.

Activities

We will be taking the rickshaws around the selected places and explaining them about what Tamil Wikipedia does, how they can contribute and what are the benefits of the Wikimedia projects.

Timeline

Based on the budget, the location and timeline will be decided.

Measures of success

• Number of visits to educational institutions of the Wiki Rickshaw
• Number of Students who attend the Wiki Rickshaw visit and try to use Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
• Get local media attention for the Wiki Rickshaw
• Growth of Tamil Wiki Community users

Future Plans

Wiki Bus, which can run around the world like the Google Bus and grab the attention of the people.

Get Involved

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Participants

• Community organizer Can help in getting contacts and organising people . Commons sibi (talk) 16:00, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
• Volunteer Ready to volunteer . Commons sibi (talk) 16:54, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
• Advisor Help to improve the idea AddisWang (talk) 00:03, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Endorsements

• Looks innovative . Given the lower broadband penetration rate , this would be nice way to introduce Tamil Wikipedia to the masses Commons sibi (talk) 15:59, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
• Seems interesting. Satdeep Gill (talk) 06:23, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
• Intersting concept for rural areas and areas with poor or limited access to the internet. If it works, it could also be used in other areas of the world. X black X (talk) 13:43, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Feedback / Comments

We have always focused on Students at school and colleges..We could conduct sessions for Senior citizens and home makers.. Both of them are productive and sufficient leisure time and resources available to them for voluntary work. Suitable forums are Women welfare associations, Apartment societies, retired officers' associations etc.--Rsmn (talk) 09:51, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

 Like--Dineshkumar Ponnusamy (talk) 08:23, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

 Like--சஞ்சீவி சிவகுமார் (talk) 07:02, 24 September 2014 (UTC)