By Hannah Evans, Programme Coordinator
Hello out there Wikimedia Community…
I’m the new Programme Coordinator for the coming year, working alongside our now three other coordinators across the UK. I’ll be concentrating on our Wikimedia In Residence programmes as well as our educational outreach projects. Both of these areas fill me with great anticipation, and frankly, after a week of intense familiarisation (reading lots of articles and Wikimedia documents) with the Wikimedia movement – I’m eager to get cracking and join in the mission to improve the sum of all human knowledge…
A little introduction of where I’ve come from… I have worked for the past few years focusing on youth and community engagement in solving social justice issues locally and globally. I have done this at the grass roots with a youth charity in Rajasthan, working in network engagement for the campaigns team of a youth-led International Development agency, and as an eager activist with Amnesty International throughout my student years, focusing on active participation of students in building campaigns.
More recently through my time in India and working in youth-focused programmes, I have become enthralled in witnessing the empowering nature of Non-Formal Education. I believe the Wikimedia movement is a great demonstration of this as an informal educational platform, accessible in different formats, available to all.
Through my work in programmes at Wikimedia UK, I’m looking forward to continuing Wikimedia UK’s drive towards greater accessibility and diversity on Wikimedia platforms, and I’m especially looking forward to getting to know the people behind these initiatives and working closely together in the future.
I’m very open to ideas and just saying hello to people in the community – so do introduce yourself – and we’ll see where this year takes us.
To an open 2018,
Hannah