Dear friends and colleagues,
Rod Dunican (currently the Director, Wikipedia Education Program at WMF) has announced that he is leaving the Foundation at the end of this month. We are truly sorry to see him go; he has been such a critical part of the Wikipedia Education Program and strategy for many years including his leadership of the team. We wish you the very best, Rod, and look forward to hearing of your new adventures.
I am looking forward to working even more closely with the current Education team: Anna Koval, Floor Koudijs and Tighe Flanagan. All three of them have complementing skills and backgrounds, and have begun working closely and effectively with each other and with the rest of the Grantmaking team. With Rod, they have been working on an exciting shift in strategy as they have moved from a more hands-on programmatic strategy to becoming a facilitative hub in which the team supports different kinds of local education programs. This has meant that the team has been working with educational program leaders, volunteers and community organisers in over 60 countries to map their education-related activities, successes and challenges. The integration of the Wikipedia Education Program team into the GLEE team also means valuable opportunities for the different grants programs to work more closely to understand successful education programs and to support them through grants and other resources. In particular, the Education team’s focus on gender and geographic diversity as a strategy is very much shared across the broader Grantmaking department.
As the team goes forward to develop a road map for the future with our community members, Floor Koudijs will be the interim Senior Manager for the Education Program. Initially the team has been assigned different parts of the world in order to create a baseline of educational programs and activities, with Floor responsible for Latin America and Western Europe, Tighe for the Arab region and Africa, and Anna for Asia and Eastern Europe. Please look at the Education portal for more details.[1]
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me, or to Floor, Tighe and Anna, for any comments or clarifications.[2] We look forward to working in partnership with our communities worldwide as we support education programs in service to the Wikimedia mission.
Warmly,
Anasuya
[1] http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program
[2] Floor: fkoudijs@wikimedia.org Tighe: tflanagan@wikimedia.org Anna: akoval@wikimedia.org