Hi, all.
Alex, I suggest that we approach the Ministry with an offline version of
wiki installed in our laptops so that we can show the officials first-hand what it is we are actually doing.
Indeed, I very much recommend getting a working offline Wikipedia on your laptops to show the ministry people. Nothing beats a live demo, and the benefits this project can bring to a school without (regular) Internet access are much more palpable that way.
We at the openZIM http://www.openzim.org/ project would be very happy to help with any technical issue you may face in getting this to work on your laptops.
Re posting on the WMF blog -- I think that blog's policy is to report rather than plan, so it would be an excellent place to publicize this project once it's underway.
Cheers,
Asaf