Looking to contribute to the advancement of free online educational materials that can be used and edited by anyone, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced that it has donated a $500,000 grant to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Websites operated by Wikimedia, which includes the popular Wikipedia online encyclopedia, are available in 265 languages and receive more than 300 million unique visitors per month, making them the 5th most popular web property in the world according to a June report by comScore Media Metrix.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which had $6.29 billion in assets since being created in 1967 to address social and environmental problems around the world, has awarded more than $100 million in grants since 2001 to promote Open Educational Resources (OER) to promote free information online.
"The enormous popularity of Wikipedia and its collaborative premise make the Wikimedia Foundation an ideal vehicle for spreading the open educational resources movement," said Barbara Chow, the director of the education program at Hewlett. "We look forward to a fruitful relationship."
The Hewlett Foundation defines OER as the tools and content used to allow institutions to create and share educational materials online. The Hewlett Foundation also places an importance on improving education for under privileged children in the San Francisco bay area.
According to Wikimedia, it is attempting to implement two initiatives to improve how user-friendly its software is while also creating a set of tools to "engage new potential volunteer editors."
"The Hewlett Foundation’s support comes at a critical time," said Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "We’ve just begun the planning that will help us identify how to maximize our impact around the world. This support will help us to execute our priorities for the current year, and enable us to plan for the future."
Aside from Wikipedia, Wikimedia also operates other OER sites such as Wikimedia Commons, which offers more than 4.5 million images, videos, and sound files, according to its website.
