Grameenphone, Wikipedia launch campaign to grow Bangla contents

Garmeenphone has teamed up with Wikipedia to start a campaign to augment Bangla content in the free encyclopedia.

The announcement of the collaboration came at a media conference titled 'Wikipedia Regional Contributors Meet' held at Bishwa Shahitya Kendra on Monday.

The campaign will take place from Nov 27 to Dec 15 in seven divisional cities and will end in Feb next year. The campaign aims to raise awareness on Wikipedia and Bangla language as internet driver.

Grameenphone's Head of Communications Marcus Adaktusson, Head of Digital and Social Media Zakia Zerin and President of Wikimedia Foundation Bangladesh Munir Hasan were present.

Adaktusson said, "We have teamed up with Wikimedia Foundation as part of our ongoing 'Internet for All' campaign. We have already reached the milestone of 5 million subscribers.

“Our next target is to make sure that all these subscribers have internet access in next three-four years.”

He spoke of the challenges which were to educate people about the use of internet, to increase supply of cheap smart phones and thirdly, to create quality content suitable for Bangladesh and can be used by everybody.

“For this reason, we formed alliance with Wikipedia. We want young men to create contents in local language. This will encourage people to use internet and benefit them a lot,” Adaktusson added.

“We are aware of parents' concern about internet. So, we will keep a session on internet safety in the campaign aiming to educate people about the positive and negative sides of internet."

Munir Hasan said,"All our current contributors are busy in creating content on challenging topics. There are some routine tasks. Minor but important topics are often left out or neglected.

“For instance, when the architect of national commemoration memorial Syed Mainul Hossain died, I did not find any quality Bangla contents on Wikipedia."

Highlighting internet as a powerful tool, he said in the Philippines people had forced Estrada govt to step down by sending SMS.

Stressing on quality Bangla content, he said," Without quality contents, people will be distracted by bad contents and will get confused. Currently we have 40 million school goers.

“In addition to cheap computers and internet access, we have to provide quality Bangla contents for them. This in turn will empower society."

He urged the youth to contribute content in Bangla Wikipedia. “If you spend five hours in social media, then please spend one-fifth of that time in creating content for Bangla Wikipedia."

Zerin said the campaign would kick off on Nov 27 and a training programme on how to create content for Bangla Wikipedia would also be conducted during the campaign.

Three best contributors would also be selected from the participants, she added.