Official photo of the Let’s Read Wikipedia workshop with teachers from the Weenhayek indigenous nation. Photo: Julia WM Bo, CC BY-SA 4.0

In 2025, Wikimedians in Bolivia experienced an intense year with the implementation of the Let’s Read Wikipedia program: from large-scale activities that brought us great satisfaction to working with new populations that left us with reflections and lessons learned to continue building critical reading skills for information not offered by the world’s largest encyclopedia.

We experienced all this through workshops with teachers from different parts of the country, the signing of agreements with teacher training institutions, working with non-traditional groups for the program, and the involvement of volunteers in the training processes.

Mass participation activities

Wikipedia in Education Seminar held at Simón Bolívar Teacher Training College. Photo: Julia WM Bo, CC BY-SA 4.0

This year, we organized three activities that attracted the participation of groups of more than a hundred teachers.

The Specialized Continuing Education Unit (UNEFCO) brought together 49 teachers from the nine departments of Bolivia; more than 50 participants were invited by the District Education Directorate of Villamontes, in Tarija, in the south of the country; and more than 150 attendees at the seminar “Wikipedia in education,” which we organized together with the Simón Bolívar Teacher Training College, learned about the importance of incorporating Wikipedia into the educational processes they carry out in their classrooms.

This work, in addition to giving us great satisfaction on a quantitative level, allows us to reflect on the importance of promoting processes that reach other groups that are rarely able to attend extended or face-to-face training processes and make better use of digital media—as was the case with UNEFCO, where teachers from all over the country attended simultaneously through virtual means, which would have been impossible in person—and, consequently, to see new forms of planning that adapt to these local realities.

The challenge of reaching new working groups

Weaving Networks Game in the Let’s Read Wikipedia Workshop Weenhayek. Photo: Julia WM Bo, CC BY-SA 4.0

In August of this year, at the invitation of the District Education Directorate of Villamontes, Tarija, we traveled to the municipality of Villamontes, in southern Bolivia, to conduct an introductory workshop on Wikipedia with teachers from the Weenhayek Indigenous Education District.

This meeting is particularly important because of the characteristics of the indigenous nation, which has an educational calendar that differs from the rest of the country and is adapted to the socio-productive characteristics of the communities.

This experience taught us a great deal and presented us with particular challenges in terms of planning and adapting the Let’s Read Wikipedia program to the specific contexts of each region and its inhabitants, especially in a society as diverse as Bolivia’s, where 36 officially recognized indigenous nations and peoples coexist (although there are more), which, in turn, inhabit different rural and urban regions and face different gaps in access to technology and formal education centers. This undoubtedly poses a new challenge and gives renewed value to the Let’s Read Wikipedia program by presenting the encyclopedia as a space open to diversity and an opportunity to exercise the right to self-representation on the Internet.

Volunteers active in teaching processes

Professor Maria Cristina Mamani is one of the teachers who volunteered to join the Leamos Wikipedia project in Bolivia. Photo: Julia WM Bo, CC BY-SA 4.0

In 2025, the Leamos Wikipedia program began an important process of working with volunteer teachers who were actively involved in training activities.

We would like to highlight teacher María Cristina Mamani (Xrismar24), who was part of the program in 2024 and in 2025 accompanied many of the training activities of her colleagues, whom she guided based on her experience, especially in the process of developing lesson plans; the work of Noemí Ticona, a certified mentor in the program, who was also involved in the process we developed with teachers from the Weenhayek indigenous section in Villamontes; and teacher Willy Zurita (Wirob7), a teacher at the Teacher Training College, who promoted the implementation of the program with his students.

It was inspiring to develop activities with such a motivated volunteer community in the teaching-learning processes and to have mentors specialized in pedagogy. We believe this is a major step forward in consolidating a community specialized in this area.

By 2026, we seek to consolidate this group of volunteer teachers who are enthusiastic about free knowledge so that this group can develop greater autonomy.

A three-year agreement with the Teacher Training College

Signs inter-institutional cooperation agreement with the Simón Bolívar Teacher Training College and Wikimedians of Bolivia for the implementation of the Let’s Read Wikipedia program for three terms. Photo: Julia WM Bo, CC BY-SA 4.0

In May, we signed an inter-institutional cooperation agreement with the Simón Bolívar Teacher Training College (ESFM-SB) in La Paz to implement the Let’s Read Wikipedia program with trainee teachers and teachers at the college for the 2025, 2026, and 2028 academic years.

The signing of this agreement was proposed by the director of the institution, Mirtha Apaza, who, upon seeing the results of the first implementation of the workshop with Professor Wirob7‘s students, expressed her interest in extending this process to other students and teachers at the institution.

We also highlight the enthusiasm of Professor Wirob7, who has been a Wikipedia user since 2013 and encouraged the implementation of the first workshop at the Teacher Training College. His enthusiasm for Wikipedia drove the development of this first initiative and the three-year agreement.

In administrative terms, the signing of the Inter-institutional Cooperation Agreement allows the certification issued by Wikimedians of Bolivia and the ESFM-SB to be endorsed by the Ministry of Education, which supports certified teachers and allows the training program to be valued for their application in promotion exams, periodic exams that are carried out among the teaching staff in Bolivia.

Nearly three hundred teachers reached

Teachers who participated in Let’s Read Wikipedia in 2025. Photo: Julia WM Bo, CC BY-SA 4.0

In numerical terms, the actions carried out in 2025 with the Let’s Read Wikipedia Program reached 297 teachers from across the country, who also received educational materials and were able to interact with the platform through their accounts.

These results are the fruit of the enthusiasm of teachers and volunteers who, from the spaces in which they perform their duties, promote free knowledge. They are the ones truly responsible for the results of this initiative.

For 2026, our challenge is to continue encouraging this enthusiasm shown by each of the volunteer teachers and participants, and consequently to give continuity to the processes that they promote.

Our commitment is to work on the evolution of the program to incorporate content and questions that teachers have raised in 2025. Technological advances, new logic and practices for internet use, open educational resources, as well as the adaptation of use on mobile devices are some of the challenges we will respond to in 2026.

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