2025:Program/Youth and Wikimedia: Why youth is important

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Session title: Youth and Wikimedia: Why youth is important

Session type: Poster

Track: Community Engagement

Language: en

The presentation “Youth and Wikimedia: Why youth is important?” is a presentation that delves in a very important aspect of the Wikimedia movement, which is the youth, the future of our movement.

The panel session below is focusing on 3 axises, with insights from youth leaders from various regions in the world.

A much more analytical description can be found below.

Description

At first, we will discuss the importance of young people in the movement. Our youth leaders will explain why young people are important to be an element of the Wikimedia movement. Youth is a very important demographic and the future of Wikimedia. Young people are enthusiastic contributors to the various initiatives they are partaking into, so at first, the youth revitalise the project. Youth is helping to provide new insights and ideas to the various affiliates, as their fresh minds and progressive outlooks tend to identify solutions and ideas that older in age members may don’t be able to identify, thus contributing to local affiliate health and progress. Furthermore, the inclusion of young people in the movement helps to increase the positive opinion and awareness of the youth populace as a whole to Wikimedia projects, while ensuring the long-term livability of the project as the older segment of the community is aging. Lastly, through the communities that they are founding in universities and the projects they do there, they become a bridge between the movement and the academic world. There are many more reasons, that we’ll speak about them during the session. Thus, we are aspiring that in the end of the day, attendees will have a good understanding of the reasons why youth, an underinvested demographic, needs more attention from the Wikimedians.

Secondly, we are planning to talk on the challenges that young people are facing in various regions. Whether it be harassment from older-aged editors, lack of understanding and empathy, or the fact that many people are unaware of Wikimedia ecosystem and Wikipedia in general, as a research in Poland by the local chapter has shown. We are also going to emphasize the problems and challenges that young people in various continents and global regions are facing, in order to give to the audience more local contexts and help find the solutions to solve them, together.

The third part of the session will be about the insights of young Wikimedians from various regions of the movement. Our aspiration by this block is in order to allow our guests to share their insights and their experiences of being a Wikimedian leader in their region. We’ll see thus what worked well for each region, what challenges the region faced, and what methods each local affiliate used, and which methods according to their experience are the most efficient to grow a youth community in a local level.

How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?

The proposed session fully aligns with the motto of Wikimania 2025. At first, by making a session focused on the importance and the challenges of youth in the movement, we are emphasizing the inclusivity part of the conference, that we should promote an inclusive environment inside WM that would allow the youth component to thrive. It also aligns to the sustainability part as the challenges that youth has faced in WM, their insights and the reasons that will be given why youth is important, from the experience of our young speakers, because, if we understand the importance of the young people for our movement and provide solutions for the particular challenges they face, we’ll have done a major breakthrough by providing a new big funnel of people to the movement thus enhancing it’s sustainability in the long term. Meanwhile, youth, with its ideas, provides new insights, innovations and solutions, impacting the movement positively.

What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

Average knowledge about Wikimedia projects or activities

Speakers

• Nikos Likomitros

Nikos Likomitros is a Greek Wikimedian. He contributes since 2013, regularly from 2016 there. He has been involved with young Wikimedians since pretty earlier in his Wikimedia career, by helping a lot with cementing a stable community of youth, teenagers and students. He has organized various editathons in Greek Wikipedia and is a member of the Greek Usergroup. Moreover since 2023 he is involved in the Wikivibrance network and he is involved on youth projects, while he is also member of CEE Youth Group. He is interested on affairs related to youth and Wikimedia movement but also for developing communities. He has done Wikimedia outreach in 2 universities so far, being a key member of Wiki for Minorities international network and in 2024 he made an online webinar for Greeks in Germany. He also collaborated with the Armenian primary school in Athens where the young students will write on Armenian culture in Greek Wikipedia and will lead more projects in his university this year. He also attended the two CEE Youth Group meetings in Prague, Czechia where he learned a lot about youth projects from around CEE and shared his own experiences. He is also a member of the organising committee of the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2025 in Thessaloniki, the first international Wikimedia event in Greece after the 2023 hackathon. He's interested on international collaborations, the future of the movement, governance, experience exchange and Wikimedia ecosystem.

• Ferdinando Traversa

I've been a Wikimedian since 2012. I'm 20 and I'm the president of Wikimedia Italy. I'm active on it.Wikipedia, but also on offline campaigns like educational activities with school and universities and organising Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy and Apulia region.