Ziemeļamerika

Support for agricultural development in Guatemala
(Solola region, Guatemala / 02.01.2014.)

In 2014, the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation began a two-year collaboration project with the organisation Global Fairness Initiative, implementing a programme in Central America for the benefit of the Mayan community in the Solola region of Guatemala.

Native communities throughout Central America have historically fallen victim to an institutional process of disenfranchisement. Mayan communities in Guatemala are largely comprised of unregistered farmers, 60% of whose means of subsistence are extremely limited. Statistics indicate that in Guatemala seven out of ten members of native communities live in poverty. Uneven land and inaccessible roads have long accentuated the disenfranchisement of local inhabitants.

The agro-industrial development programme is intended to benefit 300 small farmers in 34 Mayan communities in the Solola region. Its objective is to expand agricultural and business methods with a view to ensuring a better result, better quality and more competitive products, as well as to help to register a large number of the region’s small farmers. Under the auspices of the programme, several workshops, training sessions and round table gatherings will be held with the parties involved, in order to encourage the transition from informal and dependent farms to sustainable businesses capable of building strong and effective partnerships.

Support for the development of the Wikipedia open encyclopaedia
(Los Angeles, California State, USA / 30.06.2015.)

Since 2012, the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation has provided annual support to help the Wikipedia open encyclopaedia achieve its goals of: a) improving infrastructure, b) increasing the number of visitors to the encyclopaedia, c) improving the quality of content, d) expanding the accessibility of the encyclopaedia’s content in more languages, d) introducing innovations. At present, Wikipedia is available in almost 300 languages including Latvian, Livonian and Russian, which are used in Latvia. Wikipedia is visited by over 400 million visitors a month online.  

Since 2015, the Foundation has co-financed the Wikipedia Educational Program. Under its auspices, college and university students are trained in the preparation of Wikipedia articles, using the resources offered by Wikipedia to prepare the information found in the encyclopaedia amounting to at least 10 million written signs. The programme spans 67 countries outside North America, engaging over 1,000 students per semester (of whom a significant proportion are female students).