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Wikipedia has existed for twelve years now in several dozen languages, including the four official languages of Switzerland.

In these twelve years, we have seen millions of volunteers sharing their knowledge and written the biggest encyclopedia in the world by revolutionizing the way of writing it. In these twelve years, Wikipedia slowly became a part of your life. You recently used it to check the date of birth of a writer, you used it to try to understand the Arab Spring, you used it to help your youngest, who was confused by their geography class (do you remember the capital of the new country of South Sudan?). You use Wikipedia every week, if not every day.

Because we think that Wikipedia should stay an independent space entirely devoted to its primary goal: the spread of knowledge, there has never been an ad on the site. This is why Wikipedia needs you: to buy servers of sufficient capacity, to enable volunteers to get support and help from people organizing projects, and to introduce new Wikipedians to the site. The swiss donors play an important role in this wonderful project. Thanks to you the photographic coverage of the Swiss historical monuments went from 35 to 75%. Thanks to you, a project aims to provide three botanical gardens with QR codes in 2013, so that visitors can use their smartphones to read the Wikipedia articles on the plants in front of them, in their own language.

The Swiss (Wikimedia CH) and American (Wikimedia Foundation) organizations, both non-profit, work together towards these goals. We are committed to the values of Wikipedia, which is why we became an officially recognized non-profit association, and why our finances are reviewed by an external accountant.

You can also take part in the world's biggest project. Make a donation!

Charles Andrès Wikimedia CH Chairman