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A dollar, a love note and a broken heart.

As a volunteer at the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, I read a lot of the emails that people write and letters that they send when we launch our annual campaign for support.

Right away you realize that people aren’t just giving their money, they’re sending their love. A child happily donating one dollar from his small weekly allowance. Another check with a simple post-it message saying I LOVE WIKIPEDIAAAAA!!! Sometimes, the messages are hard to read. I’ll never forget hearing from a father and mother whose son had died after a rare illness. They gave out of gratitude that Wikipedia has an article to inform others about the existence of the disease that took their son’s life. Wikipedia means a lot of different things to those of us who use it. Whatever your personal connection, you are part of a magical community. More than 400 million people use Wikipedia and its sister sites every month – almost a third of the Internet-connected world.

This is the time of year when people all across the Wikipedia community come together to help sustain our joint enterprise with a donation of $20, $35, $50 or whatever they can to keep Wikipedia free.

The same way that we build Wikipedia one word at a time, we can keep it healthy and thriving one donation at a time.

I hope you’ll choose this as the moment to send Wikipedia some love.

Thanks, Lilaroja

Oliva, Spain