Published to mark International Literacy Day, 8 September 2026
This year marks the 60th International Literacy Day, under the theme “Literacy for people, the planet, and prosperity.”Sixty years on, literacy means more than reading and writing. It also means being able to question the information in front of us, understand the technologies shaping it, and decide on our own terms what role those technologies should play in our lives.
As Hardiansyah, Chair of the Executive Board of Wikimedia Indonesia, puts it:
“Literacy is not only about reading or writing; it is also about opening a window to the world. Through Wikimedia’s open knowledge movement, we can make knowledge freely available in Indonesian and in many other languages so that anyone can access it. This spirit of openness means that knowledge is not something held by only a few but a shared resource that everyone can benefit from.”
That spirit sits at the heart of WACANA, a new regional initiative supported by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.
It started with one afternoon
In February 2026, Wikimedia Indonesia ran a session for young content creators from all 11 ASEAN member states as part of the ASEAN Y Impact programme, organized by the Canadian Mission to ASEAN together with the ASEAN Foundation.
Participants were introduced to the Wikimedia projects and tried editing Wikipedia themselves. Many arrived skeptical about Wikipedia’s reliability. Several left wanting to contribute.
Read about the session on Diff.
The conversation with our Canadian partners continued. We found common ground around digital literacy, information integrity, and the belief that healthier information ecosystems are built with communities, not simply delivered to them. When the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives opened its 2026 funding round, Wikimedia Indonesia applied. That idea became WACANA.
What WACANA is
WACANAstands for Widening AI Capacity Across Native and Indigenous ASEAN. In Indonesian and Malay, wacanaalso means “discourse,” fitting for a project that is less about telling people how to use AI and more about creating space to question it. WACANA is led by Wikimedia Indonesia with the Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration with WCUG Malaysia, Wikimedia Thailand, and Wikimedians in Timor-Leste.
Through online learning, in-person training, and locally led activities, the program aims to support conversations around AI literacy, accountability, and Indigenous self-determination. Each participating community can adapt the approach to its own language, context, and local needs.
Two principles are especially important: consent and accessibility. Community knowledge should not be shared without permission, and activities should remain useful even in places with limited internet access.
The question at the center
One of WACANA’s central inspirations and a partner for this project comes from Wikimedia movement partner Rising Voices, a Global Voices initiative that has collaborated with a number of Wikimedia affiliates and the Wikimedia Language Diversity Hub. They were also one of the co-conveners of the first Meeting of Indigenous Communities of Latin America in Wikimedia Projects, which took place in June in Riohacha, Colombia. Earlier this year, Rising Voices worked with Mayan languages digital activists in Chiapas, Mexico, on AI, accountability, and Indigenous self-determination. Their discussion arrived at a simple but powerful question:
Who decides if, and how, AI is used?
The activists challenged the narrative that adopting AI is urgent or inevitable. Communities should first have the opportunity to understand the technology, ask what it means for their languages and knowledge, and decide for themselves whether (and under what conditions) they want to use it.
Read the Rising Voices account.
What we hope for
WACANA does not set out to convince anyone to adopt AI. Instead, we hope to create spaces where people can ask:
- What does this technology know about us?
- Where did that knowledge come from?
- Whose language is represented and whose is missing?
- Who gets to decide?
Some participants may choose to use AI tools. Others may not. WACANA’s learning activities are not primarily about using AI for Wikipedia. Rather, they focus on helping participants understand how AI works, how it may affect Indigenous and minority languages and knowledge, and how communities can make informed decisions about its use. The connection to Wikimedia comes through the broader question of who creates, represents, and governs knowledge online. Participants will also have opportunities to contribute knowledge about their own communities and languages to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
What we hope remains is something practical and community-owned: stronger regional connections, openly licensed learning resources, and people who feel more confident making informed decisions about technology. And perhaps a few more people will also discover that Wikipedia is not only something they can read. It is something they can write intheir own language, about their own community, on their own terms. Over the coming months, WACANA will put these ideas into practice through virtual learning sessions on AI literacy and accountability, including how AI works and how it may affect Indigenous and minority languages and knowledge, an in-person master-trainer workshop, and locally led activities across participating communities in Southeast Asia. Participants will then bring what they learn back to their own communities, adapting the approach to their languages and local contexts. The project will also produce openly licensed learning resources that can be reused and adapted by other Wikimedia and language communities. The program will continue into early 2027, with communities taking the work forward.