Morocco will host from May 1st to May 31st, 2015 the 3rd edition of photography contest Wiki Loves Earth. Morocco will participate in the organization of this event for the first time to encourage the development of its natural heritage through Wikimedia projects (mainly the encyclopedia Wikipedia and its multimedia library Wikimedia Commons).
Wiki Loves Earth’s (WLE) aim is to promote the natural protected areas of the world via Wikimedia projects. The competition shed light on natural areas of Morocco, including national parks, regional reserves, and various landscapes and habitats.
Free photographs to illustrate the natural heritage:
The objective of the Wiki Loves Earth contest is to encourage all participants to highlight the national natural heritage. The pictures of those natural areas are labelled under a free-license (CC BY-SA). This means that they can all be accessed freely and legally over the internet.
A contest open for all, to raise awareness:
Everyone is invited to take pictures of mother nature. This contest is a way to prompt Moroccans to (re)discover their own natural heritage, to create a proximity with it, and to make Wikimedia projects known to the large public.
Significant impact:
Last year’s international edition (2014) has put the spotlight on more than 70.000 pictures representing 15 countries of the world, including Algeria, Brazil and Germany. This latter county has put online alone nearly 15.000 images!
A worldwide contest:
At a national level, a local jury will select the 10 best pictures in Morocco, which will then qualify to the second phase of the contest. There, they will compete with hundreds of other pictures worldwide in the international competition. The international jury will then select the best pictures.
Wiki Loves Earth is an international photography contest about natural heritage. It was created in 2013 to shed light on the Ukrainian landscapes. In 2014, it was extended to 15 countries/regions around the world and became officially an international competition.
Wikimedia Commons is a free multilingual online multimedia library that contains various multimedia documents (photographs, videos, sounds, maps, diagrams, etc.) and is enriched voluntarily by web browsers. Everyone can reuse its content, which is released under a free license. Wikimedia Commons is one of the projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It was established on September 7th, 2014 and hosts more than 25 million files in April 2015.
