It’s Christmas season and time to play Santa… oh wait, we do that every month. After all, we give gifts to charities and open source developers every month. This time, it was Łukasz Nowicki, our remote Senior WordPress & PHP Developer who selected the most ‘well-behaved’ foundations. Łukasz is living in the Masurian Lake District, where he is working on a project for our UK-based client, THG and UK2 (a THG company).
Which organizations will receive Christmas donations from Sidnet this year?
WordPress Foundation
The WordPress Foundation has been striving to ensure that access to online publishing tools remains free and democratic since 2010. And since it was founded by Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, it fully reflects the philosophy behind the WordPress platform itself.
It promotes projects and software which:
- are covered by the GNU Public License,
- are available free of charge – for everyone and for any purpose,
- can be modified and re-shared at will,
- enable users to translate their content into other languages,
- can make use of plugins to extend their functionality without the need to modify the core software.
“I discovered WordPress in 2005 when I was looking for something which would allow me to set up a blog in an easy way, as such things were not as obvious back then. I tested several different solutions. I knew about the existence of b2/cafelog, as well as its evolution, i.e. b2evolution. But then I learned that another branch of this evolution existed as well. And that branch was, of course, WordPress”, Łukasz recalls.
As of today, WordPress is much more than just a blogging platform. It is a lifestyle. There are 140 WordCamps and 700 different groups organizing regular WordPress-themed meetings around the world. In addition, the website itself offers over 200 language versions, as well as 54,000 free plugins and 3,000 page templates. The entire WordPress platform consists of 350,000 lines of code, a number that amounts to 91 years of development work.
WordPress has not only been Łukasz’s basic work tool, but also a genuine passion, for years. He even provides his own plugins to other users: “My plugins available in the WordPress catalog are utilized by thousands of active websites in various parts of the world. I know that someone somewhere finds my work useful, even though I have no idea who they are or where they live. It truly is an amazing feeling”, our developer added.
Unaweza
The Unaweza Foundation was established by Martyna Wojciechowska, who is known for her TV program called ‘Woman at the End of the World’. The goal of the Foundation is to equalize the social, legal and economic opportunities of women and children from various parts of the world.
The foundation is currently collecting funds to help:
- albino children from Tanzania who are being hunted and mutilated,
- children forced to dig through refuse in Mexico due to a lack of better life options,
- women and young girls who are victims of human trafficking in Romania.
“Tanzania and Mexico may seem quite distant, but Romania certainly is not. Nonetheless, it is Romania that tops the European statistics in regard to the number of children sold into slavery and forced to become sex workers. Unaweza works closely with the Reaching Out Romania organization, which saves women and children from such a cruel fate”, Łukasz said.
The foundation will soon expand its activities to other countries as well, including El Salvador, the Philippines, Bolivia, and Lebanon. Its name comes from the Swahili word ‘unaweza’, which means ‘you can’.
“A long time ago, I had the pleasure to meet Martyna Wojciechowska at the Orlen Trophy 4×4 rally. I support the Unaweza Foundation privately as I find Martyna trustworthy. I am thus very happy that Sidnet will also donate to her cause, according to my wish”, our developer said.