In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in an unprecedented move, announced the release of nearly all its courses on the internet for free access. As the number of institutions offering free or open courseware increased, UNESCO organized the 1st Global OER Forum in 2002 where the term Open Educational Resources (OER) was adopted.

With the support of the Hewlett Foundation, UNESCO created a global OER Community wiki in 2005 to share information and work collaboratively on issues surrounding the production and use of Open Educational Resources.

This WSIS OER Commuity is the new UNESCO-supported Community encouraging practitioners, researchers, decision- and policy-makers, teachers, and learners to contribute their knowledge on OER.

Gender Equality is one of UNESCO’s global priorities, together with Africa, for the period 2008-2013. Within this framework, UNESCO seeks to promote women empowerment and to mainstream gender in all UNESCO policies, strategies and programmes (education, sciences, culture and communication).

This community is trying to identify and  measure which are the sociological and scientific reasons of this gap and find some possible solutions to these inequalities by looking at what challenges, either within or outside the FOSS community, prevent women from engaging with Free and Open Source Software or impede a full acknowledgement of their valuable contribution.

“Gender in FOSS” Community calls upon a higher collaboration between those different actors and new participations for everybody is interested on this issue

Cette communauté vise à créer un réseau de différentes institutions et projets traitant le problème de la sous-représentation des femmes dans les domaines de la science et de la technologie, et plus spécifiquement de l’écart entre hommes et femmes dans le Logiciel Libre et Open Source (FOSS).

L’égalité des genres est, avec l’Afrique, l’une des priorités globales de l’UNESCO pour la période 2008-2013. Dans ce cadre, l’UNESCO cherche à promouvoir l’autonomisation des femmes et intégrer une perspective de genre dans tous les politiques, stratégies et programmes de l'UNESCO (éducation, sciences, culture et communication).

La communauté sur « l’Egalite de Genre dans les Logiciels Libres et Open Source» vise à identifier et mesurer les raisons sociologiques et scientifiques de cet écart et chercher des possibles solutions à ces inégalités, en regardant  quels défis, internes ou externes au monde du Logiciel Libre, empêchent les femmes (ou les hommes) de s’engager avec les FOSS ou la pleine reconnaissance de leurs précieuses contributions.

La communauté “Gender equality in Free and Open Source Software” (Egalité des genres dans  les Logiciels Libres et Open Source) appelle les différentes institutions et acteurs du monde du libre à participer et contribuer aux discussions.

The Knowledge community is an open virtual space established for the promotion of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its specific articles.

As virtual laboratory of ideas, the Knowledge community provides for its members an opportunity to collaboratively seek, identify, analyze, share, and create effective and durable solutions for the inclusion of persons with disabilities in education, science, culture, communication and information.  and in society.

The Knowledge community’s work is built on the following four principles:
• Inclusion
• Collaboration
• Creativity and innovation
• Partnership. 

It is expected that the Knowledge Community will facilitate dialogue, provide opportunities for sharing information and knowledge among members, build partnerships and capacities required for the empowerment of persons with disabilities.

In addition, the Knowledge community will provide access to other already existing communities of practice such as (i) 2013 WSIS+10 Review: Towards Knowledge Societies, for Peace and Sustainable Development, (ii) Open Educational Resources (OER), (iii) Open Access (OA), and (iv) Gender Equality in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).