Kiwix - Learning Digital Skills offline

4 billion people worldwide lack reliable Internet access - because of costs, lack of infrastructure, or outright censorship. In a technology-focused world, this severely impacts an individual’s access to education and subsequently, better economic and employment opportunities. The pandemic did not help, with millions more kids left out of their classroom.

Enter Kiwix: an offline platform bringing Internet content to those without Internet access. Kiwix can convert and read any web-based material (e.g Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, MOOCs, etc.) for users to browse without the need for further Internet connectivity. The platform is device-agnostic and runs on Mobile, Desktop, or microserver-based Hotspots. If we are able to continue to scale our solution, by 2025 we should have reached 100 million users, for whom digital resources are otherwise inaccessible. 

Kiwix centres around the problem of education equality; a lack of Internet connection means a whole world of digital tools become inaccessible. By providing an offline Internet, this reinvents the idea of quality educational tools which equip the individual for an increasingly digital world of employment requiring a stable Internet connection.

The scale of this problem is global and spans a vast range of environments. From rural villages in the Andes mountains to refugee camps in the Middle East to prison education courses in the U.S., Kiwix is already helping organizations worldwide to provide educational resources to 4 million people and open up for them a world of new employment opportunities. This is our way of addressing the inequalities in the current digital workforce, by providing underserved communities with the means to gain the same skills  as their online counterparts.

Kiwix is offline software downloadable as a reader available on mobile devices, desktop computers, and microservers. 

Kiwix uses the openZIM file format, a highly compressed method of storing web content and making it accessible offline. The end user experience is similar to that of using a regular Internet browser.

Target websites are entirely archived - including all text, images, and videos -  and condensed it to one easy-to-use zim file. This can then be stored and accessed locally without the need for an Internet connection. Put simply, it means that a user with poor connectivity can store and browse the entirety of Wikipedia or StackOverflow through their smartphone, without massive storage capacity or Internet being required. 

While Kiwix serves a diverse range of users spread across 200+ countries and territories and in over 100 languages, one of the biggest ways it has impacted users to prepare them for the workforce of the future is in prisons.

Kiwix has been deployed to the U.S., Austria, and Germany through our partnerships with The Last Mile, the Bard initiative and eLIS, amongst others. These rehabilitation initiatives teach inmates everything they need to know to be a successful software engineer once released. However, the environment in which they must operate is limited in resources by the lack of free reign of the Internet as part of necessary security measures in incarceration centres. Kiwix allows these programs to bypass the lack of connectivity to access their course material, and gives inmates access to roles as technical experts which will allow them to gain access to meaningful  work as software engineers. 

By leveraging our offline platform for Internet resources technology becomes the solution, rather than the problem. We believe that the Internet is for everyone, and is an essential part of skills training, upskilling, and reskilling; by providing a way to access Internet resources offline, we are providing for those who would otherwise struggle to rise through the ranks of a competitive employment market.

The problem: The opportunities for education offered by the Internet remain inaccessible for some 4 billion people due to a lack of connectivity. If quality education is contingent on good Internet access, this prevents them from contributing to the global workforce.

Our solution: Kiwix provides educational accessibility without an Internet connection. As it is free and adaptable to any content or device, users can acquire digital skills and training for employment opportunities, fully offline.

The population served: Anyone lacking educational, economic, and social opportunities because of their lack of Internet. We provide a solution preparing their way to a digital workforce.

Since being founded in 2017, Kiwix quickly built to 1 million users worldwide on the initial Android and Desktop formats. In 2020 this number grew to 4 millions worldwide.

Our business model distinguishes between end users and clients, the latter usually being NGOs running the actual field deployments. We have ongoing partnerships which allow us to bootstrap part of our dev work.

We are building on what we have learned over the previous 4 years and rolling out wider deployments of Kiwix with more specialised technology. We are aiming to reach 100 million users worldwide by 2025, with 60% via hotspots/server distribution, 20% on Android, 10% on Desktop, and 10% through other miscs. (e.g. iOS, KaiOS).

Kiwix takes a problem of lacking (Internet resources), and the tools already at the community's disposal (any smartphone, computer, or tablet) to provide a solution. It makes use of its ability to compress large amounts of data and condenses them into content packages that are easy to share and consume in low connectivity settings.

Kiwix creates an opportunity for anyone, as it is so easily scalable. For example, for Kiwix Hostpot, each low-cost single-board computer that is used can serve up to 30 people at no additional cost than the initial 100 USD purchase. As it is most often deployed in community centres, the project also offers the social benefit of bringing the community together to share in a resource which ultimately results in large-scale economic advancement; as better learning resources increase, so do employment and education opportunities. Similarly, for Kiwix desktop, content is often distributed locally (through USB or other storage devices) for a small fee. Therefore, Kiwix not only provides the opportunity for the free distribution of information, but also for an entrepreneurial spirit to be fostered through doing so. 

Moreover, this project offers a self-sustaining, inclusive solution; the community learns how to use and choose the tools it needs to help itself, rather than depending on passively receiving external assistance.

There are two elements behind Kiwix's tech: the openZIM project, which allows for the compression and access to any web-based content, and the Kiwix reader itself, which can read and broadcast ZIM files, on budget Android devices as well as on large servers.

Scrapers crawl and copy the entirety of websites - all text, images, videos and structure- and condense them into one easy-to-use ZIM file. This can then be stored locally and accessed on-the-fly on any computer, phone, or tablet, without the need for an Internet connection. The user experience is similar to that of the online source. As a concrete example, Kiwix users can store and access the entirety of Wikipedia's 6.3 million articles on a mid-range android phone.

All of the ZIM files created get added to the ZIM Farm. This is a cluster of servers which automatically update all of the content on a regular basis. In this way, the information we capture and offer for download remains relevant and up-to-date.

All the code we use and produce is Open Source (GFDL 3.0) and follows the four freedoms of software: it is free to use, study, modify, and redistribute.

Kiwix has been running since 2017, when it started with only Kiwix Android and Kiwix Desktop, and reached 1 million users. We conservatively estimate our user base to exceed 4 millions in 2020, and are aiming at 100 millions by 2025. ZIM files can also be read on an increasing number of third-party services, e.g. the Wikipedia App.

There are too many use cases to detail here, but broadly speaking these range from Indian schools to US prison education projects (e.g. the Last Mile in the U.S.), and included some emergency zero-rating deployments in West-Africa to compensate for school lockdowns during the Pandemic. 

A Youtube reviewer also made a product demo for the JS version of Kiwix which can be viewed here.

While Kiwix offers a simple, scalable, adaptable offline solution, there are some issues to be aware of.

We recently developed "ZIMit", a universal scraper that could be used to copy any kind of web-based material, including copyrighted material.

The downside to offline information is that it is static. To combat this, every ZIM file we create is updated automatically and regularly updated. However, we are aware that the information most used on Kiwix remains universally true, e.g. medical and biological information, computer science articles, historical events, etc. 

Last but not least, there always is a bottleneck when it comes to downloading a ZIM file. We found that users however are able to access the resource at community centres or Internet cafés before going back to their unconnected environment.

Kiwix is currently serving circa 4 million users in 200+ countries and territories. This is most likely a conservative estimate, as we cannot track users after their initial point of download, and, in fact, this is the very reason why some users find Kiwix so helpful; they do not need to sustain an Internet connection to access our content. 

We predict that we will reach 6-8 million users by the end of 2021, and our current model shows us as being on track to achieve 100 million users by 2025.

Over the 1-5 years we aim to carry out the following projects:

- Incremental updates (a UX/technical improvement) so that users do not have to download an entirely new ZIM file every time there is an update to the content, just what needs to be updated. This makes Kiwix more efficient and require even less data.

- Hospital-in-a-Box (a content expansion/bespoke package) to allow access to a Hotspot content package bringing essential medical information to unconnected environments. Specifically, this would be adding the NIH Drug Information Portal and Open MRS (an open-source patient management system) to the already offline WikEM (the largest emergency medicine open-access reference), and WikiMed (the largest available medical encyclopaedia).

- Scientific literature (content expansion) to allow for open-access scientific/medical academic journals in offline environments, particularly BMC, PLOS and Hindawi.

- Build partnership with local hardware vendors to facilitate access to low-cost, pre-packaged Raspberry Pi servers in target markets.

Our impact is measured through the SMART framework:

- Specific: We have identified key areas of need for improvement in the Kiwix platform and are actively searching for funding from sources who specifically target these topics (e.g education-related content).

- Measurable: We look at numbers of downloads and contents hosted, where these are most prevalent, and who this leaves out in the global offline figures.

- Achievable: Kiwix is easily scaled, adaptable, and has already impacted the lives of millions worldwide. We know that it is within our capabilities to continue to provide online information to offline communities.

- Relevant: Technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate, and while developed countries are continuing to get better tech, many are still missing out on basic access to resources. This has come to light more than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic when many children have had to be home-schooled with the limited digital resources accessible without an Internet connection. 

- Time-bound: As mentioned above, we have a plan of projects and user expansion for the next 1-5 years.

 
We also align with SDG 4, to deliver on the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, in line with our user expansion goals.

3 FTEs, 2 part-time, ad-hoc contractors as required for software development projects.

As a technology, Kiwix simply is the only content-agnostic solution for bringing Internet content to people without connectivity.

On the team side, just under half of Kiwix’s coders are located in the Global South (Mali, Ghana, India) and have hands-on experience with connectivity issues. Kiwix’s advisory committee is also comprised of five members representing its main areas of deployment (US, Africa, Middle-East, South-East Asia, South America) and are tasked with providing user and deployment input.

The very purpose of Kiwix is for diversity and inclusion, and we are particularly working on developing more content available in more indigenous languages. We follow the Wikimedia Foundation’s non-discrimination practices, but do not devise our own. We pledge the contributor's covenant for all projects. 

Our reasons for applying are simple: we believe that Solve could help us further our cause greatly.

Kiwix's core mission fits well within the focus of the Digital Workforce challenge particularly; we are a technology solution which endeavours to include everyone in the digital economy, through the empowerment of education which leads to better access to digital workforce opportunities.

Furthermore, the supportive community of Solvers would be a huge benefit to the deployment and development of Kiwix. As a non-profit, our ultimate aim is to connect the unconnected and to ensure that our software satisfies the needs of those who are most lacking in opportunities because of their lack of Internet resources. To have expert advice (whether technical, administrative, communicative, or other) and greater funding opportunities would help us to streamline our processes and get our software where it needs to be more effectively, and sooner. 

In the US and developed countries (e.g. France, Germany), deployments are mostly in prison rehabilitation programs, or underserved communities.

In India our reach is in rural schools (or mountainous areas, e.g. Ladakh) and universities.

We need Legal support for day-to-day operations with our prospective distributors, worldwide. Public relations should be easy considering that Kiwix is a beautiful story with large impact, but this takes time to build and as the saying goes we can either talk about things we do, or do them.

Last but not least we need support reaching out to potential field partners with connectivity issues and probably not aware of our solution. Some professional coding support would also be nice, there are a few tickets/fixes that can hardly be managed by hobbyist volunteers.

Our objective is to reach 100 million users. Anyone who knows someone that works in the field and has connectivity issues is welcome to put us in touch.

As far as ServiceNow goes we would be interested in pro-bono support, e.g. server hosting, code(rs) and UX/UI work.