My name is Adama DIOP. I'm from Agnam-Goly, a Sahelian village in north-eastern Senegal with a population of 3,143 inhabitants. The village is located in the Matam Region, approximately 630 kilometers (390 miles) to the northeast of Dakar, on the bank of the Senegal River.

I used Wikipedia the first time in 2007 for educational purposes while I was studying in Cheikh Anta DIOP university of Dakar. At the beginning, I thought like many other students in Dakar that the Wikipedia articles are all completed work to which I can't add anything- I mean a closed system. So that I just have to come by and take from Wikipedia projects what I want as information for my research and that's it. But by curiosity, I entered the name of my village (Agnam-Goly) within the Wikipedia search tool, and I noticed that the article entitled "Agnam-Goly" does not exist but I can create it. And I said to myself "wow, how come?!". I was so happy to know that I can be part of the system, I mean becoming an active Wikipedia user and contributor.

Well, I started elaborating on the article about Agnam-Goly on May 10, 2007 with the support of very dedicated Wikipedia users like Ji-ELLE and Patricia FIDI. Then I shared worldwide lots of information about my village: its history, tradition, geography, economic, social organization, myths, beliefs, people, architecture, and culture. As I didn't have a digital camera for my first Wikipedia writings, I said to myself that I can use a drawing which I can scan and share. The first image I used for my village was a diagram of its infrastructures: its school, health clinic, borehole and wells, the central market, the soccer field and the mosques. And that idea works quite good as I do not have a digital camera. But it can be hard to convey every reality of my village through drawing and it is time consuming. So I started saving some money in order to buy a digital camera, which took me four months. I bought a digital camera and took more than one thousand pictures related to my village so that I can share them through Wikimedia commons and use some of them to elaborate on the article about my village. But as through Wikipedia it's all about community and sharing, so I also created articles on the other surrounding villages of Agnam-Goly. I did my best and then invited students from these villages to contribute and share information and pictures about their area. They all appreciate the pages for Agnam-Goly but as most of them are not connected to the Internet so they did not contribute in the Wikipedia projects for their villages.

It was all exciting to learn and share about what you know best: I can proudly say that I shared the best knowledge I had about my village (Agnam-Goly) by using Wikipedia free tools but by the meantime, I learnt about basic creation of a website, how to embed images within plain text and I also extended my knowledge on personal interests (sustainable development, alternative energies, climate change, carbon offset, mechanism of clean development, etc.)

But what I learnt most from all of that is the fact that the best of the communities is the community of knowledge and sharing and that's what WIKIPEDIA means to me.

I'm also so glad that the article about my village (Agnam-Goly) that I first created in French has been proposed as a good article and has been translated into English and Deutsch thanks to Julia BLUE, Ji-ELLE, etc.

The best accomplishment is that I use today that article about my village as a support and valuable reference in my activities in community development and building partnership and networking thank to Wikipedia. The project Pellital is an example: Julia BLUE (a Wikipedian user) and I support the entrepreneur women of Agnam-Goly through Pellital by finding them loans to run their small businesses. Just to say how my involvement in Wikipedia also inspired me as a youth-led development.

To finish, I feel good about myself when I read the other Wikipedia encouragement and comments towards the great work we did together:

"Hello Adama, I just found your images through Special: Newimages and want to say thank you very much for your contributions, see Category: Agnam-Goly. It's great to have active Wikipedian from Senegal :-) Greetings --Überraschungsbilder 19:26, 26 May 2007 (UTC)"

In Community,
Adama DIOP Wikipedian and youth-led development from Agnam-Goly, Senegal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnam-Goly