Free basics on Wagtail
We've been fans of the Praekelt Foundation since we discovered their Molo app ('a set of tools for publishing mobi sites with a community focus') earlier this year.
Soon after, we came across their excellent 'Ways of Working' document, which we are shamelessly reusing here at Torchbox. So we're delighted to announce a new partnership with Praekelt and Facebook on a Wagtail-powered platform for the Free Basics project, which is launching today.
Initially, the project will provide support and resources to 100 social change organisations, selected by an independent panel (sign up here). Later in 2016, the tools developed for this incubator programme will be opened up to the public, allowing thousands more organisations to build and launch sites which create sustainable change and make their content freely available via low-end mobile devices.
We'll be working with Praekelt Foundation and Facebook to develop and document the technical platform which will underpin the project. Based on Wagtail, the toolkit will generate content which is optimised for Facebook's Free Basics distribution platform ("free access to basic internet services to a billion people all over the world"). It'll be simple to use and cheap to host. Because both projects are open source, the outputs of this work will be shared with the upstream Wagtail CMS. We can't wait to get started.
Get in touch
If you'd like to find out more about the Free Basics platform, which will be powered by Wagtail, please get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.
