After four long years of planning, meetings, online chats, and legal discussions, I’m very pleased to announce that Wikimedia Philippines Inc. is now a SEC-registered non-stock, non-profit corporation incorporated under the laws of the Republic of the Philippines! Hooray! And because of our SEC recognition, we are also the second official Wikimedia Foundation local chapter in Southeast Asia after Wikimedia Indonesia!

Shown to the right is a picture of WMPH’s SEC registration and WMPH’s “birthday” is April 12, 2010. If you’re interested, you can check out the text of our Articles of Incorporation and By-laws.

As stated in our AoI, the organization was formed in order to help the Wikimedia Foundation promote its projects here in the Philippines and to champion the cause of free and open-content reference tools and educational materials locally. While the English Wikipedia is by far the largest and most successful project of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Philippines also aims to promote participation in and use of the other Philippine-language editions of Wikipedia such as the Tagalog Wikipedia and the Cebuano Wikipedia. Aside from that there are also other projects such as Wikibooks (open-content textbooks), Wiktionary (multi-lingual dictionary and thesaurus), and Wikimedia Commons (free and open media files) that deserve our attention.

You know that Wikipedia has helped you a lot. Now it’s time to give back by supporting Wikimedia Philippines! Go be a member of WMPH (we’re still hashing out the membership requirements) or just start contributing to the Wikimedia projects. And we are planning to have a simple launch event coinciding with the first annual member convention this May 15. Interested? Just comment away and I’ll keep you in the loop.