GrassrootsWiki

Ralph Wollmann

Industrial Engineer with Business Studies (diploma) and Master in Human Communications

Ralph Wollmann is Business Development Manager in the field of energy supply with a local focus on Russia and Central Asia. He studied industrial engineering with business studies at the Dresden University of Technology. He completed an internship at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and made field studies in Zimbabwe to for his diploma thesis on environment-oriented cost management in developing countries.

Afterwards, he worked as assistant lecturer at the chair of environmental management and accounting at Dresden University of Technology. On behalf of the German Robert Bosch Foundation he changed for one year to the University of Friendship Among the Peoples in Moscow (Russia). Besides he worked as consultant for the Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation swisscontact in Russia.

Ralph Wollmann finished a master program in Human Communication at Dresden International University. In this course he started to engage in knowledge management, especially in computer based communication with wikis. Besides GrassrootsWiki he developed an internal wiki for the German chapter of the organization Transparency International.

Uwe Schützenmeister

Geographer (Diploma)

Already during his studies of geography he worked in various short term projects in the field of humanitarian aid and development cooperation in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1998), Kosovo (1999, 2000) and Iraq (2003).

After finishing his studies in 2005 he worked in an earthquake recovery project in Pakistan for the German organization arche noVa. The goal of the project was the recovery of destroyed water piping systems in a rural mountain area.

From 2006 to 2008 Uwe Schützenmeister has been working as an assistant for social science at the German Kazakh University (DKU) in Almaty/Kazakhstan, financially supported by the German Robert Bosch Foundation.

Besides his studies and professional life Uwe Schützenmeister worked as a web programmer for various non commercial organizations.

At the time when Uwe Schützenmeister worked in Pakistan, he realized that the knowledge management of humanitarian aid and development cooperation organizations should be more effective. Also he realized that there are lots of good local ideas which are useful for the professionals, too. These experiences were the initial idea for starting GrassrootsWiki.org.