Kazakh Wikipedia 30 million tenge spent in 2011 for paid editing, digitalization, and author rights transfer. At the Wikimania 2011 conference WikiBilim president Rauan Kenzhekhanuly was awarded the Wikipedian of the Year award by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales for his work on the Kazakh Wikipedia expansion. In April 2012 Tengri News reported that "in 2011, the Samruk Kazyna sovereign wealth fund allocated a total of $204 thousand to develop the Kazakh-language Wikipedia. This year, another $136 thousand will be earmarked", citing the Fund’s Press Service. Wales thanked the Kazakh government for its support of the Kazakh Wikipedia at Wikimania 2012. The Kazakh
Jimmy Wales traveled outside North America prior to the site's founding, his participation in the Wikipedia project has seen him flying internationally on a near-constant basis as its public face. When Larry Sanger left Wikipedia, Wales's approach was different from Sanger's. Wales was fairly hands-off. Despite involvement in other projects, Wales has denied intending to reduce his role within Wikipedia, telling "The New York Times" in 2008 that "Dialing down is not an option for me ... Not to be too dramatic about it, but, 'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on