Yesterday morning, Sir Tim Berners-Lee sent out a tweet from the speaker’s podium at the annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum announcing the official operational launch of the World Wide Web Foundation.

Funded by a five-year, $5 million grant from the Knight Foundation, the Web Foundation is devoted to advancing the Web to empower people across the world.’ In his speech to the IGF, Berners-Lee explains the significance of the organization this way:

We need to think about society, the people who are less privileged, the people who they may be poor, they may be in disconnected rural areas or they may be poor in urban areas. They may be wealthy but they may suffer from disabilities. They may be illiterate and, while connected, they’re connected to a Web which is very text-based. So the conclusion — our conclusion was that we should create a World Wide Web Foundation to think about these things. …

We look at the Web now as humanity connected. Humanity connected by technology. We want it to empower people, we want it to do the very best for humanity, so ladies and gentlemen … I present to you the worldwide foundation and I hope that together we can work together and achieve great things.

Along with launching its global operations, the Web Foundation also launched a new Web site at the time of the announcement. There, you’ll find more information about the organization’s mission, programs, staff and history. You can also view Tim Berners-Lee’s entire speech to the IGF here (or read the transcript, beginning on page 13).