Ultimately this involves instilling practices within the organization or project that imitate the very characteristics of the resources that OER projects serve to create and support.

In March 2002, Mark Horner, a graduate student in physics at the University of Cape Town (UCT), presented a demonstration on waves at a science fair in South Africa. After the demonstration, several high school students approached him, explaining that they did not have a science textbook, and had never had wave phenomena described to them before. The students had pooled their money to purchase a notebook and pen, and they asked Horner to write down the demonstration, step by step, so they could share the notes with their classmates and teachers. Wanting to give the students more than the steps of a wave demonstration, Horner returned to UCT and engaged his colleagues in writing a high school science text that would be free and sharable for all teachers and learners in South Africa. In the process, Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) was born.

Through its communication and networking channels, the project grew from an original group of five graduate students who wrote the content locally, to over 420 volunteers who have, since 2002, signed up for an account and logged onto the project website.[[3]] The number of active and sustained contributors of content, however, was smaller—about 50 volunteer authors globally, from South Africa to India, Pakistan, Scotland, and the United States. Of these 50 active volunteers, approximately ten became core participants, contributing content regularly and consistently (i.e., weekly).