Brazil Program/Timeline

Timeline of the Brazilian Catalyst Program

Nov 2010 - Aug 2011 - Then Global development team hires a Brazilian consultant living in the US to develop a proposal / set of recommendations for what a catalyst program should look like, after months of dialogue and interviews with Brazilian volunteers

December 2011: the Brazilian Education Program starts with the hiring of Everton Alvarenga, under the coordination of WMF

March 2012: Hiring of the Brazilian Catalyst program / (until then planned) WMF office director

May/June 2012: education program becomes locally supervised and we open a call for professors in order to engage 15 courses in the program.

July 2012: in India, CIS takes over the Catalyst program in that country and Brazil stops the process of setting up a local WMF office, on hold for a final definition from WMF on the future of the program.

August 2012: Former Global Development team director, Barry Newstead, leaves WMF and Anasuya Sengupta, then recently hired to create and manage FDC process, takes over grantmaking and learning, catalyst programs included.

October 2012- January 2013: hiring of one data analyst; conversations with potential partners and the community to set up a partnership goes on

February 2013: Anasuya Sengupta visits Brazil and, together with Brazilian contractors and volunteers, attend meetings with two pre-selected organizations and their directors/teams: Ação Educativa and Coletivo Digital. WMF, along with local stakeholders, decides to establish the partnership with Ação Educativa.

February 2013-June 2013: the terms and governance of the partnership are discussed; project writing starts with participation of the Brazilian contractors and Ação Educativa; hiring process of two part time contractors to replace Everton takes place; in the education program, it’s decided to focus in the production of materials and the continuity of class assignments with universities that had been in strike in 2012; CAPTCHA in the emergency mode is removed from the Portuguese Wikipedia, taking place controversial debate and the measurement of the impact of this decision; open planning of data analysis takes place; development of bot to invite new editors to collaborate in the health wikiproject is ongoing;

June 2013-September 2013: two new contractors are hired to develop the education and outreach program (onboarding, new planning); building the partnership continues: project is submitted to community review.

October 2013-November 2013: project is approved and US$ 500.000 out of the US$ 557,863,36 are granted to Ação Educativa do develop the project.

November 2013: grant agreement as well as trademark agreement are sent and discussed, being signed.

December 2013: grant is wired and transition phase is over; onboarding of the previous contractors team into Ação Educativa takes place more intensively;

December 2013 - January 2014: Staff concentrates efforts on organizing the team work under the new model while Brazilian organizations are not very active (Christmas and new year’s eve are holiday period, followed by summer holidays in Brazil, when schools and universities are closed, partnerships move slower etc.). We identify cultural clash between Wikimedia movement and NGOs organizational and governance models, and start activities under a blurred environment, without all stakeholders in the same page, but proceeding with the project as planned.