Community Development/WikiLearn/Partnership Building

Overview

The Partnership building course (part of the Community Development Online Learning Pilot) will be hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. This program is intended to provide training for a cohort of Wikimedia community volunteers interested in participating in the 8-week program.

Upon completion of the Partnership Building course, participants will be able to create partnerships and share the knowledge within their surrounding communities. The movement strategy builds the need to create equitable access to resources for the movement and Partnership building -- a topic repeatedly requested for in needs-assessment surveys for conference programs such as Learning Days -- aims to support emerging and developed communities that wish to build and strengthen their community partnerships.

Due to the nature of the pilot, we are only able to admit up to 40 participants. This limited number of participants will allow our small staff to better deliver the program and ensure participants are provided with adequate support.

Applications are now closed.

Target Audience

The course is designed for Wikimedia volunteers with intermediate experience contributing to Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Commons, etc.), and who have little or no experience building partnerships with non-Wikimedia groups and organizations.

This course will be delivered in English, and we strongly recommend that participants feel comfortable writing and communicating in English. The course materials will be translatable, so it will be eventually possible to learn using the course materials in other languages as well.

Timeline

Applications open: December 15, 2020

Application close: January 14, 2021

Successful applicants notified: January 18, 2021

Onboarding call: January 25, 2021

Course begins: February 1, 2021

Online Course Details

This course will be held over an eight week period, and combines self-guided and live sessions to ensure participants have the opportunity to work on their own as well as with other participants. Sessions will be scheduled weekly with regular office hours during the week for participants to ask questions and/or collaborate with their peers.

We ask that all interested applicants be sure they are able to make the full commitment. However, we recognize that may not always be possible, especially with the ongoing pandemic. If you are unable to continue with the course, our team can help find solutions to ensure you can complete the course material.

All efforts will be made to ensure that scheduled live sessions will be time-zone friendly to the majority of course participants, but with the global spread of potential applicants, that may not always be possible.

Course Outline

Topic	Modules
Introduction	Introduction and cohort experience share
What are partnerships?	Definition of partnership; why build partnerships?
Preparing to partner	Know yourself Present yourself Study your environment; identify prospective partners Study your prospective partner; evaluate alignment Identifying and articulate the partnership value proposal Develop a theory of change and logic models Develop your partnership pitch
Negotiating partnerships	First meeting / conversation Agreeing to partner... or not!
Running partnerships	Deriving actions from partnership agreement Sharing reality between partners
Sustainability and evaluation	Evaluating a partnership Sustaining and refining Ending a partnership
Troubleshooting	Dealing with setbacks
Final presentation and peer review	Integrating it all

The course coordinator for this course is Asaf Bartov.

Feel free to ask questions on the talk page or reach out to comdevteam@wikimedia.org

Participating in the course

To participate in the course, fill out this application form.