Community Resources/Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021/Regional Committees/Candidates/statements

Applications received via email

Name	Region
Harriet Bayel	Middle East and Africa
Bhuvana Meenakshi	SAARC
Anthony B. Diaz	ESEAP
Richard Varela	Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
Carla Salazar	Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
Tochi Precious	Middle East and Africa
Ammar Abdulhamid	Middle East and Africa
Gbemisola Esho	Middle East and Africa
Isaac Oloruntimilehin	Middle East and Africa
Jesse Asiedu-Akrofi	Middle East and Africa
Cristina Algarra	Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
Ralff Nestor S. Nacor	ESEAP
Faisal da Supremo	Middle East and Africa
Musa Umar	Middle East and Africa
Aristide Kouame	Middle East and Africa
Nanour Garabedian	Middle East and Africa
Abhishek Suryawanshi	North America, SAARC, or Middle East and Africa
Joy Agyepong	Middle East and Africa
Constant Azogbonon	Middle East and Africa
Yi Sheng Wang	ESEAP
Nawaraj Ghimire	SAARC
Eben Mlay	Middle East and Africa
Butch Bustria	ESEAP
Ayokanmi Oyeyemi	Middle East and Africa
Željko Blaće	CEE
Avery Jensen	United States and Canada
Elaine Cristina	Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
Lynn Jibril	Middle East and Africa
Tebogo Khama	Middle East and Africa
Medhavi Gandhi	SAARC
Carlo Joseph Moskito	ESEAP
J. Balaji	SAARC
Stephen Dakyi	Middle East and Africa
Hana Yariv	Northern and Western Europe
Abdul-Rasheed Yussif	Middle East and Africa
Christian Brickhouse	United States and Canada or ESEAP
Benny Lin	ESEAP
Tajëëw Díaz Robles	Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
Johnattan Rupire	Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
Bernardo Gaitán Otarán	Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
Aaryaa Joshi	SAARC

Middle East and Africa

User:Onyinyeonuoha

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

I am a member of Igbo Wikimedians User Group in Nigeria and also the Coordinator of Igbo Wikimedians User Group, Anambra Hub. I have contributed to Wikipedia, Wiki Commons, Wikitionary and Wikivoyage. I have lead 5 Edit a thons since I joined the organization in 2018.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working

I plan to bring in my experiences over the years as a Project Coordinator of Young African Leaders Initiative, Anambra State Hub, Nigeria. I am also actively involved in Wikipedia and it’s sister projects. I believe that I posses a fair knowledge of the grant disbursement with the experience I gained in applying for Rapid Grants and other grants for community projects in my region and I am confident and believe that I will be of great help towards contributing positively to the committee roles and ways of making Grants to be more accessible to the various communities/ User Groups involved in the Wikimedia movement in my region.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

Having undergone Wikimedia Education Project Management online training and graduated on April 2020. I plan to step down the training so that the grantees will understand the process of grant application and also encourage more grantees to apply. Through utilization of effective communication between the grantees and the grantors ,communities will be educated on different types of grants and what exactly is expected so that they can write a winning grant.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

I wish to see that collaboration and volunteerism are promoted in Wikimedia Movement. It will be cost-effective, there will be accountability and transparency, well-documentation of all the grants to see that the projects are truly being implemented. Projects and programs will be replicated and adopted in different communities. At the end of each project, projects will be tracked and evaluated with the necessary tools.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

I am the current coordinator of my community ( Wikimedians User , Anambra Hub). Over the years I have worked as a Project Officer, Project Coordinator and have volunteered to different organizations to see that their goals was achieved. Having undergone Wikimedia Education Project Management online training and graduated on April 2020, with my huge experiences, I believe that I will be a great assets to Wikimedia Movement.

User:Eugene233

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

Currently a member of the Wikimedians of Cameroon User group, developer and currently community grant assessment personnel for Cameroon grants and projects for all projects, campaigns and workshops.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.

I have been a grantee for quite some time now and I think more Africans need to know how to apply for grants and what purpose each grant will serve to them. Also, there are many regions where people do awesome things related to Free Knowledge and are not aware of Wikimedia's support through its partners.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

Inform communities on the different types of grants and what exactly is expected so that their goals are clearly shaped before a grant application is provided.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

Come up with a strategy to sensitize other communities which are similar to Wikimedia partners on how to become partners and how to benefit from these grants.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

Being a grantee over years and seeing community impact for Wikimedia grants, I think would be good to have an inside-out perspective of the partnerships gained by Wikimedia, which is what I intend to propose.

User:Kinvidia

I work in Ghana and I wish to join the Middle East and Africa regional committee.

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

I begun editing on wikipedia in 2018 and I have created over 300 pages since then. I have also contributed considerably to various pages most of which are Ghanaian. I joined the Global Open Initiative Foundation (an open data community with a vision of making open knowledge easily accessible) in 2019, and together with the team, I have organised and facilitated projects and programmes aimed at teaching new editors how to make edits on Wikimedia platforms such as wikipedia, wikidata and Wikimedia commons, improve content on these aforementioned platforms, and thereby increasing content on these platforms as well.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

I will want to bring my experiences over the years as a team member of a community actively involved in various Wikimedia related projects. With my experience in applying for grants for community projects, I believe I have a fair knowledge of the grant disbursement situation in my region and I can help contribute positively to CR's goal of making Grant's more accessible to the various communities involved in the Wikimedia movement in my region.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

Through effective communication between the grantees and the grantors. Also, training programmes will be held to help grantees understand the process of grant application and also encourage more grantees to apply.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

If grants are easily accessible and extended to as many communities and stakeholders as possible the impact will be huge.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

As an experienced editor and a beneficiary of Wikimedia grants, I believe I have ample knowledge in the process enough to understand and effectively analyse grants from my region. Kinvidia (talk) 15:26, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Yasield

What country or region are you working in?

I come from Côte d'Ivoire

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Middle East and Africa

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

I am an active member of the Ivory Coast User Group. I was the vice president from 2019 until May 15, 2021. I would like to use the next two years to focus on my project Wikimousso which means Wiki Women. It is a project focused on reducing the gender gap on Wikipedia in Côte d'Ivoire. With this project we have several activities planned for this year.

I am also an active member and referent of Wikifranca in Côte d'Ivoire. In addition, I am a regional ambassador for Francophone Africa and France of Art+Feminism. I belong to this community for three years.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.

As an active member of my user group, I have been at the heart of some of the difficulties my community faces or has faced in funding and developing activities. As a Regional Ambassador of Art+Feminism, I have accompanied several users from several French-speaking African countries to organize funded editorial-athon. I have also been confronted with some feedback on grants and the difficulties that communities face in organizing events.

This wealth of experience can be useful in terms of contributions regarding the direction to give or the role to assign to the working group

What would you do to make decision-making more participatory?

I will make sure that the voice of my community is heard. Their concerns and proposing solutions that we think are right and can help them better remain active in the greater community.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

In addition to being a very active member of my community, I also have experience participating in international meetings of the greater Wikimedia community. All my participations and actions have always been beneficial to my community through experience sharing sessions. I think that my community is aware that my participation in this working group will help to bring their voice.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

In order for grantmaking to have a greater impact, there could be advocacy for objective delivery of grants to communities in need. So that they can be more message carriers for the movement. But also that they develop their experiences in contributing to projects and that they are also interested in the life of the Wiki community through the initiation of viable and useful projects.

User:Kahoutoure

What country or region are you working in?

I come from Côte d'Ivoire

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Middle East and Africa

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

I am an assistant - GLAM project; WIKIQUOTE and AFROCINE Cote d'ivoire Project Manager and I also participated in the edit-a-thon of several sister projects (Commons, (wiki loves Africa) Wiktionary (wiki Kouman) and 1ref & Lib as well as webinars (Wikidata workshops) and online training (WikiAflibs). I have been an active member since 2017 to Ivory Coast User Group

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

My experience as a MARATHON DU LIVRE FRANCOPHONE project manager during the VIIIth Francophone Games in Côte d'Ivoire allowed me to acquire the knowledge necessary for the proper execution of tasks under pressure and a good methodology adapted to the events of scope, I am able to respond to unforeseen events independently

What would you do to make decision-making more participatory?

I will practice active listening in order to anticipate the needs of my employees, which will allow me to consider them better;

I will remain authentic and respectful, pledge of a healthy relationship; I will be transparent while maintaining the relational thanks to the dialogue, vis-à-vis the objectives which are assigned to us; I will be able to delegate, demonstrate the trust between my collaborators and me.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

I intend to add, reduce or modify the targeted geographic areas or even reconsider the selection of sub-recipients if the reasons for these may include an archive of past performance with the proposed sub-recipient for other funded grants

I also intend to change the proposed key personnel for example, if a proposed person does not have the necessary qualifications and remove, if necessary, items from the budget that are ineligible according to the regulations of the Wikimedia Foundation or others. Which will be considered excessive and finally add strategies that take into account specific considerations from several angles such as gender, environment, etc.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

My training as a project manager and manager has allowed me to acquire many skills among those you are looking for. I have the assets that will allow me to succeed in the role that you will entrust to me. Motivation, rigor and listening are the key words of my professional behavior.Thanks to my sociable nature, I am able to work in a team and communicate with my collaborators. I think that by teaming up, goals become easier to achieve

Joining your Foundation represents for me a challenge for the future in which my work and my honesty can be fully expressed. I know the products and services offered by the foundation. I am therefore the ideal person for this function.

User:Fjmustak

My name is Farah Mustaklem, and I’m a Wikip(m)edian from Palestine. I’m applying to participate in the Middle East and Africa regional committee. My involvement with Wikipedia began in 2005, when I started editing the Arabic and then the English Wikipedia. I’m a founding member of the Wikimedians of the Levant User Group and a member of the newly formed Arabic Wikimedians User Group. I also served on the Affiliations Committee for two years. I was also involved in kickstarting the Wikipedia Education Program in Palestine.

In my capacity as treasurer of the Wikimedians of the Levant User Group, I oversaw the grant process from initial request to reporting. Our group has applied for various rapid grants, and is currently on a simple APG. My experience in the grants process, as well as the nuanced knowledge of the region and of the affiliate ecosystem, the good relations with my fellow Wikimedians, and my command of both Arabic and English as native languages are qualities I believe will benefit the committee in building its role and sustaining it.

I believe the regional committee should be more involved in understanding the projects and in helping the grantees make the best use of the funds, as well as help gauge the feasibility and impact of a grant proposal.

User :xibitgh

What country or region are you working in? Ghana

What regional committee do you want to participate in? Middle East and Africa

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

I am currently a volunteering as a training associate for the Open Foundation West Africa.I have over the years trained editors in the various projects under Wikimedia Foundation.I am also into membership recruitment for open movement and strategic planning on development of editors into the movement.I also piloted the kiwix in 2019 to promote the use of wikipedia and wiktionary to supplement the use of textbooks in senior high schools.The use kiwix an offline platform to access information increased the awareness of the use of wikipedia.I am a virtual tutor for Educational Technology and professional associate for Ghana Society of Education Technology and have used that as a leeway to introduce open Education to Student teachers and other professionals.As an open advocate,i am a member of the creative commons Ghana community in promoting open licencing for creators and educators.I am currently a committee member of Creative Commons Summit 2021. As part of the course structure of Educational Technology,Wikipedia in Education has been integrated into the postgraduate course at the distance education for Education to help teachers to use kiwix (offline) and Online to teach in the classroom and also to allow them to contribute to Wikimedia projects.I am also on the Outreach Wiki Expert Organizing committee.I am also training young girls in Senior High Schools in translating articles to Akan, this is to onboard students studying Akan as elective subject to contribute immensely on various projects.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

I believe my volunteering experiences over the years in diverse roles have position me to take up roles and work to achieve desired results.I am goal oriented,problem solver meeting deadlines on clarity of instructions.My contributions would be effectively working with other independently and also with teams creating an enabling environment.I am very inclusive and diversify my work roles.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

By the use of the 21st framework ; communication effectively,Critical thinking through systematic process,integrating creativity and problem solving and working collaboratively.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

To meet deadlines and collaborate effectively with team work.I would effectively work to achieve the desired outcomes towards the goal.Opportunities would be shared within my network of knowledge managers to understand the holistic process of grantmaking.I would inspire and execute innovative approaches towards grantmaking.Working with the code of conduct and demonstrating ethical leadership.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

I have the ability to communicate organisational goals and goal oriented.I am also very accomodating and works within the friendly policy.I am a forward thinker and astute volunteer.I have developed a social capital of integrity,accountability,loyalty and trust over the years of working as a volunteer with diverse group without any form of discrimination.I am goal oriented.

User:Didierwiki

What country or region are you working in?

I come from Côte d'Ivoire

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Middle East and Africa

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

I am a member of the Wikimedia-civ, GLAM-CIV user group and General Secretary of Wikimedia Côte d'Ivoire. I contributed to Wikipedia, Wiki Commons, Wiktionary (wiki Kouman), 1ref & Lib. I am a Glam-Wiki project manager, I have been a Wikipedia trainer, I have participated in several edits since I joined the organization in 2015

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

I plan to bring my experiences over the years as an active member of the Ivory Coast Wikimedia Association, Wikipedia trainer and Glam-Wiki project manager. I am also actively involved in Wikipedia and its sister projects. I will wish to bring my experiences over the years as a member of a community actively involved in various projects related to Wikimedia. With my experience in applying for grants for community projects, I think I have a good knowledge of the situation of grant disbursements in my region and I can positively contribute to CR's goal of making grants more accessible to the different communities involved. in the Wikimedia movement in my area.

What would you do to make decision-making more participatory?

Inform communities about the different types of grants and what exactly is expected so that their goals are clearly defined before a grant application is submitted.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

I want collaboration and volunteering to be promoted in Wikimedia. There will be accountability and transparency, good documentation of all grants to see that the projects are really implemented. This will be of great benefit to the community.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

I am general secretary, Glam-Wiki project manager and current trainer of my community (Wikimedia-civ user group, GLAM-WIKI). Over the years, I have worked as an ordinary member, active member, Glam-wiki project assistant, GLAM project manager and Secretary General of Wikimedia Côte d'Ivoire today. Motivation, rigor and listening are the key words of my modest person. With my background and my experiences, I believe that my application will hold your attention.

User:Geugeor

What country or region are you working in? Cameroon

What regional committee do you want to participate in? Middle East and Africa

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

I am an active member and Co-founder of Wikimedians of Cameroon User Group and I live now in Belgium. I have contributed to Wikimedia projects since 2013. During all these years, I have coordinated several projects: Wiki Loves Women, like Wikimedian in residence, Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth, Afripedia, the WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique project... I coordinated several other local projects: Promotion of local Cameroonian languages in the Wiktionary through Lingua Libre. I am also a member of Wiscom (WikiIndaba Steering Committee); 1Lib1Ref ambassador for French-speaking countries. I am a member of the grants commission (Microfi) of Wikimedia France

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

These experiences have allowed me to regularly solicit grants: So I have knowledge of the whole process related to grants. As a man in the field and actor of the grant commission, I have a perfect knowledge of the African realities in the management of grants, the difficulties encountered and many others which allow me to be a good interlocutor. In addition, I am well placed to sensitize African Wikimedians to discover and apply for grants.

What would you do to make decision-making more participatory?

Many communities and Wikimedians in Africa are not aware of all the types of grants that exist and sometimes some do not know how to apply. I have already helped and it is through a responsibility like this to strengthen this action.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

The major action is communication. In addition, there is support and follow-up. In addition, it is important to take into account the difficulties encountered in the African context so that applicants are not discouraged.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

I have theoretical and practical experience of the subject both as an actor yesterday and as an expert through the responsibility that I hold through the Microfi commission at Wikimedia France. On a personal level, I am looking for a new challenge in the Wikimedia movement.

User:Farajiibrahim

What country or region are you working in?

Morocco

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Middle East and Africa

Tell us about yourself and why you want to join a Regional Committee
- Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

Coordinator of Education Programs for Wikimedia MA User Group, Local Coordinator of Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom project and Coordinator of the Moroccan User Group in WikiFranca, plus contributor in many projects as Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Africa and Wiki Loves Earth..

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

by the motivation to succeed in this challenge in order to make this role an added value for the work of the communities and for the free knowledge in our region.

by learning and applying new skills

by the spirit of analysis, teamwork, and openness to all possible solutions in order to optimize the work in this role.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

by exploiting the communication channels already used by the communities of the region and subsequently developing, through collective and constructive reflection, the most reliable means to make the decision more participatory, while respecting the policies and principles of Friendly space expectations, Universal Code of Conduct and Conflict of Interest Guidelines

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

try to measure the impact of the project for the community and free knowledge

try to optimize spending and processing procedures

try to do a post evaluation and share experiences

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

I believe that the committee needs any motivated person for this very nice initiative which will give added value to the work of the communities, and my candidacy comes to present my motivation for this challenge, and I think that Morocco can represent the whole region cause it's an African, Berber country which belongs to the Arab world.

User:Anasskoko

What country or region are you working in?

Nigeria

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Middle East and Africa

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

I have been an admin in Hausa Wikipedia since 2019, I edit English Wikipedia, Wikidata, Hausa Wikiqoute and Wikimedia Commons, I have contribution in this Wikimedia Sister project, I have engaged myself in providing a friendly space for Hausa Wikipedian editors, also working to create a group of users that will contribute to Fulfulde Wikipedia, as a result of the above mention, I train and guide so many users on how to edit wikipedia, especially Fulfulde Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Hausa Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, by creating video tutorials, by helping users with skills they have desire, both on wiki and off wiki. On March 2020 I updated the main page of Hausa Wikipedia to a better one.

Also a Co-founder of Nigerian Commons Photographers User Group, and a member of Hausa Wikimedians User Group where we carry out so many successful Wikimedia grants projects, and working onboard to create Fulfulde Wikimedian User Group, I have successfully complete a course in Wikimedia movements WikiLearn Identifying and Addressing Harassment Online course, were I obtain a certificate in the course.

A part from many articles and pages I created, I also organise Hausa Wikipedia Annual Contest, were I multivate Hausa Wikipedians, furthermore, I have participated in so many contest were I was declared one of the winners, in a contest like WikiLoves folklore, WikiGap online challenge and WPWP.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.

Right from day I believe in sharing, releasing and providing help in Wikimedia sister projects and its movement at large, I do believe that I posses a free will to be of help in depthbly in Wikimedia movements, having this opportunity will make me work actively and interlectually, to make sure Wikimedia Grants are easily accessible and responded very quickly as required and plan by the Wikimedia Foundation and to the various individuals, User Groups and thermatic organization involved in the Wikimedia movement in my region

What would you do to make decision-making more participatory?

I believe in sharing opinion, listening to others, to look things from their perspective, because no matter how good we are at times we make mistakes, it is through this that we obtain neutral point of view, neutral point of view makes decisions flow, flowing of decisions makes decisions more participatory.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

I will try as much as I can do, and as possible as I can to make sure that I do as I'm bid base on Grant Stragies and base on Grant processing, I'm sure that by doing what is needed that grantmaking will have a greater impact.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

Well, due to the experience I have, I have a set of plan which I'm intending to make Wikimedia movements rapidly grow by 2030, from my side I do believe I have pretty much experience regarding Wikimedian movements and Wikimedia grants strategies, which this very committee might like.--Anasskoko^Talk 13:43, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Ndahiro derrick

What country or region are you working in?

Rwanda

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Middle East and Africa

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

I am a Rwandan wikimedian and the Founder of Wikimedia User Group Rwanda and a volunteer in the User Group in Uganda, I edit English, Kinyarwanda and kirundi Wikipedias, Wikivoyage, english Wikiqoute and Wikimedia Commons, since 2019, I have participated in Wiki Loves Monuments,Wiki Loves Africa,Wiki Loves Folklore,Wikigap,Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki4Refugees both in Uganda as a contestant where i made it among winners and in Rwanda as the coordinator,

Besides,I monitor three and improve times a week rw.wikipedia.org to prevent and deal with vandalism, I also train newbies from Rwanda,Burundi and Uganda as a way of recruiting more people in the movement but also pay back to the Wikimedia User Group Uganda, who introduced me and mentored me throughtout to the wikimedia movement.

Besides the above, I also create and improve content on english,kinyarwanda and kirundi wikipedias,something i wont hesistate to call my passion.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.

I believe that team work,mentorship and passion are essential to achieve a collective goal , therefore having a full conviction in possessing the above essentials,I believe they will help me to serve in the wikimedia Movemenent under the committee guidance and representing East Africa.

What would you do to make decision-making more participatory?

One, by engaging every committe member through listening to their views,without judging,and creating a leveled ground by mainstreaming gender in all operations ,to fight against systematic discrimination of women in the decision making processes.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

I would begin with improving the communication structure more contextual to allow effectiveness, then having delibarate meet-ups, between different regional hubs to allow experience sharing and mentorship.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

Am a quick learner,enthusiastic and reliable ,I believe in team work and change creation therefore ,The committee having me as part of them,will enhance team work,commitment and realiability not forgetting represeantion of East Africa on the committee. Ndahiro derrick (talk) 09:42, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Yamen

What country or region are you working in?

Tunisia

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Middle East and Africa

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

Hi, my name is Yamen and I'm an active Wikimedian and volunteer from Tunisia. I'm an open knowledge advocate active online (mainly on Wikipedia, Commons and Wikidata) and offline. I joined the Wikimedia movement end of 2006 and below the main events and activities I was involvedː

2014 I had the honor to be the co-founder and legal agreement signatory for Wikimedia Tunisia the first User Group in the Arab region and Africa.
2014 with UserːDyolf77 we co-founded and coined the name of the Arabic conference WikiArabia, the regional and the main conference in the north Africa and the middle east. With other Tunisian wikimedians I was involved in the organisation of the first edition in Tunisia in 2015.
2018 I co-organised the third edition of the African Conference WikiIndaba in Tunisia.
2020 I had the honor to be the co-founder and legal agreement signatory of another user groupː Wiki World Heritage User Group.
2021 I had the honor to join the Project Grants Committee and I learned so many things from this experience which is motivating me to apply again for this regional committee.
2021 I had the honor joined the Core Organizing Team of Wikimania 2021 expected to be the most inclusive and the most accessible Wikimania.

I have also been involved in many activities (Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2021 organizing team, Editathons, Wiki Loves Monuments, WikiGap, WikiForHumanRights ...) and members of many other affiliates (Wiki Cemeteries UG, Commons Photographers User Group, Wikimedia France).

Outside the Wiki movement, I'm the co-founder of the NGO CLibre (Organisation for free digital culture) in Tunisia which aims to promote Open Software, OpenGov and OpenData. CLibre is the Fiscal Sponsor for Wikimedia Tunisia.

In normal life, I'm a Central Banks Collateral Management financial expert, working closely with many Central Banks in Europe managing projects and budgets.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.

I could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working by making sure that it's adapted to the context and the particularities of the region in term of communication and expectations.

What would you do to make decision-making more participatory?

Having a participatory decision-making process is very important for the grantmaking. Committee members should be involved in reviewing the application by giving their feedback through collective and collaborative coordination. They have to make sure to have all the required clarifications from the grantee, take into account the feedback from the community and from the Foundation experts in order to well assess the impact of the project and take the right decision.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

IMHO, I think we need to communicate more on the grantmaking process (especially in the Arabic region) so wikimedians and affiliates can be aware about the possibilities offered to fund their activities. Many wikimedians/affiliates are not aware about the different types of grant and how to apply. Scheduling office hours in Arabic (the most spoken language in Africa), in French and of course in English (these 3 languages are the UN official languages spoken in Africa) will certainly help wikimedians/affiliates and encourage them to submit grant applications (sometimes it's not easy and quite challenging for some wikimedians to apply for grants). Participating in WikiIndaba and WikiArabia via workshops and presentations can also help to make the grantmaking process more accessible and with greater impact.

Providing video tutorials to explain how the process is working and how to submit applications can be helpful as well.

Make the grantmaking process more inclusive and accessible for wikimedians who do not speak English (Wikimedia Strategy 2030 recommendations) by allowing them to submit applications in their native language (or in one of the main UN languages) and then providing translating for the review process.

I think also we can assign an advisor from the committee to affiliates from the region to assist and advise them about the grantmaking process (before submitting the application till the final report).

Finally, we can maybe set some assessment/scoring tools to be used by affiliates before engaging in a SAPG application so the committee can advise and help them.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

Being an active Wikimedian, I have an excellent understanding of the Wiki World and projects in my region and being able to speak three of the main languages used in Africa and the Middle East (Ar, Fr and En) will be a great asset to understand the context and the particularities of the region especially that I will be representing three main communitiesː the Arabic community, the WikiFranca community and of course the African community . Finally coming from the financial world, I'm very comfortable with numbers and budgets.

Yamen (talk) 01:06, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Oby Ezeilo

What country or region are you working in?

Nigeria

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Middle East and Africa

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

I am an active Wikimedian volunteer of the Igbo Wikimedia User Group and Nigeria User Group. I joined the Wikimedia movement in 2017 and have contributed in both English and Igbo Wikipedia, Wiki commons, Wiki data, and Media wiki. Below are some main events and activities I have been involved in

Co-Founder Igbo User Group 2018, My job is to see that we have a healthy and respectful interactive community, I also teach them the rules and ethics of Igbo Language and Culture, I teach them how to edit Igbo Wikipedia, commons and Wiktionary using video and chat tutorials.
Founder Igbo Wiki Fan Club 2018 in one of the leading girl's colleges: Federal Government Girls College Bwari Abuja Nigeria.
Test Wiki Admin for Igbo Wiktionary though still in the incubator and an Admin for Igbo Wikipedia.
Organized and participated in numerous grant projects
2020 one of the winners in WikiGap online contest organized by Wikimedia Nigeria in partnership with the Swedish Embassy.
2019 Wiki Education Greenhouse certified member
Juror 2020 during the decolonizing the internet organized by the Gothe Institut and Nigeria User Group.
2021 Online certified wiki learn partnership advocate.
2021 I had the privilege to join the Project Grants Committee a few months ago and gained a wealth of experience which is motivating me to apply again for this regional committee.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.

As a teacher by profession I believe in team work, mentorship, cordial relationship, learning, and relearning are essential to achieving a collective goal, therefore possessing the above essentials, I believe they will help me to serve in the Wikimedia Movement under the committee guidance and representing.

What would you do to make decision-making more participatory?

During my brief time with the dissolved grant committee, I realize that committee members were not involved, I wish they will be involved in the discussion and deliberation process by so doing clarifications and feedback which are important in grantmaking are taking into consideration.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

Bearing the 2030 movement strategy recommendations in mind, a strategic plan that will accommodate the differences in the nature of resources across regions, countries or communities will be put in place.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

I believe in Wikimedia ideology; FAIRNESS, EQUALITY, FREE ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE, FEMINISM, COMMITMENT, PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE, AND VOLUNTEERISM.

User:Ptinphusmia

What country or region are you working in? Nigeria

What regional committee do you want to participate in? Middle East and Africa

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

I'm an active member of Wikimedia Nigeria, Igbo Wikimedia Usergroup, and Wikimedians for Sustainable Development. In the moment, I contribute to English Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, wikimedia commons and wikidata. I have been on several juries of wikimedia projects such as Wiki Loves Africa, Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos and Afrocine Project and lead a Wikimedia Hub in the South Eastern part of Nigeria, Owerri Imo State to be specific. Other experiences include organizing Wikimedia projects such as South East Edit-a-thon, Wiki4climate online edit-a-thon,WikiForHumanRights 2021 in Nigeria, facilitatingmovement strategy follow-up discussions for room 2 of Skills and Leadership Development (cluster C) and moderating the two-day strategy discussions for Igbo Wikimedia Usergroup. I'm also an Election Volunteer for Igbo Wikipedia in the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees election Wikimedia Foundation elections 2021 Election Volunteers. In the past, I participated in the wikimedia rapid research sprint, communications insights and was one of the panelists in the Wiki 20 Countdown Africa

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.

I belong to three different user groups and this has afforded me the opportunity to experience and understand the peculiarities, challenges, and differences that exist across communities in my region and country through collaboration on diverse projects. Beyond this, I have been a grantee of wikimedia projects and as such, aware of some underlying concerns that will contribute to the work of the committee.

What would you do to make decision-making more participatory?

I will ensure that the voices of diverse communities in the region are heard and considered by creating a platform for them to communicate their challenges and recommendations as regards Wikimedia grants while orienting them on the TORs of wikimedia grants to attain a common goal.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

By launching a strategy that will align priority areas and knowledge gaps specific with each community, with the 2030 movement strategy recommendations. In addition, such a plan should accommodate the differences in the nature of resources considered across regions, countries or communities.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

There is need to support gender equity in the wikimedia movement and particularly on this committee by ensuring women, especially from the global south are represented on the committee. These women will serve as role models to other such women and propel them to be grantees, which is currently in a smaller percentage specifically in the Nigerian context and Africa at large. I'm a typical woman from the global south who will like to work towards making more women grantees from the aforementioned geography.

User:Adjoajo

What country or region are you working in?
- United States - I am also interested in Africa
- United States & Africa
Tell us about yourself, and why you want to join a Regional Committee.

I want to be able to connect the African Diaspora to the African continent. I am already doing this by writing content about Africa via a study edit group I started during sheltering in place.

I have been a Wikipedia for 6 years with the Afrocrowd user group based in New York City.

As a Wikipedian I have attended three Wikimania conferences in 2017, 2018, and 2019. I started a Wikipedia edit study group last November as a support group to share my experiences as a Wikipedia. I felt that a consistent meet up every week was necessary, and that people can attend when they are able to. I wanted to engage others in the process of editing as a learning tool. I think that group editing is important, and thru diligence we can make content providing to the Wikipedia movement a way of life. As a group we have compiled four Wikipedia books using the Wikipedia book creator, added references, added to wikidata, uploaded images to wikicommons, created Wikipedia articles about villages in Africa. What I like best about group editing is fact finding, and quality discussions that we have while learning and adding content to the Wikipedia movement.

User:Hamxo

What country or region are you working in?
- Nigeria
- Middle East and Africa
Tell us about yourself, and why do you want to join a Regional Committee.

I am Abdullahi Hamza, I'm based in Kaduna State, Nigeria. I am a passionate writer, community organiser, environmentalist and technology enthusiast. I'm an undergraduate student of Geography at Kaduna State University. The reason why I wanted to join the regional committee is that I look at myself as a person who has vast experience in community organising, volunteerism and social work, e.g I am the current Social director of the National Association of Geography Students Kaduna State University chapter (NAGS KASU) where I relate, counsel, and consulted about activities related to Organizing and promoting the organisation mission, like nurturing the skills of students such as arts and crafts, creative writing, sports, music, dramatics, social recreation, camping, and hobbies, taking into account the needs for a diverse regional committee that is what encourages me to apply to see that I can contribute to reviewing, supporting and identifying the best of what is required of the community of volunteers.

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

I am a Wikipedia editor since 2019 where I help organise the first Wikipedia awareness campaign in Kaduna.

SAARC region

User:Mahir256

I have been contributing to Wikimedia projects in earnest since 2015, and have been an admin on Wikidata and the Bengali Wikisource since 2018. I frequently collaborate with individuals from Wikimedia Bangladesh and the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, and through the latter with individuals associated with CIS-A2K, in a number of areas, largely relating to the two projects I administer, if not regarding efforts concerning regions of South Asia in general.

I believe that the committee for this region can play a role in better tying the stated means behind funded initiatives to the various ends, conceived of by both grant applicants and members of related groups, that are effected by them. To support this, I would encourage, in addition to the usual endorsement process, direct solicitation of feedback by the committee from communities affected by proposals, so that there is greater assurance that the views and considerations of those communities are expressed rather than implied for a particular proposal prior to taking action on it. I would also encourage grant applicants to elaborate—perhaps through itemization—on the potential outcomes per community of their proposals (these outcomes attached to specific aspects of their applications), given that no two communities will necessarily benefit in exactly the same ways from the same effort.

Although I am a natural-born United States citizen having been based in that country my whole life, I interact more frequently in the course of my on-wiki activities with people from this region, so I am submitting myself as a candidate for it. I think having someone who takes a particular interest in a region and is aware through sociocultural connections of issues specific to it, but is also sufficiently separated from it, may lead to positive and balanced outcomes for that region.

User:Abhinavgarule

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem? I started my Wikimedia journey as novice editor back 2009 when I was research about Pi value 3.14 to submit an essay in my college. But became an editor around 2013. After that I have been involved in different projects with different capacity as editor and community advocate with the centre for internet and society. I have created e-learning content in Marathi Language, got many books under free license. I am translator and language coordinator for translating subtitles in Indian Languages with TED and Mozilla.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working? Currently, I am a practising designer. And as a part of my day to day work empathy plays important role. I am curious to apply the design principles in bridging communities. This will be challenging but exciting opportunity to work with regional committees.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory? Building empathy- will play an important role in it. When you speak with community members, you relive experience in story format you relive emotions, what they feel? and how they feel? this will help me understand their motivation.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact? When I was working with CIS I developed grant plan for 2 years with my community.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you? I can bring diversity to the committee and will help designing community programs from different perspective. --Abhinavgarule (talk) 15:58, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Atudu

What country or region are you working in?

India

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

SAARC region

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

I have been connected with the Wikimedia movement since 2015 and also a representative member of West Bengal Wikimedians User Group since 2019. I have been leading and maintaining a scientifically based butterfly documentation project namely Wiki Loves Butterfly(WLB) successfully for the last 4 years with the WMF fund. Currently the project has entered into its fifth year. I am also an organizing member of the Wiki Loves Monuments in India photo-competition for the last 3 years. This year, I took the initiative and successfully co-organized a national level photo competition namely Wiki Loves Food in India.

To say of my involvement in totality in the Wikimedia movement I have so far contributed on a regular basis to Bengali Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Bengali Wikisource and Meta Wiki.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

SAARC is a unity of diverse communities. The committee is to be a well communicating, understanding and transparent, open body aiming at assisting and improving the grant application and evaluate the same in a proper way. I think it will give positive results towards the solution of regional challenges through communication and sharing experiences with each other within the committee and with the communities, previous grantees, mentors and new applicants.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

I have practical experience and estimation about the true value of a grant coming from donation money and the required aims, goals and motivation to make a grant project successful, as a result of my successfully handling five consecutive granted project phases of WLB project. We will identify the potential community, who have not applied for the grant yet or lack proper knowledge or awareness regarding the grant or previously faced some huddles to apply for grant. We can make office hours on a regular basis with them, so that they can get a clear vision and proper guidelines and resolve the problem, by which we can increase the impact of grantmaking. I would also encourage the applicant to take part in office hours to share their experience, difficulties with their communities etc so that other community members will inspire and move forward with different projects, topics or innovative ideas.--Atudu (talk) 12:14, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

East, Southeast Asia, and Pacific (ESEAP)

User:Filipinayzd

Filipinayzd (talk) 03:04, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What country or region are you working in? Philippines

What regional committee do you want to participate in? ESEAP region

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

Contributing to Bikol Wikipedia, Meta, Incubator, and Wikimedia Commons, and previously to Wikimapia, Mozilla interface localization, TranslateWiki, among others. Being an advocate of marginalized languages, I have devouted practically half of my life to building accessible knowledge on the internet. Prior to becoming Board Treasurer of PhilWiki Community, I served as the user group's President from 2018 until 2021. I have been involved in the Movement since 2007 and have tried different roles from a contributor, which I still am, to a community outreach organizer inspite of my busy life as an educator, and a community organizer.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

Being a grantee of several rapid grants as well as having several rejected proposals, I have somehow learnt the difficulties faced by a grantee and how it should be addressed by the regional committee. The Committee should know the context of each project as culture play a great part. The Committee should also take in mind that grantees or proponents are not created equal.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

Community discussion does not always help so is gathering support from anyone in the movement. Some people are polite not to make a comment about the proposal on the other hand some people use it as a platform to attack the proponent for some reasons. Some reasons why people would not participate in helping the proponent improve or make a comment about the project proposal, specially if the proponent is a "somebody" or has managed to perfect the "art of grant application", are intimidation, retaliation, among others. Blind-reading or reviewing is one process that I would suggest. There is no need to rush in approving or rejecting a proposal only because the starting date of a project is too soon.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

To see to it that projects and programs promote collaboration and volunteerism, proposed in good faith, cost-effective and transparent, well-documented in a sense that the projects are truly being implemented, and they make great impact not necessarily outright to the goals of Wikimedia and free knowledge in general. Projects and programs can be replicated and adopted in different communities. An independent Wikipedian or validator can help the project organizer in the analysis and evaluation of the project.

User:Chipmunkdavis

What country or region are you working in?

East and Southeast Asia.

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

The East, Southeast Asia, and Pacific (ESEAP) region.

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

I have been editing English Wikipedia for over a decade, as well as making some contributions to Commons. I have previously participated in training courses with Wikimedia UK, and was able to help out with an edit-a-thon at one point. However, I have not had the opportunity to participate further since moving from the UK, and thus am interested in pursuing this opportunity to contribute further.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

I have experience with a number of countries within the ESEAP region, and believe I would bring a useful regional perspective to the committee. Part of my professional work is related to developing collaboration between different organisations from countries throughout the ESEAP region. This builds upon prior personal connections to a number of countries in the region.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

The ESEAP is an extremely diverse and heterogeneous region, with unique national and regional challenges. Wikimedia projects serve an important role in making information accessible, but in turn, there is great scope for the region to contribute more to Wikimedia. It will be important to get perspectives from across the region’s different communities. As such, I would seek input from Wikimedia groups throughout the region, and hopefully identify gaps where communities are underrepresented, as well as take action to begin to remedy this.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

I believe a significant and measurable impact can be achieved from discrete and easily achievable goals, even if the grants involved are quite small. It would be important for grants to be tailored and assessed based on the needs and capacities of each individual country or community.

User:Rtnf

Rtnf (talk) 13:07, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What country or region are you working in? Indonesia

What regional committee do you want to participate in? ESEAP region

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

Contributing to Indonesian Wikipedia and Indonesian OpenStreetMap. Working on several book project on wikibooks based on my own expertise and research interests. Currently researching on the field of "knowledge management", and currently implementing several of my current findings as a new project. Reaching out to the government, Wikimedia Indonesia, and several domain-specific expert group, so we can collaborate together to make knowledge more accessible to the masses.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

Purify our intention. Dont forget our ultimate goal (vision). Remember that we have the responsibility, to the donators and to the public in general, to use the grant money to actually reach our vision. We can be honest with ourself, whether we actually use this grant to reach the vision, or we just use it for our personal gains.

Involving actual domain expert in their respective field, so we can use their knowledge and expertise to reach our vision.

Using discipline project management approach to keep track the progress of each grant project.

Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean

User:Felipe da Fonseca

From my Userpage

About me

I have a degree in law and philosophy, a master's in philosophy, and a doctorate in philosophy in a binational doctorate (Brazil and Germany), with a thesis written and defended in German on the application of Practical Philosophy to Law. I have a post-doctoral internship in Philosophy and am currently researching topics in Philosophy of Globalization. I am an amateur triathlete and an amateur water marathoner. As a triathlete I focus on 70.3 races and as a water marathoner I have just created and completed a 16km race in my region.

My work

Currently my work within the wikimedia movement consists of three fronts:

a) administration of pt.wiki, which I center on blocking issues, both in judging concrete cases and in restructuring our current blocking policy;

b) development of Wikisul, a user group that aims to bring Wikimedia closer to universities;

c) create a more effective bridge of communication and work between Meta and WMF on the one hand and pt.wiki on the other.

Some questions:

Q: What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

A: The mesh design I have proposed will certainly be very useful.

Q: Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

A: Because one out of three of the actions I have proposed since my return to Wikimedia is to strengthen the WMF/Meta relationship with pt.wiki, and bringing the community closer to important decisions like the financial ones is an important step towards that.

User:Mike Peel

I am an old hand in the Wikimedia movement. I have been editing the English Wikipedia since 2005; Commons since 2006; and Wikidata since 2013, with over 350k edits combined (as well as operating Pi bot with over 7 million edits). I authored the multilingual Wikidata infobox used in over 3 million Commons categories, have uploaded 40k+ of my own photos, and co-originated the term ‘editathon’ with the first event at the British Library in 2011. I co-founded Wikimedia UK and was a trustee of it for 5 years, and served on the Funds Dissemination Committee for four years in 2012-17. By day I am a radio astronomer, and have lived in the UK and Brazil; I am currently working in Spain.

I would like to bring expertise from my past involvement on the FDC, and experience with Wikimedia affiliates (both Wikimedia UK and Wiki Movimento Brasil), to these new committees to help ensure they are fully functional from the start and don’t have to re-learn experiences from past funding committees. I would bring experience with evaluating grant requests from $100 to >$1 million within the Wikimedia movement. Personally, I am highly collaborative, and pay attention to the details (I have served as secretary for both WMUK and the FDC). I would aim to encourage as much community review of applications as possible, and encourage Wikimedia organisations to grow professionally according to best practices.

I have applied both for N/W Europe and LATAM, as I have experience of the cultures of both of these areas (if only one is allowed, I would prefer LATAM as there are more people with similar expertise to me in Europe). I have been learning Portuguese and Spanish, but prefer to communicate in English (although I am happy to receive emails/texts in pt/es and translate them!). I’m happy to answer any questions that anyone might have. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:35, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Hedestad

I am mostly active on the portuguese Wikipedia, where I contribute as a rollbacker, also creating and improving content about the humanities, mainly history. I am also active on Wikimedia Commons, where I contribute mostly uploading the educational videos and images related to História na Wiki, a project I run with two other wikimedians in Brazil. Recently, we have been granted for two edit-a-thons, one on Wikipedia and the other on Wikimedia Commons, where more than 28 articles were improved and more than 58 pictures were uploaded to Wikimedia commons. Those events were part of the Festa da Wiki-Lusofinia, the lusophone Wikipedia 20 party. The Wikimedia Commons uploads were made in partnership with the #VisibleWikiWomen 2021 campaign. História na Wiki has also organized the Festa da Wiki-Lusofonia's main events, working with 7 other lusophone groups such as Art+Feminism, Creative Commons Brazil, Wiki Editoras LX, Wikimedia Portugal, Wiki Movimento Brasil and the GLAM for the libraries of the University of São Paulo.

As a historian, I've been working on research about the Wikimedia projects, mainly the portuguese Wikipedia, since 2018. So, besides my volunteer activites, I am also involved with the Wikimedia platforms as a researcher. In this sense, I believe my participation in the committee could be positive because of my experience as a recent global south grantee, a researcher and an active wikimedian. If I become part of this committee, I wish to contribute on accounting the latin american reality in the discussions, bringing the criticity of a researcher and the practices of a brazilian wikimedian who volunteerly works for the improvement and the propagation of the Wikimedia platforms. Best wishes, Hedestad (talk) 19:50, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:TMorata

I have been editing Wikipedia in English (mostly) and Portuguese and Commons since 2015. I have been editing Wikipedia on a variety of subjects mostly related to occupational health and hearing loss prevention in the workplace. My first edits were under username User:SiSreach, and I also edit as User:TCMorata. I contribute as co-instructor to several University classes, to examine how we can use the help of the Wiki Edu platform to improve coverage of public health, occupational safety and health, acoustics and audiology articles. I enjoy this mechanism to disseminate high-quality, peer reviewed research to improve coverage of occupational safety and health content. I am a member of Ohio Wikimedians User Group, Wiki Movimento Brasil, WikiProject Medicine, and WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health. I helped expand the strategies for Wikipedia's collaborations with Cochrane and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Q: How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working? A: I would work towards establishing and maintaining group processes that promote equitable participation, trust, and respect among participants.

Q: What would you do to make decision making more participatory? A: I would work to identify desired constituencies on the basis of their expertise, access to resources, influence, interest, and ability to represent intended users, and beneficiaries.

Q: What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact? A: Improving communication of the funding mechanisms, narrowing the scope of some funding opportunities, making the application process simple and accessible, consolidating and expanding the youtube videos on Wikipedia Project Grants, having a track for grants in every Wikimania, examine possibility of making the information on grants more visible in Wikipedia's main space.

Q: Why do you think the committee needs someone like you? A: I have experience in applying for grants within academia as well as helping develop and run funding processes for intramural grants in a government agency. TMorata (talk) 19:32, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Flávia Varella

What country or region are you working in?

Brasil

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

Comecei a editar na Wikipédia em 2015 como parte de minhas funções pedagógicas enquanto professora universitária na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina editando verbetes na área de História da Antiguidade Ocidental. Permaneci nesse projeto até 2017, quando em 2018 iniciei o Teoria na História da Wikipédia, um projeto extensão também desenvolvido na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Junto dessas minhas atividades, também atuo como editora criando e traduzindo conteúdo para a Wikipédia lusófona. Pensando de forma mais abrangente sobre conhecimento livre, também tenho bastante experiência como editora de periódico científico que trabalha em amplo diálogo com a ciência aberta.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

O diálogo é um dos pilares essenciais para um trabalho colher bons frutos. Ser capaz de escutar e acolher, acredito, é fundamental nessa iniciativa de ficar mais próximo da comunidade. Creio que posso contribuir com isso e também com as minhas habilidades acadêmicas de gerenciamento. Já fiz e faço parte de associações científicas e estou habituada a rotina de trabalho que envolvem atividades de engajamento.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

Estar presente no dia a dia das pessoas é fundamental. A presença pode ser nas mais diversas instâncias: um fundo de tela no computador, um adesivo no carro ou na bicicleta, uma camisa ou mochila para ir passear, trabalhar ou estudar. O importante é sempre se fazer presente para que o sentimento de comunidade esteja em constante renovação. Esse, acredito, é o primeiro passo para os usuários quererem participar. Depois, tem que haver uma escuta atenta e um retorno sobre essa escuta, contando o que foi possível ser solucionado, o que está em andamento e os entraves. A falta de retorno desmotiva as pessoas a participarem uma segunda vez. Esses dois ciclos, na minha visão, são essenciais para que as decisões possam ser compartilhadas de forma participativa.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

Primeiro há de se entender o que é impacto. Só assim será possível melhorá-lo. Atualmente, ao menos nos grants rápidos, o impacto é medido numericamente, com número de participantes ou número de bytes adicionados. Se a política seguir nessa direção, talvez o estabelecimento de critérios mínimos de desempenho seja um caminho a ser trilhado. De qualquer forma, é necessário entender mais profundamente as diversas nuances do impacto esperado pela Wikimedia.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

Eu sou uma apaixonada pela Wikipédia e pelo ideal de conhecimento livre dos projetos Wikimedia. Sou uma educadora, igualmente apaixonada por aprender. Gosto muito de trabalhar em equipe e poder partilhar experiências e construir projetos coletivos. Acredito também que, por ser mulher e mãe, posso contribuir com algumas ações de engajamento nesse setor. --Flávia Varella (talk) 18:58, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Alexandrabello

What country or region are you working in?

Venezuela - LATAM

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

Right now I edit for wikivoyage, sometimes wikinews both in Spanish, I really enjoy to give an analysis about some news of the Latin American area, and make travel guides in wikivoyage for people that will need help in the places they travel to.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

I'm very creative, and good at organizing and scheduling, I think my contribution for the committees would be my excellent productivity and time management. Also, my project management skill and creativity to make good activities for the Foundation.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

I think it's important that all the people in the committee is interested about the project, If they like the project they would take part of it. And the decision making could be a votation from every member of the committee.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

We have to reach to more people, in the different regions and countries, this is important. We have to do interesting and creative activities, so more people would feel curious and interested in Wikimedia movement. I would try to organize and management activities for every type of age, trying to reach to all sectors and ages. It's important to make people know that everyone can be part if they are willing to help with free-knowledge.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

I think the committee need someone like me because like I said before I'm excellent at time management and project management, I think this would be a helpful factor about budgets, timing and scheduling. Also, making better strategies for the Wikimedia free knowledge.

User:Lilian Viana

What country or region are you working in?

Brasil

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

América Latina (LATAM) e Caribe

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

Profissionalmente atuo como bibliotecária. Em 2020, junto a outras bibliotecárias, atuei na criação do GLAM Bibliotecas da USP e coordeno ações no escopo da biblioteca em que atuo, tendo realizado ações em parceria com disciplinas de graduação envolvendo Wikipédia e atividades na Wikipédia e Wikidata com bibliotecárias. Atuei na exportação de dados de docentes da instituição em que trabalho para o Wikidata, tendo como próximos passos exportar dados da produção acadêmica e trabalhar com imagens no Wikicommons. Na Wikipédia editamos verbetes de docentes da universidade. Colaborei com a Festa da Wikilusofonia, acompanho as oficinas do Wikimedia & Educação, a partir da oficina Capacitação de usuárias Wikimedia, me engajei nas ações do Women in Red. Na Wikipédia edito sobre temas que me mobilizam.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

Estou habituada a organizar e documentar informações, como bibliotecária tenho experiência com atendimento, voltada a escutar e compreender demandas. Meu trajeto de formação também pode contribuir para pensar função e fazeres do comitê.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

Um processo participativo implica diálogo, seria importante criar instâncias de comunicação pautadas na troca. Ou seja, ambas as instâncias (membros do comitê/fundação e aqueles que desejam submeter projetos) ocupando posição de aprender/ensinar, escutar/falar. Assim, investigaria a viabilidade de criar uma esfera que contribua para que as pessoas compreendam e integrem dinâmicas da Wikimedia, o desenvolvimento de projetos, e que essa esfera tenha abertura a negociações. Para que os procedimentos da Wikimedia sejam avaliados e reelaborados, é preciso escutar o que os demais têm a dizer.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

A noção de impacto não está clara somente com essa pergunta. Tendo clareza do que se busca impactar, um passo seria definir critérios para conceder financiamentos. Supondo que se busca ampliar os usos das ferramentas Wikimedia para diferentes esferas, seria importante comunicar o universo Wikimedia, criando condições à participação de mais pessoas na proposição de projetos. O diálogo com grupos organizados poderia ser um caminho.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

Ter acesso a informações de qualidade é essencial à uma democracia, isso motiva meu interesse no movimento Wikimedia, que não segue lógicas do capital. Entendo que democratizar acesso é insuficiente a transformações socioculturais mais amplas e assumo o conhecimento como processo que pertence a todos. Acredito que um ecossistema de conhecimento democrático culturalmente demanda que as condições à produção de informações sejam pautadas na consideração de diferenças e desigualdades; há aí um desafio a ser encarado. Sou mulher, atuo como bibliotecária em universidade pública brasileira. Fiz mestrado e doutorado em Ciência da informação, na linha de pesquisa apropriação social da informação, pesquisando bibliotecas e considerando a realidade brasileira. Meu trajeto demonstra interesse em atuar em torno da informação em perspectiva democrática, tenho desejo de aprender, de pensar e contribuir com a questão no universo Wikimedia dada sua dimensão livre, colaborativa e, pelo que percebo, a intenção de que sejam criadas alternativas à participação mais ampla das pessoas em sua produção.Lilian Viana (talk) 20:13, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:TiagoLubiana

What country or region are you working in?

Brazil

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Latin America and the Caribbean

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

I have been active on Portuguese Wikipedia since 2015 and with Wikidata since 2018. I am currently studying in my PhD how biological information can be better represented in Wikidata, thus Wikimedia is a core part of my daily activities. I've dedicated myself to the Wikidata Wikiproject COVID-19 over 2020, working with improving communication between editors. I am also a member of Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB), and I host a weekly Wiki-editing series alongside different Portuguese-speaking scientists each week.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

I believe I can contribute with developing the interactions with the scientific community. In my professional life, I have worked with friends and collaborators throughout Latin America (LA), and got to know about the practices of academia across the region. I can contribute most, thus, in the Wikimedia-Academia interface, taking into account the intricacies of LA researchers. Also, as someone very involved with Wikimedia, but who has not actually dealt with Wikimedia Grants in the past, I believe I might provide points of view that come from a different background, enriching the discussion and perhaps fostering innovative ways for adapting the grant strategy to LA and the Caribbean.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

That is indeed an open challenge. I believe that many contributors are not aware of the decision-making processes, or even of the grant structures, and do not have the time or the initial stamina to get involved with those directions. Maybe one way to improve participation is the development of training materials, making more editors aware of the grant possibilities and, at the same time, providing clearer guidelines on how to get involved. Another way is to have volunteers (from the Committee or not) with the clear role of aiding in participations, to make it easier for editors seeking help as to how to participate.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

I believe that the impact of any grantmaking system is bound to the community it serves to. One way to improve impact is to improve awareness of the grant processes themselves; by fostering more grant applications, we increase the likelihood of improving the diversity of Wikimedia. For example, calls for grant applications can be tailored towards relatively new editors, getting more people involved in the project. TiagoLubiana (talk) 14:51, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Application has been withdrawn by the Regional Committee applicant.--DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 06:25, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Salvador_alc

Hi! Mi name is Salvador Alcántar. Mexican and es.wiki editor since 2013. Cofounder of Wikimedia Mexico and former board member of such chapter for near seven years, still member as simply volunteer. I was AffCom member from 2013 to 2019. I'm a civil lawyer, with experiences as civil servant in areas of technology governance, digital communication, e-government, and digital transparency. Now I'm studying a máster on information technologies. I live in Mexico and I have worked closely with almost all Spanish speaker Wikimedia affiliates in the region. So, definitely I want to participate in LATAM and Caribe region.

Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

I am an active admin and editor in es.wiki. In Wikimedia Mexico I participate as attendee in activities and as speaker in talks and conferences. I am cofunder of Creative Commons México where I am volunteer, legal advisor, speaker and workshop instructor. Just now, I'm leading a temporary project of CCMX funded by a Creative Commons grant. I am also digital rights activist on internet freedoms and against some unfair copyright reforms.

Contributions towards building the committees’ role and ways of working

I think I can share all my experience accumulated as a long-term Latin American wikimedian and all the knowledge about affiliates and communities organization, governance and problematic that I got during my time as AffCom member, where I used to be the contact person with Latin American communities. As a lawyer, I have good experience on structuring processes and rule generation. Finally, I am really familiar with online and remote committees way of working.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

To keep personal closeness with affiliates and individuals receptors of Wikimedia funds and other stakeholders. Creating and maintaining confidence inside community is fundamental to have stakeholders giving their opinion. Besides, it's necessary to reach our community trough the diversity of channels outside of Wikimedia projects and mail lists that community is already using as Telegram and social webs.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

Joining efforts inside and outside Wikimedia along free knowledge and technology ecosystem. There are many people in LA region doing similar things but dispersed and unorganized, it's needed not only being a grantor but a facilitator of synergies. On the opposite, I would suggest to put more attention to duplicated and unjustified projects in order to avoid overspending.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

Well, it seems you need more native Spanish speakers for the region where Spanish is the main language :P Besides. I think I can give a lot of expertise on Latin American Wikimedia communities. I can bring my personal bonds with Latin American wikimedians. I have a formation that encloses legal, administrative and technological perspectives, so I fit very will in multidisciplinary teams. Finally, I am committed with some important issues in the region as woman inclusion, diversity, multiculturalism, social and historically marginalized sectors, as well as other non-hegemonic approaches. --Salvador (talk) 01:46, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Marcelo_Fornazin

What country or region are you working in?
Brasil

What regional committee do you want to participate in?
Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean

Tell us about yourself and why you want to join a Regional Committee.
I am a Researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and an Assistant Professor at the Federal Fluminense University. I teach and research information systems subjects, linking knowledge from computer science and social sciences to understand changes associated with the new information and communication technologies, mainly related to health information systems and social information systems.
I am currently technical coordinator of the ‘Marielle Franco’ Favelas’ Dictionary (www.wikifavelas.com.br). The Favelas’ Dictionary is a public access virtual platform, coordinated by Professor Sonia Fleury from Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, to produce and disseminate knowledge about favelas and the peripheries. To support collaboration among the actors, the Favelas’ Dictionary was engineered as a wiki platform based on values of diversity and interdisciplinarity. Hence, the Favelas’ Dictionary aims to collaboratively retrieve favelas’ memories, disseminate other narratives about them, and discuss the right to the city.
Editors vary in their social backgrounds – researchers, slum dwellers, and activists engaged in producing content. The open technology and content place the Favelas’ Dictionary as common public good where multiple knowledge dialogue.
With experience in teaching, research, and practice in social computing and social projects, especially the Marielle Franco Favelas’ Dictionary, I suppose I may help Wikimedia Movement build a roadmap based on plurality, diversity, and social embeddedness values.

User:Kitanago

I am Handgod Abraham, one of the founding members of the Wikimedia Haiti User Group, I contribute to more than five Wikimedia Foundation projects (Common, Meta, Mediawiki, Wikipedia.ht, Wikipedia.fr, Wikipedia.en) and I participate in French-language Wikipedia maintenance projects such as Haitian Literature and others. I am also currently one of the volunteers for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections.

I want to be part of regional committees in order to be useful to the Foundation through my skills in Social Media Strategies, social leadership and others. I believe that everyone's contribution and availability are essential to make decision-making easier and faster, in this sense, I would like to propose specific schedules where everyone (or the majority of members) must be present at the same time. time. Either way, setting up platforms that will allow contributors or individual project or affiliate group leaders to inform about the grant application process is important. Likewise, strengthening technical strategies that would make the button to "donate" to the Foundation more visible when a visitor accesses the site are still important. Because, all of this can contribute to a greater impact of grant making and make Wikimedia richer in knowledge and attract more contributors.

I like the foundation for its collaborative nature and I am already making myself available to the whole team for rigorous work. Because, it is part of my current passions. Thank you for your favorable opinion, which will allow me to join these regional committees. Kitanago (talk) 17:32, 24 June 2021 (UTC-5)

User:Niamfrifruli

Actualmente me encuentro trabajando en Argentina, en la región centro del país, y me interesa aplicar para la región América Latina (LATAM) y el Caribe.

En 2018 comencé mi participación en la comunidad Wikimedia, a través de fotografías y audiovisuales. Principalmente liberando material propio, pero también buscando construir bancos de imágenes temáticos sobre sucesos de la historia reciente, sitios públicos de memoria en Santa Fe y en Córdoba, eventos de cultura libre y software libre, cultura popular entre otras temáticas. Desde allí comencé a aportar también en Wikipedia en Español, con trabajo focalizado en fuentes y en sumar material multimedia.

Mi principal intervención es a través de la participación en una comunidad ubicada geográficamente en la región Litoral del país. Desde donde postulé para un proyecto de la comunidad en 2019 llamado Radar Libre, a partir del cual pude visitar y conocer experiencias de distintas comunidades de la región centro de Argentina (en provincias de Córdoba, Santa Fe y Entre Ríos), que funcionaran bajo paradigmas libres (software y cultura libre, principalmente, pero también en sus formas de organización). Muchas de las fotos de esas instancias están liberadas en Wikimedia Commons, son más de 200 imágenes de alta calidad.

Ese proyecto sirvió para tejer redes y fortalecer el intercambio lejos del teclado” (AFK) un poco por fuera de las métricas en bytes con las que suele medirse la participación en las comunidades. Esa experiencia me llevó a conocer realidades e intervenciones diferentes respecto a cómo se piensa la cultura libre. Incluso lograr desmitificar y romper un poco el prejuicio de que lo experimental en cuanto a tecnologías o cultura libre sólo puede darse en los grandes centros urbanos.

Durante 2021 fui parte de algunas instancias de capacitación sobre fotografía, fotoactivismo y cultura libre, en eventos como "Archivo de la imagen documental santafesina" y en "Enseñar con Wikipedia", ambos organizados por Wikimedia Argentina.

A estas experiencias también puedo sumar recorridos previos en el ámbito de la gestión cultural: diagramación de proyectos, en aplicación a diferentes convocatorias y ejecución de los mismos.

Estos recorridos y esta red de contactos tejida me puede permitir tomar decisiones con otra amplitud, entendiendo la diversidad de formas de habitar el ecosistema libre.

United States and Canada

User:Slowking4

--Slowking4 (talk) 11:03, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem
  - Wikimedia DC, Wikisource User Group
- How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.
  - I have some experience in non profit financial management, we need some change from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset.
- What would you do to make decision making more participatory?
  - need to train grantees, and be more responsive both on and off wiki. we need to develop more user friendly communication channels other than meta wikicode.
- What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?
  - increase grantmaking, starting with reviewing past grant requests. need to take more risk, while also mitigate risk by training.
- Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?
  - better to have people inside the tent, rather than implementing grants outside.

User:TonyTheTiger

--TonyTheTiger (talk) 17:52, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem
  - I have been involved in a variety of capacities from a boots on the ground perspective (Chicago Meetups, WALRUS), as I understand this role it would enable me to advise how to help others with their boots on the ground pursuits.
- How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.
  - I have a broad array of wiki experience from which to draw upon and understand potential impact.
- What would you do to make decision making more participatory?
  - Deploying resources with an emphasis on diversity and expansion of participation.
- What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?
  - Increasing the impact of grantmaking is different in English-speaking North America than it is in regions with less developed knowledge presentation. Diversity of coverage is the main result that we should be pursuing as the world becomes more understanding of diverse subjects.
- Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?
  - Over 15 years of experience with Wikimedia has enabled me to expand my understaning of how wikimedia can impact the world. This will enable me to help oversee and advise the grant process.

Effeietsanders

Effeietsanders (talk)
- Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem
  - I have been active in the Wikimedia movement for a long time, in the past years primarily as part of the Wiki Loves Monuments international team. I have currently a minor role in the SF Bay Area meetups (if those ever revive after Covid) and am part of the Wikimania Core Organizing Team.
- How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.
  - I have seen many different parts of the movement, and like to think I have a good feeling for how our movement 'works'. I would love to contribute to a better support for the North American affiliate (and non-affiliate) infrastructure with hopefully minimal bureaucracy.
- What would you do to make decision making more participatory?
  - I currently don't have a good feeling for what the bounds are to work within. Whatever method we choose, should mostly scale across countries/committees, to ensure that we don't end up with a maze of rules for different regions. The best participatory effect would be peer review (applicants of a similar portfolio giving feedback before the final version)
  - I think there is a lot of potential especially in the US to better support groups to organize activities. A more succinct answer as to how that should happen, requires more in-depth research, but I think it's essential to engage the existing chapters in this process.
- What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?
  - The most important is that experimentation gets space to develop. I prefer to take a bit more risk every now and then if the requested resources are low, because it also brings the benefit of supporting new groups more easily.
- Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?
  - I like to think about good processes that scale and are sustainable. Let's have a conversation about this!

User:Emjackson42

--Emjackson42 (talk) 19:06, 22 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem
  - Wikimedia NYC member; Wikidata:WikiProject LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group/Wikibase and WBStack Working Hours member; former Wikimedian in Residence at the New York Botanical Garden. I worked on the Plants and People project and also have worked on articles for women in science and history of science, botany.
- How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working.
  - I could help to establish clear roles and expectations for committee members.
- What would you do to make decision making more participatory?
  - Solicit applications and hold educational sessions for applicants. Create understandable documentation and expectations that committee members be responsive to applicants.
- What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?
  - Provide guidelines and frameworks for recipients to provide microgrants to others. Agree with Effeietsanders about engaging with existing chapters.
- Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?
  - I come from the GLAM world and am active in library service organizations, so within the academy so to speak. But, working for a museum for five years also gives me perspective on those organizations which are often under-resourced. I think my experience and perspective will be valuable to the committee.

User:Bridges2Information

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

I am a librarian at a university where I have worked since 2006. I started participating in Wikipedia activities only four years ago. I am involved with Women in Red and AfroCrowd. I developed the curriculum for and taught three for-credit classes at my university about Wikipedia and Information Equity. I have co-hosted four editathons. I am currently co-editor of a book that will be published this September, "Wikipedia and Academic Libraries: A Global Project."

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

I bring knowledge about libraries and higher ed institutions. I listen and gather feedback from stakeholders (particularly marginalized people and populations) before moving forward with decisions. I have applied for and received two Rapid Grants (and am, therefore, familiar with the process).

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

I like surveys for gathering information and opinions.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

Remove barriers and roadblocks to the process. Promote grants to the library community.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

I am passionate and excited when engaging in new projects. Before becoming a librarian I worked in marketing - specifically promotions. So, I'm good at "spreading the word".

Bridges2Information (talk) 21:19, 22 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Redwidgeon

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?
- As a semi-retired postsecondary educator, I have long been a vocal advocate of the free knowledge movement & have conducted a number of workshops about the Wikimedia movement for educators. Since retirement from full-time work, I've participated in a variety of Wiki-related projects & initiatives. Mostly I participate as a Wikignome, assisting with editing, writing lead paragraphs etc. & generally (still) trying to find my best fit within the movement. I am a member of Wikimedia Canada.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?
- I have a lot of experience serving on committees & am committed to teamwork, collaborative decision-making, & good listening.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?
- It would be worthwhile first to see who currently *does* participate in decision making & to explore ways to reach those who have been underrepresented. It’s possible we need to make the decision-making processes less onerous or intimidating.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?
- I would like to encourage greater support for first-time grant applicants & first time grantees. I would also encourage new ways of evaluating funded projects & communicating project successes.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?
- In the interests of supporting diversity, I think I have something to add. I live in a rural part of Canada & have a background working with marginalized adults. I’m a senior citizen who sees a huge opportunity for engaging retired educators in the Wikimedia movement. Given my experience & perspective, I think I could make a valuable contribution to the Regional Committee.

User:Perimeander

--Perimeander (talk) 22:04, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?
- I primarily edit English wikipedia and organize editathons at a community-based archive in New York City. I have organized editathons as part of Art+Feminism, as well as independently, to increase representation of various underrepresented communities and issues. I've also conducted training workshops for other community-based organizations to run editathons that could improve representation of their community online, and I've worked to support other community organizations hosting their first editathons.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?
- In committee contexts, I am great at helping to create documentation that helps others step into processes and that preserves institutional knowledge. I have facilitation experience and am interested in creating and supporting non-hierarchical, participatory working and decision-making workflows.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?
- I believe that the root of all organizing work is relationship building, and would work to foster relationships in this committee as well as in the broader grant-making network that will in turn foster participation.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?
- I would analyze which communities have historically not applied for grants and work to improve communication with them about the availability of grants from Wikimedia. I would also work to communicate ways that grants of various sizes can be used to have different impacts and provide different opportunities.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?
- While I primarily speak English, I have an intermediate reading knowledge of both French and Spanish and would be able to read through applications in those languages. I also have experience applying for Wikimedia grants from a very small, community-based nonprofit, as well as other grantwriting in the context of that all-volunteer organization. I believe that this gives me a clearer understanding of the challenges that some community organizations face in the grant application process, and I would aim to improve communication with these types of organizations in a way that will ease the burden of grant bureaucracy.

User:Mcbrarian

What country or region are you working in?
- Canada

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?
- I joined Wikipedia in 2017 in a workshop that for medical librarians. Since then I have edited health and medical information on Wikipedia, but my focus has been on bringing the knowledge and expertise of health and medical students and faculty into editing. I teach a regular course at McMaster University where third year students spend a semester improving a group of articles and I encourage adding new research publications to Wikipedia as part of the workflow for researchers and faculty at the university. I also research Wikipedia as a consumer health information resource and am currently working on a study that will provide greater insight into what Wikipedia users do with the health and medical information they seek out or encounter on Wikipedia.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?
- I have expertise in open access publishing models, the dissemination of information and reviewing research protocols. This perspective could bring important insights to the committee table about how the projects and research funded by WMF grants can be shared globally.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?
- Low-stakes, low commitment participation is important to facilitating communication from possible stakeholders. Online surveys, while sometimes onerous are one such way of obtaining low-stakes input from the community. Sharing the feedback with participants and inviting their comments/insights based on survey results is another such way to cultivate a culture of participatory decision-making.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?
- One idea that has potential is to establish a relationship with an open access publisher and request a reduction in the cost of article processing fees for articles reporting on WMF grant funded research/projects. This would allow the outcomes of grant funded projects to be published open access at a less prohibitive cost and consistently extend the reach and impact of the funded work beyond the WMF community.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?
- I have insight into the world of information dissemination and consumer health information. For conversations about health research or projects, I would have relevant and important knowledge to contribute.

User:Matthewvetter

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

I am a veteran instructor with Wiki Education, Wikipedia English editor since 2011, and academic who has published multiple research studies on the intersection of Wikipedia editing and education. I'm a member of Women in Red and Writing Wikiprojects. I am also a member of the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative, which seeks to engage academic in writing/literacy studies in Wikipedia editing. I frequently assign Wikipedia-based assignments in my University courses, and have also organized and led four edit-a-thons in academic contexts.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

I have applied for and received numerous rapid grants and am familiar with the process, especially in terms of Safe Space practices, clarifying project outcomes, and budget constraints. I have a good understanding of how educational initiatives could work with the grants strategy, including what types of funding can be supported and how applicants can leverage existing resources to improve project outcomes.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

Call on previous grant recipients, especially those who have been awarded multiple grants, to take part in the decision-making process. Make previous participation in decision-making a criterion for grant applications.

What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?

Create and execute a more visible campaign that celebrates previous high-impact grant projects to share success narratives and promote additional initatives.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

I am well-positioned to help accomplish relaunch related goals focused on making granting processes more equitable and accessible. As a teacher-scholar working on teacher training and the intersection between Wikipedia and education, I have a good deal of experience in the integration of equity and accessibility-minded outcomes into curriculum and training processes. I am a strong believer in the value of linguistic and cultural difference as assets for collaboration and learning. I am well-acquainted with Wikipedia and Wikimedia policy related to editing and community standards (e.g. UCoC, Safe Space, CoI, Neutrality, etc.), and have a clear understanding of how Wikipedia and Wikimedia face challenges related to systemic biases, community climate, and participation. I have spoken out on some of these issues in my writing and research, because I believe that Wikimedia can move past them and into a more sustainable and equitable future if we work together to improve representation, participation, climate, and equity. The grants program can support these goals by building in criteria, processes, and outcome expectations that are aligned with 2030 movement strategy.

Matthewvetter (talk) 19:27, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Northern and Western Europe

User:Mike Peel

I am an old hand in the Wikimedia movement. I have been editing the English Wikipedia since 2005; Commons since 2006; and Wikidata since 2013, with over 350k edits combined (as well as operating Pi bot with over 7 million edits). I authored the multilingual Wikidata infobox used in over 3 million Commons categories, have uploaded 40k+ of my own photos, and co-originated the term ‘editathon’ with the first event at the British Library in 2011. I co-founded Wikimedia UK and was a trustee of it for 5 years, and served on the Funds Dissemination Committee for four years in 2012-17. By day I am a radio astronomer, and have lived in the UK and Brazil; I am currently working in Spain.

I would like to bring expertise from my past involvement on the FDC, and experience with Wikimedia affiliates (both Wikimedia UK and Wiki Movimento Brasil), to these new committees to help ensure they are fully functional from the start and don’t have to re-learn experiences from past funding committees. I would bring experience with evaluating grant requests from $100 to >$1 million within the Wikimedia movement. Personally, I am highly collaborative, and pay attention to the details (I have served as secretary for both WMUK and the FDC). I would aim to encourage as much community review of applications as possible, and encourage Wikimedia organisations to grow professionally according to best practices.

I have applied both for N/W Europe and LATAM, as I have experience of the cultures of both of these areas (if only one is allowed, I would prefer LATAM as there are more people with similar expertise to me in Europe). I have been learning Portuguese and Spanish, but prefer to communicate in English (although I am happy to receive emails/texts in pt/es and translate them!). I’m happy to answer any questions that anyone might have. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:35, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:NickK

My main application is going to the #Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region as that's where I am most active. However, being based in Western Europe at the moment, I think my expertise might be also useful for the Northern and Western Europe committee. As we also discussed in the CEE that having links with committees from neighbouring regions would be useful to ensure we are all on the same page, I may help building such a link.

I am a current member of the Project grants committee, treasurer of Wikimedia Ukraine and a member of Wikimédia France. Other than that I am a Wikipedian since 2008, active on Ukrainian Wikipedia (sysop and checkuser), Wikidata, Commons and some other projects (notably in English and French).

Serving on the Project grants committee, I enjoyed supporting affiliates, groups of volunteers and individual Wikimedians in their projects and initiatives improving our movement. With an evolution of the grant committee system, I am willing to continue this by supporting initiatives on the regional committee.

I intend to bring my experience as an experienced Wikimedian to support the committee and help it become stronger and bring more added value to applicants. As I have been evaluating projects in the Wikimedia movement for almost 10 years (as a chapter board member looking at impact of our projects, as a grants committee member evaluating projects of other applicants), this experience should be useful for the committee. As I also happen to know context and challenges of many communities in the Northern/Western European region (particularly from Affiliate Chairpersons meetings), I would be able to better understand needs and reasons behind each request.

NickK (talk) 11:29, 12 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Camelia.boban

Graduated as economist but working as developer, I'm a Wikimedian since 2007 based in Rome, Italy. As Wikimedia Diversity Ambassador I'm engaged in activities related to filing the gender gap and increasing content and participation of women, minorities and underrepresented groups. Founder of WikiDonne project in Italian Wikipedia and co-founder of WikiDonne User Group, I serve as member of AffCom since 2017 and I was it's treasurer for two mandates in the past years. I lead the Diversity Working Group for the Strategy 2030 and the Diversity Space at Wikimania 2019.

Born in Romania, I have experience with both Western and Eastern Europe cultures and languages. Working on the diversity, I observed the gaps - inside the projects and the movements - and the needs the community has to grow. With both positive and negative responses, I applied for a few Rapid and Projects grants, so I know the work behind applying for one of them. As AffCom's former treasurer I know the importance to have resources to grow and carry on activities, but also the importance to design processes and have best practices.

As by 2030 we aim to "become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us", for the selection of the applications, I think that the gaze must extend to the entire ecosystem of free knowledge, not only wiki. --Camelia (talk) 21:48, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ad Huikeshoven

What country or region are you working in?
The Netherlands, Western Europe
What regional committee do you want to participate?
Great question. "Diversity and inclusion" is the strategy direction. As far as I can see anybody applied to work on the regional committee of the region they are working and living in. Please do consider creating grants committees per region with at most one member per region, excluding the region the committee is working on, to promote diversity, exclude any conflict of interest, and maximize movement wide learning. In case that won't happen, I am happy to serve on the Northern and Western Europe committee.
What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?
I am a volunteer contributor and tech ambassador to the Dutch Wikipedia.
How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?
I graduated as economist, and have decades of experience in a range of financial-economic jobs. I am a former member of the Audit Committee of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation (2007-2012). I am a former Treasurer and former board member of Wikimedia Nederland (2012-2016). Writing and reviewing plans and budgets is my profession. I prefer lean processes, and a decrease in the administrative burden in general, and specifically on affiliates. My focus is on learning to make an impact.
What would you do to make decision making more participatory?
Preferably affiliates develop plans and budgets in an open and democratic process, with final decision by a general assembly of members. Before approval draft plans should be open for review by the affiliate community. After approval grant applications should be open to review by the global community. To make it practical: as a member of the grant committee I will review grant applications, and anybody seriously willing to participate in these decision making has applied to become a grant committee member.
What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact?
Force the WMF to spend as much in the Global South on grants as they are spending on grants in the Global North, without reducing spending in the Global North (the WMF has excessive reserves and excessive surpluses each year, so there is no cash restriction on balancing spending). Make accountability proportional to size of grant. Be far more generous in small grants. Dramatically reduce lead time of applications.
Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?
People on a team enjoy working with me - that is the feedback I got when I was ASBS election facilitator in 2019.

Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 07:41, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:lajmmoore

Hello all!

What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?

Most of my personal edits are with Wiki Women In Red, I mostly work to combat the gender bias within Wikipedia. I'm really proud of the work we do and have recently got more involved in creating our online events, suggesting themes and supporting newer editors. In the pages I've been building I've been targetting women from the least represented countries: [[User:Lajmmoore/% highest gender imbalance per country]] - this is something I feel is really important that I can do as part of the movement. Outside the editing I do for fun (but isn't it all fun?) I work in the museum sector in the UK. As part of my work, I've introduced editing as part of our curatorial practice at work, and am a strong local advocate for editing as activism. I've run several editathons, in person and online, and have recently been a speaker at a number of events.

How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working?

This would be my first role within the Wikipedia comunity more broadly and firstly I would want to listen to see what has been tried before and what problems with engagement already are identified. When we've got some idea of that we can look to build. It really struck me that the first I knew of the grants programme was through these roles. Communication, as other applicants have identified is therefore key.

What would you do to make decision making more participatory?

One of the things I really like observing in the Wikimedia movement is its participatory and cooperative ways of working. For the grants, its interesting this has been identified as something that's not as participatory as the foundation would like - do people know why? At a practical level, do all editors get reminders to vote? More community-focussed, are people not invested? I guess I would ask a lot of questions, and then move forward with more ideas.

What would you do so grant making can have a greater impact?

I'd be very interested in using my knowledge of and connections within the GLAM community to see how grant-making might be able to build partnerships and provide longevity for time-limited projects. In an ideal world I would love to advocate for an amount of editing training to be built into heritage interpretation grants across the UK. It often strikes me that huge amounts of infomation are generated, some interpretaton for example is made, but in reality a lot of the knowledge could be shared into exisiting Wikipedia pages, if only people had the tools. Internally to Wikipedia, I wonder if there is some work to do to identify the extent to which Wikkipedians feel investment in the grants programme, as I said earlier i'd listen, learn and then form more ideas.

Why do you think the committee needs someone like you?

I've been editing Wikipedia for the last two years, so am a relative newbie to the movement. I think that gives me a fresh and enthusiastic perspective. I am knowledgeable about sector Wikimedia is keen to work further with and am already a positive advocate for the work it does.

Thanks for making this opportunity available. I'm keen to apply for the NW Europe group - I'm an English speaker and have a good understanding of German. Lajmmoore (talk) 07:11, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Antiqueight

What country or region are you working in?

I am of Ireland. My edits tend to be about women. I have worked with the Women in Red project but with a focus on women in STEM and women in Ireland though I have taken on editing about anything and anywhere in the world. I also work with the Wikimedia Community Ireland to improve the use, editing and recognition of Wikipedia and the whole movement in Ireland. I also have an interest in how Wikimedia includes small/minority languages. I strongly believe it has huge use as an education tool and that we need to improve how the project is seen and used.

What regional committee do you want to participate in?

Northern and Western Europe. This is my home territory and the one I understand best.

Tell us about yourself and why you want to join a Regional Committee.

Currently I am an editor with 725 articles written. I started out (after a few missteps) editing pages to remove vandalism and fix typos until I felt I understood how the project worked. Then I chose an area I understood and began to work on writing articles for it. This has exposed me to a wide variety of the volunteers who work in various areas of the movement. I have seen how the movement can teach skills which are essential in the modern era as well as how heavily we rely on the movement in everyday life.

I am a strong believer in diversity being needed for a group to create something which has the best solutions. As an engineer, an Irish person and a woman I have a particular view on the world. Working with other volunteers from around the world I have learned how my experience is different and thus how all of us are needed to work together.

The thing I love about the Wikimedia movement is that it is not about one person winning or being better than others. There is a place for every interest within the movement. It is about working together to improve something continually. As a lean engineer I always start with data; what has been tried in the past, how can we try something new going forward. It's about being bold and trying new ideas.

I am a new face in terms of the grants process but an old hand in terms of editing. I understand the site but have no preconceptions about how things are being done or should be done. My experience in Lean tells me that we need new perspectives to find out where we are doing things because we have always done it that way rather than because it is the best way and to see gaps people have gotten used to seeing.

Thanks for this opportunity. ☕ Antiqueight ^chatter 11:30, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Ferdi2005

What country or region are you working in?: Italy
What regional committee do you want to participate in?: Northern and Western Europe

I’m from Bari, a town in the southern of Italy. I’m 16 years old and I’ve been contributing on Wikimedia projects since 2013. I’m mainly active on it.Wikipedia, where I’m a rollbacker, a mover and a bot maintainer, however I’m also a sysop on it.Wikinews, one of the smallest projects in Italian language. I was also one of the main organizers of itWikiCon 2020. I’m obviously active offline, too. I’m the local coordinator for my region (Apulia) of the local Wikimedia Chapter (Wikimedia Italy) and I’ve organized a lot of events, courses and projects with a variety of institutions, such as schools, the University of Bari and museums.

I believe that diversity is important and that diversity in age, which is quite usually neglected, should be considered, too. I think that, being a young but rather experienced Wikimedian, I could bring my young perspective in the committee. I have a bit of experience also in project management (which involves also asking for grants and sponsorships), considered the projects that I’ve organized with Wikimedia Italy (e.g. the local edition of Wiki Loves Monuments for Apulia). I think that also having had some WMF grants rejected is a worthwhile experience, because they helped me understand the flaws in my projects (or in the grant-making process :D).

Furthermore, I’d focus also on the replicability of the projects and their documentation: projects with good results should be easily replicable, with or without WMF funds, while identifying mistakes correctly is important so that no one else repeats them.

I’d encourage also partnerships with GLAM institutions, because they can bring a vast amount of content/volunteers and create a good form of contamination between different realities, benefiting both of them. Reaching out to the already present local realities should be valued a lot, too.

What’s more, I’d like it if the committee was personally involved in grantee’s formation sessions and worked with them to identify strengths and weaknesses of their projects even before they’re submitted for evaluation, because this is not a school: we are all working together to reach the common goal of creating the sum of (free) knowledge! This is the beauty of our movement.

I’d also give grantees more time to revise their projects and improve them when they receive the committees suggestions, also working with the committee itself or the community. This is one of the reasons why I’d try to make the Wikimedia community feel more engaged in the grant-making process, involving them and valuing more their approval or disproval of the proposals. In fact, we should acknowledge that local community generally knows its own needs better than we do, therefore I’d suggest trying to interact with them more frequently.

I’m a very positive and optimistic person, this doesn’t mean that I’m unable to tell the difference between a bad and a good proposal (even though I’m pretty young), but that I’d like to give everyone their chance to present the best proposal they can, giving them the assistance they need.--Ferdi2005 _[Mail] 14:24, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Mmo

Hello all, I am Marco, from Bologna, northern Italy and I would like to participate in the Northern and Western Europe committee. I have been working on Wikipedia since 2005 and on Open Street Map since 2014 and active in transparency and open data non-profits not directly connected to the wikimedia world since 2009. In october 2020 I presented and worked at the real time translation during the itWikiCon, and since may 2021 I am coordinator for the activities in Emilia Romagna for the italian chapter of OpenStreetMap (under wikimedia italy). Since 2016 I am also working with Open History Map, a non-profit trying to interconnect digital humanities data-diriven history data to create a map of the past. Since 2019 I am also in the directive of Mensa Italy as the treasurer.

I think that one of the most important elements to keep in mind in a project like Wikimedia is that the grants need to give at least a best practice as outcome, in order to be able to replicate that practice, considering all the possibile changes given by cultural adaptations.

Furthermore, I think Partnerships with organizations in the openness sector are key to get relevant content into the encyclopedia as well as to create synergies and data exchange through APIs.

As a third element, as a software developer, I think it is very important to ease the integration of the project data with third party content, be it through APIs, through specific endpoints around WikiData or any other form, but integration and standards have to be paramount in the definition of the proposals. Free knowledge comes from standardization.

--Mmo (talk) 20:09, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:DarwIn

Olá! I'm Paulo from Madeira Island, Portugal. I graduated in Biology, specialization in Biotechnology, though I only use that to run a (very) small farm at home. In the past I've worked as software developer, building ERP solutions and the advertising management system for Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (2000-2001), among other projects. Since 2003, I work as researcher in History, with a focus in Macaronesia, part of CLEPUL-Madeira, an University of Lisbon research center hosted at University of Madeira. Additionally, I co-run a small tourism-related family business, now sadly suspended due to the pandemic. I speak Portuguese, English, Spanish, reasonable French, and some Italian, can read Galician and some Catalan and other Languedoc languages. Currently learning German.

I'm a native and live in Madeira Island, Portuguese Autonomous and European Ultra-Peripheral Region located in Africa and part of Portugal. Born in a place far away from the rest of the country, I am quite familiar with the particularities, challenges and constraints of distant, isolated communities, often forgotten and underrepresented in the system/country they are inserted. Descending from all sorts of free and enslaved people that came or were brought to this island over the centuries, I’ve a strong sentiment of brotherhood with the fellow islanders from our sister archipelagos, Azores, Canary Islands and Cape Verde. Since the early 1990s I have been an activist in a number of areas, fighting as a student for affordable education, working as volunteer in AIDS/VIH support associations (Abraço and AP), volunteered in the LGBT+ suicide helpline and at ILGA Portugal, where I served as board member. I'm a volunteer and board member of Associação Presença Feminina, ONG working for protecting women against domestic violence, also developing a noticeable work of support and integration of local expatriate and migrant communities.

Joined Wikimedia in 2009, being active mainly in the Lusophone Wikipedia, Commons and Wikidata, with administrator roles in the first two, and also part of the Volunteer Response Team. In 2017, started doing Wikimedia educational activities at CLEPUL and Universidade da Madeira, formally joining Wikimedia Portugal (WMPT). There, I chair the "General Assembly Table" (non-decision-making and non mandatory-by-law board, in charge of organizing the General Assemblies), organize "Wiki Loves" contests, conferences and workshops and a number of other activities. I'm a global member of Creative Commons and active volunteer at OpenStreetMap, including the humanitarian project HOT.

In Wikimedia, my focus has been 1) outreach, development and project integration of traditionally underrepresented communities, notably women and non-binary, and Portuguese-speaking African communities 2) local outreach and educational projects with university and secondary school students, and seniors. I consider senior citizens, a large portion of Portugal's population, one of the most promising groups of potential Wikimedians, an immense source of expertise and knowledge, too often neglected and forgotten; 3) connecting with our sister free knowledge communities. I'm also active in Public Policy and digital rights groups, both at Wikimedia and national level.

I've written and received a number of grants, so I minimally know the processes and mechanisms involved in this task, and have a significant experience and knowledge of Wikimedia structures, from onwiki projects to affiliates, conference organizing and Wikimedia social networking, and - to some extent - WMF itself. I'm a strong advocate of inclusion of all sorts of knowledge in the platforms that form our marvelous project of building a freely and globally available encyclopedia, including oral and traditional knowledge, in all sorts of supports we may be able to. I've advocate that even those that can't write nor read and have all sorts of limitations in everyday life can be part of our projects without any feeling of limitation, if proper support is given, so that that knowledge can be shared, building the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge in a way that anyone who shares our vision is able to join us. Thanks, --- Darwin ^Ahoy! 20:07, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)

User:Красный

I'm founder of a North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User Group. I'm in Wikimedia projects since 2009, in movement since 2015. Q: What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem? A: Currently 90% of my activity goes with the User group I was founder of. I'm not a big participator in global community mostly because of a large amount of anticipation of it that is very common in CEE and, especially in Russian community where I'm active in.

As a member of Grant Committee I hope I can help CEE and Russian communities I belong to get as much support as any other community in the world and with that to solve at least a part of this anticipation between them and global one. Q: What would you do so grantmaking can have a greater impact? A: I believe that to have a better impact on a free knowledge movement grant decision making should be based not only on a current plans of applicants and a good faith but also on their previous impact, on their role in community and other notable parameters. Q: How do you think you could contribute towards building the committees’ role and ways of working? A: I want the Grant Committee to have the better understanding to whom they give money and whos application gets rejected. And i hope that in the nearest future we will have no good idea lacking for money and no money sent to nowhere. Q: Why do you think the committee needs someone like you? A: I think last few years Russian and some other communities of CEE separated from the global movement and I hope I can give that side view for the committee. Красный^{wanna talk?} 15:54, 3 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Melberg

Hello. I'm George Melashvili from Georgia, currently I'm a Board member of Wikimedia UG Georgia. Based on my knowledge and regional representation, I would like to be a member of the committee for CEE.

I'm an active editor of Wikimedia projects since 2008. I'm mostly active on my home Wikipedia, Georgian. Also active on other Wikimedia projects. In addition, in 2015, I became one of the founders of Wikimedia UG Georgia, which is the only Wikimedia affiliation in Georgia. As part of Wikimedia UG Georgia, I actively try to contribute to the development of Wikimedia projects in Georgian, and to build a strong Wikimedia movement in Georgia.

My vision for the committee to be a transparent, open body aiming to assist and make work of Wikimedia Affiliates smooth and able to react to solutions to the national, regional, and global challenges. Besides reaction, I believe that Wikimedia Affiliates should have an opportunity to become thought-leaders in their countries, nations and regions, promoting free knowledge and assisting countries where we can have maximum impact by creating access to world's knowledge.

Transparency and involvement of Wikimedia Affiliates in development of procedures, as well as decision-making, is the most crucial part. The pandemics forced us to actively use online communication methods, thus decreasing the necessity of permanent travel. I believe that we should utilize this new reality and increase communication with affiliates even more. Moreover, I believe that in-person communication, working together with the affiliates to identify issues and topics interesting to specific communities, is the key to success an increased participation - people tend to participate actively if they believe their voice will be heard, and one of my aims will be to give voice to the people.

We should work together with Wikimedia Affiliates to identify issues specific to their communities, and be ready and flexible to respond to problems that we might not have seen coming. Flexibility and working hard with affiliates is the most important way the committee should develop. I also strongly believe in cross-wiki cooperation and the necessity to increase visibility of small communities, and I envision the committee to support more cross-community initiatives in the future.

Besides being active in Wikimedia movement, my career path includes being chairman of the Initiative project - an attempt of the President of Georgia to increase youth involvement in civil life. As the head of the project, I was responsible for hundreds of micro-grant funded projects, for their financial oversight and additional activities. The project turned out to be a great success, with more than 500 small projects changing lives of people in their communities, and increasing youth interest in civil life, as well as their ability to make a change.

I am tremendously happy and eager to use my experience in non-profit sector for the sake of the committee, and if, the community finds my application interesting enough, I will be more than happy to contribute all my knowledge, experience and energy.--George M. (talk) 19:32, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:NickK

I am a current member of the Project grants committee, treasurer of Wikimedia Ukraine and a member of Wikimédia France, actively involved in Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe hub initiatives. Other than that I am a Wikipedian since 2008, active on Ukrainian Wikipedia (sysop and checkuser), Wikidata, Commons and some other projects.

Serving on the Project grants committee, I enjoyed supporting affiliates, groups of volunteers and individual Wikimedians in their projects and initiatives improving our movement. With an evolution of the grant committee system, I am willing to continue this by supporting initiatives in the CEE region.

I intend to bring my experience as an experienced Wikimedian to support the committee and help it become stronger and bring more added value to applicants. As I have been evaluating projects in the Wikimedia movement for almost 10 years (as a chapter board member looking at impact of our projects, as a grants committee member evaluating projects of other applicants), this experience should be useful for the committee. As I also happen to know context and challenges of many communities in the CEE region (particularly by being a part of organising teams of two CEE Meetings, 2014 in Kyiv and 2018 in Lviv), I would be able to better understand needs and reasons behind each request. And of course, the more expertise from different CEE countries we get, the stronger the committee will be.

NickK (talk) 11:20, 12 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:BruneiWMUA

I am Wikipedian since 2011, active in uk.wikipedia and en.wikipedia, Commons, uk.wikisource, etc. I am WMUA member since 2015, joined after Wiki Science Competition organizing. As a scientist I want to improve free knowledge quality, which I do through wikiprojects and popular science activity outside the movement. I applied for WMUA microgrant in 2017 and since then I am interested in promoting these grants for researchers outside the movement. Currently I am involved in talks with WMF affiliates considering research grants. I am not very active in Regional Wikimedia events so I believe I have a fresh view on larger processes. Fresh view is important as I could see attending Wikimedia Strategy event at WikiConference Berlin-2017. I also have vast experience of project evaluation in education and research sphere so I believe I can be of use.--BruneiWMUA (talk) 17:57, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Justinianus

What country or region are you working in?
- Turkey
What regional committee do you want to participate in?
- Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)
Tell us about yourself and why you want to join a Regional Committee
- I am a part of Wikimedia for about 15 years, especially in Turkish Wikipedia. Beside from Wikipedia, I'm doing some stuff at Turkish Wikisource (have admin rights there), Commons and Meta itself (by doing some translations). Joined the Election Volunteers for the 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections and keep informing my community (Turkish wiki-projects). Also I'm a member of Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey. We are making some stuff at there to help Wikimedia projects and the Movement expand throughout the Turkish community, with making events like edit-a-thons, online meetings and face-to-face meetings with public and private enterprises. As you know, it's very important to have good opportunities to make these events well. We may need grants to make them as it should be. To operate this events and grants we had eloquently, some users who can serve as a bridge between his/her communities and the Foundation are needed. I think that I can be one of these. Strong communication between the communities and the Foundation is required to carry out our plans for our community and I want to work for it. --justinianus 18:19, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]