Grants:APG/Proposals/2017-2018 round 1/Wikimedia Serbia/Progress report form

Purpose of the report edit

This form is for organizations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their progress after completing the first 6 months of their grants. The time period covered in this form will be the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). This form includes four sections, addressing grant metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. Please contact APG/FDC staff if you have questions about this form, or concerns submitting it by the deadline. After submitting the form, organizations will also meet with APG staff to discuss their progress.

Metrics and results overview - all programs edit

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Grant Metrics. We understand not all Grant or grantee-defined Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and

  1. Next to each required metric, list the outcome/results achieved for all of your programs included in your proposal.
  2. Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
  3. In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs success

For more information and a sample, see Grant Metrics. Explanation of grantee defined metrics:

  • No. of new files used on Wikipedia - the number of multimedia files that were used to illustrate Wikipedia articles.
  • No. of partnerships - these metrics imply the number of accomplished collaborations with educational institutions and cultural institutions, as well as non-governmental organizations within the projects and activities of Wikimedia Serbia. Cooperation can mean the implementation of various projects in these institutions, the organization of edit-a-thons, workshops, lectures, and exhibitions. We believe that these metrics are important because they show the growth of our programs and the expansion of the network of associates, and therefore affect the greater visibility of our organization and projects.

EDUCATION PROGRAM edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. number of total participants 854 1670 planned for the whole year
2. number of newly registered users 825 1360 planned for the whole year
3. number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects 769 1160 planned for the whole year
4. number new files used on Wikipedia 147 300 planned for the whole year
5. number of partnerships 29 35 planned for the whole year


GLAM PROGRAM edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. number of total participants 311 208 planned for the whole year
2. number of newly registered users 139 143 planned for the whole year
3. number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects 1138 3590 planned for the whole year
4. number new files used on Wikipedia 527 300 planned for the whole year
5. number of partnerships 10 16 planned for the whole year


COMMUNITY SUPPORT edit

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. number of total participants 202 116 planned for the whole year
2. number of newly registered users 35 35 planned for the whole year
3. number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects 7885 9550 planned for the whole year
4. number new files used on Wikipedia 1863 2400 planned for the whole year
5. number of partnerships 18 5 planned for the whole year


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Telling your program stories - all programs edit

Please tell the story of each of your programs included in your proposal. This is your chance to tell your story by using any additional metrics (beyond global metrics) that are relevant to your context, beyond the global metrics above. You should be reporting against the targets you set at the beginning of the year throughout the year. We have provided a template here below for you to report against your targets, but you are welcome to include this information in another way. Also, if you decided not to do a program that was included in your proposal or added a program not in the proposal, please explain this change. More resources for storytelling are at the end of this form. Here are some ways to tell your story.

  • We encourage you to share your successes and failures and what you are learning. Please also share why are these successes, failures, or learnings are important in your context. Reference learning patterns or other documentation.
  • Make clear connections between your offline activities and online results, as applicable. For example, explain how your education program activities is leading to quality content on Wikipedia.
  • We encourage you to tell your story in different ways by using videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g.), compelling quotes, and by linking directly to work you produce. You may highlight outcomes, learning, or metrics this way.
  • We encourage you to continue using dashboards, progress bars, and scorecards that you have used to illustrate your progress in the past, and to report consistently over time.
  • You are welcome to use the table below to report on any metrics or measures relevant to your program. These may or may not include the global metrics you put in the overview section above. You can also share your progress in another way if you do not find a table like this useful.
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Example Example Example Example Example

EDUCATION PROGRAM edit

Wikipedia in schools

Goal: introducing wiki projects into the academic environment

Description: students are writing seminar papers on Wikipedia or other wiki projects and for this they get points within the course/exam at their school or faculty.


Accredited seminars

Goal: enabling teachers to independently implement wiki projects in their institution

Description: the project involves the organisation of accredited seminars Application of online wiki tools as didactic tools in teaching and learning in secondary schools throughout Serbia. Seminars are accredited by the Institute for the Advancement of Education (state accreditation body for professional development of teachers) and teachers receive 8 points for professional development by attending it. It consists of all-day workshops on editing Wikipedia and highlighting how to implement wiki projects in teaching and learning. Seminars are intended exclusively for teachers.


Edu Wiki camp

Goal: attracting new Wiki ambassadors and Edu volunteers and strengthening ties between them

Description: This camp is organized within the Education program and serves for additional education of current Wiki ambassadors and attracting new ones, as well as strengthening the network of Edu volunteers. The program is diverse and includes education in terms of editing Wikipedia, cooperation with educational institutions, and technical things necessary for the realization of the Education Program.

Overview edit

During the first half of 2018, Wikimedia Serbia renewed cooperation with elementary schools on the project Wiki Pupil. We also started the development of video tutorials for editing Serbian Wikipedia. Beside this, we developed Tutorial for Wiki ambassadors (11 active for the time being) and we have established cooperation with several non-governmental organizations working on education of children and youth. As part of the Wikipedia in schools project, 34 workshops were held in schools and 12,300,000 bytes were uploaded in total. These workshops were held in 24 educational institutions with which we cooperated in the first half of this year.

Work on Wikidata has continued, and the interest in getting involved with Wikidata has been shown by even more partners this year. Two partnerships with educational institutions have also been achieved within the Community Support Program since they applied for annual grants with educational activities.

Wikimedia Serbia also received a new accreditation for the program of professional development of teachers. New accreditation for the "Application of Wiki Tools in Teaching and Learning" program will be valid for the next three school years, until the 31st of August 2021. Within the framework of the current accreditation, six seminars for teachers were held in the first six months of this year, attended by 134 teachers, and they have written 130 articles on Serbian Wikipedia.

These results were presented at the conference New Technologies in Education in 2018 in Belgrade, the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, the Wikipedia and Academia Conference in Dublin and at the WikiLive Conference, where a very attended roundtable was held on the topic of the Education Program of Wikimedia Serbia. The rest of the results can be found on the Outreach page.

Successful stories edit

Story: Accredited seminars brought cooperation with elementary schools

One of the seminars’ participant, Sanja Ječmenica, responded on WMRS’ invitation for the cooperation, which was sent during the event. She was one of the participants at the accredited seminar held at the elementary school "Jovan Sterija Popovic" at the end of 2017, and she decided to share her acquired knowledge with students and use it in class. The project was then expanded to other schools, so cooperation was also agreed with the "Sveti Sava" elementary school in Kikinda and the Regional Center for Talents from Belgrade.

"At the same time, we want to motivate students to explore, enrich and create pages on Wikipedia, but also to acquire functional knowledge," said Dragana Videnov, a teacher who implemented this project at the Sveti Sava Elementary School in Kikinda, and also one of the participants of the accredited seminars of Wikimedia Serbia.

Story: The Institute for the Advancement of Education has again recognized the significance of accredited seminars this year

Wikimedia Serbia received a new accreditation for the seminar "Applying Wiki Tools in Teaching and Learning" for the next three school years. The accreditation is issued by the Institute for the Advancement of Education, which is the official body of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, established for the purpose of monitoring, securing and improving the quality and development of the education system. The aim of the seminar is to promote the Wiki tools for educational purposes and raise the competencies of teachers for their use in teaching. This is the third accreditation that Wikimedia Serbia received.

Challenges and lessons learned edit

Challenge: Decentralization of the program

Decentralization of the Education Program’s activities is one of the challenges we face in our work, primarily in the context of the diversity of project activities already implemented and their planning. The goal of program decentralization is that Wikimedia Serbia strategically positions the activities of the Education Program as activities of relevance to education that are available to educational institutions outside of Belgrade. In the previous period, we visited many cities throughout Serbia, which was very challenging for us, especially considering the technical equipment of institutions in smaller towns. Through these activities, we realized that there is a very strong motivation of teachers from smaller towns in Serbia to participate in the project Wikipedia in schools, but also that Wikimedia Serbia needs to provide more technical and organizational support for their realization.

Lesson Learned:A Round Table on the Education Program during WikiLive helped create a more solid network of associates

During the local Wikipedian conference, we organized a round table on the Education Program with the aim of gathering teachers, professors and assistants with whom we cooperate in order to exchange experiences and create a more solid network of associates. Attendance to the round table was higher than expected, with participants from elementary schools, high schools and faculties. This event reminded us that it is very important to regularly assemble our associates and organize similar events, because it is obvious that the best way to learn something is by hearing others’ experiences. After this round table, during which a large number of questions were asked by the audience, the motivation of the participants to continue or renew the cooperation increased greatly. Therefore, we will organize similar events in the future as we have seen that they are the basis for further activities that contribute to the expansion of our Education Program.

What’s next? edit

By the end of the year, we are planning to complete a part of tutorials for editing Wikipedia, which we are creating in cooperation with the College of Electrical Engineering and Computing. We are going to use these tutorials for educational purposes later on. In the coming weeks, we will work on the preparation of the Edu Wiki Camp, which will have a diverse program. One of our goals is to get new Wiki ambassadors who will spread the Wiki idea and help us in the implementation of new partnerships and the expansion of the entire program. Our plan is to explore the possibility of awarding Wiki ambassadors with additional ECTS points for their volunteer work.

In view of the new accreditation for the seminar of professional development, we will work on the design of a new seminar, its organization, presentation and the work enhancement during the seminar. In addition, we will work on better monitoring of students' input, their labeling and quality. In addition, our goal is to include more Wiki projects in the Education Program in the next academic year.

GLAM PROGRAM edit

Wiki Loves GLAMers

Goal: Achieving cooperation with cultural institutions in order to increase free knowledge.

Description: Content release by GLAM institutions, organization of seminars on implementation of wiki projects in culture, realization of editing workshops of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commodities, organizing edit-a-thons.

Wikipedian in Residence

Goal: Establishing various forms of cooperation with the cultural institution, digitizing certain works, releasing them and educating employees on the application of wiki projects in culture.

Description:Engaging a Wikipedian in the cultural institution, where he will perform digitization, upload freed content to corresponding wiki projects, create content on Wikipedia based on available sources in the institution, organise workshops on editing Wikipedia, etc.

Wikimedians in Decentralization

Goal: Extending GLAM activities to parts of the country that are not covered by GLAM co-operation.

Description: One employee and one volunteer spend a short time in the cultural institution while doing internship on a smaller scale.

Overview edit

Within the framework of GLAM program, the successful cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Information of Republic of Serbia continued in the first half of the year, within which funds were also provided for the implementation of three internship programs.

Under the auspices of the Ministry, two GLAM seminars were held for representatives of museums, archives, libraries and other institutions. One of the seminars was realized in cooperation with the Museum of Vojvodina, which is responsible for all the museums in this province.

For the first time, #1Lib1Ref campaign was conducted in Serbia. With a total of 786 references, Serbia ranks fourth in the world, and the 10,000th reference of the campaign was added on Serbian Wikipedia.

Within the project Wiki Librarian, eight workshops were held with a total of 49 participants and 383 pages created on wiki projects. Eight publications have also been digitized, which is 2035 pages total.

The third annual Mime Day edit-a-thon was held as a part of the First World Conference on Pantomime, which brought 27 articles to Serbian Wikipedia and eight articles to Macedonian Wikipedia. In addition, for the first time, the commons:Category:World Mime Day Edit-a-thon 2018famous world mimes were photographed for Wikimedia Commons.

We organised a hiring process for the new Wikipedians in Residence, where we received 206 applications and we had interviews with 24 of them. Seven people were selected for the implementation of these programs until the end of this year.

The two-month internship in the Museum of Yugoslavia began, from the funds received from the Ministry of Culture. An internship tutorial was also written in order to facilitate future work.

The main activity of the Wiki-team Trstenik project - a three-day camp also took place. Secondary school students from Trstenik, Vrnjačka Banja, Kraljevo, Kruševac and Rekovac passed training on editing Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, and then they wrote and improved articles on the cultural heritage of this region and uploaded photographs released by the National Museum in Trstenik (National University).

GLAM activities were regularly shared with global Wiki Communities through the This month in GLAM newsletter.

Successful stories edit

Story: Expansion of GLAM program brings diverse activities

Cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Information of Republic of Serbia brought the official support of the State to the work of Wikimedia Serbia and the implementation of the GLAM program throughout our country. Consequently, the GLAM institutions’ perception in terms of content release and collaboration with Wikimedia has been significantly improved. After the seminars held at the Ministry of Culture and the Museum of Vojvodina, many institutions expressed their willingness, but also the necessity to cooperate and increase the visibility of their collections and the institutions themselves on Wikipedia and other wiki projects. The seminar was attended by representatives of 21 institutions of culture in Vojvodina, or about 40 cultural employees in museums, galleries and other cultural institutions of this province, including directors and managers. An advanced workshop on Wikipedia was attended by 40 participants who rated the seminar with the highest marks.

Participant of #1Lib1Ref campaign

One of the results of the cooperation with the Ministry is the proposal of this institution that Wikimedia Serbia will be the carrier of digitization of ethnological collections, together with the National Library of Serbia. Grant funds for the implementation of the internship program by the Ministry of Culture has allowed us three additional internships, besides the three previously planned, but this time for a period of two months.

Thus, for the first Wikipedian in Residence program in this year, we have chosen the Museum of Yugoslavia. This institution has proven to be an outstanding partner, implementing the need for two-way cooperation and proven effectiveness in releasing the material under Creative Commons licenses. This partnership is important because it is in line with the WMRS strategy - to strive for stable and long-term partnerships. The program was conceived as a continuation of activities from 2017, with an idea of additional data input and releasing additional materials that are currently unavailable on Wikipedia. For even better results, the Museum of Science and Technology joined the project and donated additional photos for article illustration.

WikiLive 2018 in Serbia, GLAM panel with partners

The first Serbian involvement in the global campaign #1Lib1Ref of adding references into Wikipedia pages was more than successful. The University Library "Svetozar Markovic", which has been leading the project "Wiki librarian" for four years, and the City Library of Belgrade were the main actors of this campaign. We held Wikipedia editing workshop and training at the University Library, where this global action was presented to the involved librarians. From January 15 to February 3, librarians, as well as other Wikipedians, tirelessly added references to articles on Serbian Wikipedia. With a total of 786 references, Serbia ranks fourth in the world, and the 10-thousandth reference throughout the campaign has been added in Serbian Wikipedia. The three librarians who added the most references were awarded by Wikimedia Serbia with vouchers of 1000 and 2000 dinars, together with certificates for contributing to the campaign, presented to them at the celebration of the 15th birthday of Serbian Wikipedia.

Within the WikiLive conference program, we organized a panel discussion with GLAM partners from cultural institutions. Representatives of the University Library, the National Library, the Institute of Technical Sciences of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Museum of Yugoslavia, the Heritage Museum of Trstenik, the Historical Archive of Pančevo, along with GLAM volunteers and former Wikipedians in Residence, helped in mapping the most common problems and challenges, as well as the advantages in working with the cultural institutions. A similar discussion was also organized with the a group of former Wikipedians in Residence, in order to share their experiences with new potential candidates for this position.

Challenges and lessons learned edit

Challenge: Relationship between the organization’s capacity and the GLAM potential

Given the support we received from Ministry of Culture and their open recommendation addressed to the cultural institutions to join the GLAM program, the interest for cooperation is constantly growing. Institutions are interested in cooperation on almost all project models, from releasing the materials, through GLAM seminars and additional Wikipedia workshops, to the Wikipedian in Residence program. In addition, the Ministry wants to include Wikimedia Serbia in other digitization activities, specifically on digitalization of heritage collections (with emphasis on the usage of materials). Bearing this in mind, our organization now faces the problem of capacity to realize all GLAM demand. This can potentially lead to slow cooperation, but also a possible loss of interest by institutions, given our inability to act quickly.

Challenge: Challenges within the external projects and how to overcome them

The Wiki-team Trstenik project did not meet the expectations, especially in terms of timely organization of a three-day camp for 30 students, as well as disregarding our recommendations for the project team to prepare for editing Wikipedia, so that they can provide quality training and assistance to pupils at the camp by themselves, but also fulfill other similar project activities. Wikimedia Serbia now faces the challenge to help successfully bring this project to an end, by investing the capacities of its employees and volunteers.

The project Wiki loves local museums had the idea to present the GLAM program to museums in Vojvodina. However, this was mostly done through the seminar that was held at the Museum of Vojvodina. Now we are considering the best model of restructuring of this project into support and assistance to the realization of existing and potential new GLAM cooperation with museums in Vojvodina.

Lesson learned: Redirecting projects can help improving your program

Due to the great interest of many cultural institutions for the Wikipedian in Residence project, the decision was made to divert the funds that were originally allocated for the project Wikimedians in Decentralisation towards additional two Wikipedian in Residence programs. GLAM decentralization is needed, but with the growing interest of cultural institutions and the support of the Ministry, institutions outside of Belgrade are successfully covered. It is estimated that the engagement of Wikimedia Serbia’s staff and volunteers is more needed at this time in the implementation of the internship programs, compared to the Wikimedians in Decentralisation project (planned one-week stay in institutions throughout Serbia).

What’s next? edit

By the end of the year, Wikimedia Serbia will have six more Wikipedian in residence programs. Two programs will last for two months and will be financed by the Ministry of Culture, while five more one-month programs will be funded by Wikimedia Serbia (three programs are planned in the annual plan, while two will be realized through reorienting funds from the project Wikimedian in Decentralization). At the end of the year, we have planned media promotion of the results, with a special focus on the results of internships under the auspices of the Ministry.

New GLAM seminars organized by the Ministry of Culture are planned for September, but additional ones are expected, in cooperation with the representatives that attended the previous workshops and proposed the realization of these activities in their institutions. Seminars include a presentation section on the possibilities of implementing wiki projects in culture, making it easier to introduce institutions to the GLAM program and to further establish cooperation.

Serbian Ministry of Culture and Information, Wikimedia Serbia and the National Library of Serbia are planning to digitize the heritage collections. The role of Wikimedia in this process is focused on the use of digitized material in wiki projects, thereby increasing the visibility of such collections, as well as the dissemination of knowledge of cultural heritage.

A part of the participants of the GLAM seminar have expressed their interest and the need to gain additional skills in editing Wikipedia, as well as for their colleagues in the institutions to be trained to edit. Therefore, additional editing workshops are planned in such institutions, with the idea that they should be mainly implemented by experienced GLAM volunteers, or leaders of projects that will be transformed according to the real needs of the organization.

GLAM in Serbia awaits the opportunity to cooperate on models for which the cultural institutions expressed interest during seminars and other forms of communication. We strive to establish a stable cooperation when it comes to releasing content, organizing edit-a-thons, setting up QR codes, etc.

COMMUNITY SUPPORT edit

WikiLive

Goal:enabling members of our community to get to know each other, networking and strengthening the connections between them

Description: WikiLive is a local annual Wikipedian conference, which is conceived with the idea of ​​strengthening the spirit of community, interconnecting the participants and involving them in the WMRS programs. The conference consists of a two-day program covering various topics from Wikipedia.

Community motivation

Goal: establishing better communication with the community and reducing the gap between Wikipedians and Wikimedians

Description: Within the project, activities such as community gathering, microgrants, organization of Wiki stand at public events, birthday celebrations, support for individuals in relation to the realization of activities and informing the community about various events through various communication channels are realized.

Article writing contests on Wikipedia

Goal: increasing the motivation and active participation of the community in Wiki projects

Description: The Contests on Wikipedia are organized several times a year. They usually last for a month (except CEE Spring) during which participants write and improve articles on various topics. Members of the jury evaluate the articles, after which the winners are proclaimed and rewarded. Contests are a good way to reduce the gap between Wikimedians and Wikimedians.

Overview edit

Within the framework of the Community Support Program in the first quarter, the most important events were the local Wikipedian Conference (WikiLive), the CEE Spring Competition and several organized gatherings and birthdays.

Since the volunteer community of Wikimedia Serbia is diverse, the Community Support Program has different target groups and accordingly various activities are carried out. One of the most important events that occurred during the first half of 2018 is definitely WikiLive Conference. WikiLive is a local conference of Wikipedians who contribute to Serbian Wikipedia. The gathering was organized with the idea to connect editors, strengthen the community and inform about current issues and problems on Wikipedia. This year, the conference brought together over a hundred editors of Wikipedia, online and offline volunteers who wanted to share their knowledge and hear something interesting from their peers. One of the new additions was also the call for community members to participate with the topics they wanted to present at the conference.

WikiLive 2018 in Serbia, Group photo

The conference itself had a two-day formal part that was full of various workshops and lectures. In addition to typical presentations, the program was enriched with interesting workshops in order to activate the participants. Unlike previous years, this year there were several parallel sessions, so the participants had a greater choice. The sessions that made the conference program had two goals. One was to provide as much information as possible to the audience both on current happenings on Wikipedia and on the activities of Wikimedia Serbia. The second objective was to enhance the involvement of participants in current projects and the obtaining of feedback. In the first quarter, the puzzle statuette for Branislav Jovanović Award was created. Several candidates were nominated and a longtime Wikipedian Dražen Dražeta won. Soon after the conference, everything was presented in a blog post that was shared with the community.

The first part of the year was also reserved for a very important contest on Wikipedia - CEE Spring 2018. This year CEE Spring has been the most successful so far. It was organized in cooperation with the Wikimedians of Republika Srpska User Group. As before, the rewards were selected as motivation, and we used a proactive approach in the form of sending individual invitations to Wikipedians to participate in the competition. At the end of the competition, we had 740 new and improved articles, thus Serbian Wikipedia earned third place in the global competition. It is praiseworthy to note the very good cooperation between the jury members and their responsiveness in evaluation, given the large number of articles.

In addition to conferences and contests, the important thing within the community motivation are birthdays, gatherings and other actions that are being undertaken in order to increase the motivation of Wikimedia Serbia community:

  • Fifteen years of Serbian Wikipedia - this year, Serbian Wikipedia celebrated 15 years of its existence. In order to celebrate this jubilee, Wikimedia Serbia has launched a series of promotional activities before and after the birthday. Friends from chapters all over the world sent their birthday wishes to Serbian Wikipedia community. So we shared them on social networks and presented at the event. The celebration was held in Serbian - Korean Information Access Center, and the opening speech was given by the representatives of Wikimedia Serbia and the author of the first article on Serbian Wikipedia. The event was attended by over 30 guests, among which were contributors and volunteers. Event pictures can be seen in this category.
  • In the first six months of 2018, 30 blog posts were written in order to invite the community to engage in current activities, as well as to notify the community of current events.
  • Nineteenth meetup of General Assembly was held in February. Changes for the important acts were proposed, and then adopted (the Bylaws and the Financial Policy).
  • At the very beginning of the year, a Microgrant funding call for proposals was announced. First, a plan and a time frame were created, and then a decision-making committee was set up. There were 14 proposals submitted to the competition. Although their number is not big, we can say that we have achieved our goal in terms of quality. Each project had similar objectives to the mission of Wikimedia Serbia. After two rounds of selection, the decision was made to accept 6 proposals which we have signed contracts with:
    • Southeast through the lens 2 - the idea is to motivate a large number of individuals and institutions in Niš through activities such as photo-tours, exhibitions, tribunes, which are continuation of activities from the previous year. In addition to the massive collection of photographs under free license, the goals of the project include increasing free content in the form of Wikipedia pages;.
    • Dragonfly-riding school - the aim of this project is enriching Wikimedia Commons with photographs of the diverse flora and fauna of Serbia, as well as writing new articles and improve existing ones, which is one way of raising public awareness of the importance of biodiversity and conservation of nature. Primarily, dragonfly species will be photographed (Odonata), as well as vascular plants. Biodiversity means the diversity of the living world at different levels, so in addition to photographs of individual organisms, their habitats as well as the areas in which these habitats exist will be photographed.
    • Belgrade Librarians on Belgrade - This project is realized in cooperation with the Library of Belgrade. The idea is to start the cooperation with writing and improving articles about the capital of Serbia, and about municipal libraries, events, cultural heritage of Belgrade and the like.
    • Flora and fauna of water habitats and invasive species of Serbia - Through this project, a group of students from Novi Sad will strive to enrich free content on the types of water habitats as well as invasive species of Serbia. It is planned to visit important water habitats and other types of habitats in Serbia, where different types of organisms will be investigated, which will subsequently be written in articles, supported by a large number of free images.
    • Wild Wiki Parks 3 - The participants plan to write articles for at least 100 types of daily butterflies during the realization of this project, thereby facilitating the availability of this information on the Internet and additionally contributing to the development of Wikimedia's Wikispecies project. In parallel with this activity, the team will organize a photo competition in cooperation with the fungi association from Niš.
    • Let's meet the geomorphology of Serbia - this project will increase and expand free content in the field of Geomorphology on Wikipedia, and the articles will be illustrated with photographs related to that area. In addition to these activities, the volunteers will tend to increase the interest of pupils and students for editing.

One project is accepted outside the micro-grants and will be part of the Community Support Program. It's called Little school of editing.

  • In addition to the aforementioned activities, we also have projects that are being implemented by individuals who make a significant contribution to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Let's meet Fruška Gora, On the border of Pannonia and Dinarides, and Roadside memorials and tombstones are supported by Wikimedia Serbia, and the results of previous work can be found on the following links:
    • Let's meet Fruška Gora - the participants plan to, in cooperation with CA "Fruškać" from Novi Sad, photograph and discuss the topics and terms related to Fruška Gora, which will be found on Serbian Wikipedia (towns and settlements, monasteries and churches, natural and tourist destinations, lakes and caves, flora and fauna, monuments of culture and nature, etc.) - Wikipedia page with the list of articles, Commons category, usage of images
    • At the border of Pannonia and Dinarides - the project involves the creation of multimedia material which represents a space between the Kolubara river and Valjevo mountains. This is done through several different thematic units which by their nature make an important segment in acquiring new knowledge and education - Commons category, usage of images in articles.
    • Roadside memorials and tombstones of the Moravian district - the project’s objectives consist of the extensive presentation of the topic of old tombstones and memorials on Serbian Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons - Commons category, the list of articles.

Successful stories edit

Story: Feedback from the participants of WikiLive can significantly increase the quality of conference

During the three years of organizing the conference, we collected feedback from the participants and the organizational team in order to improve the quality of our conference. Based on the document in which we entered all positive and negative sides of the conference and evaluation surveys, we introduced the following improvements:

  • We had a more proactive approach when it comes to attracting Wikipedians. We sent individual calls to volunteers, and posted the event on popular portals, we also created gifs of participants from previous conferences, in which they invited people to apply and we also shared a blog post with the experiences of previous participants.
  • We invited Wikipedians and volunteers to submit conference topics. The response was not great, but the received proposals were included in the program.
  • We introduced round tables for Edu and GLAM partners. These sessions proved to be very successful. Gathering contributors in one place has enabled us and them to look at all the benefits, but also the problems we face. There is an initiative to organize such meetings outside the conference as well.
  • Within the conference program, we introduced game energisers and games, which helped us make participants better acquainted and entertained.
  • In addition to the standard presentation of editing Wikipedia, the program also included Visual Editor training. Experience has shown that Visual Editor is much simpler for new users and easier to use.
  • We have also introduced a project-writing workshop for those people who are interested in our grants, and have an idea they wish to realize.
  • A social event was organized - Underground Belgrade tour which inspired the participants to contribute to Wikipedia through articles and photos.

Story: Reducing gender gap through the activities of the Community Support Program

In March, Wikimedia Serbia joined the global WikiGap campaign aimed at raising awareness about notable women. Through organizing edit-a-thons in more than 40 countries, the Swedish embassy and the Wikimedia chapters have worked together to increase the visibility of notable women. In Serbia, the edit-a-thon was held March 7th, in the Serbian-Korean IT Access Center. In total, 25 participants attended, and they wrote and improved 45 articles. Students from the Swedish Department of the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade also participated in the event. The media reported on the edit-a-thon, and the Swedish Ambassador and the Minister of State Administration and Local Self-Government gave statements at the event. After the edit-a-thon, all the impressions were summarized in a blog post. In the final part of the event, a cocktail was organized to invite some of the women about whom the articles were written during the day. Thus, photographic materials were also collected to illustrate the articles. Photos are available on the Wikimedia Commons.

Story: CEE Spring has achieved the best results so far

CEE Spring 2018 was held on Serbian Wikipedia from March 21 to May 31, and the organizers were Wikimedia Serbia and the Wikimedians of Republika Srpska User Group. The results exceeded the ones from last year, having in mind that 608 new articles were written, and additional 132 articles were improved. When we compare metrics over the years, we can see a significant increase both in the number of participants, as well as in the number of articles and bytes. This can be graphically displayed as follows:

Challenges and lessons learned edit

Lesson learned: Proactivity and the right selection of candidates for the allocation of micro-grants

When announcing the call for micro-grants, we faced a challenge in terms of the announcement visibility itself, as well as the visibility of individuals and organizations submitting their projects. This time we wanted to avoid situations in which we receive many projects that often do not have the same goals as our organization or are not related to wiki projects. That's why we focused on quality this year. The call for submission of projects has been sent through all the available communication channels, as well as through the portals whose users belong to our target group. In addition, the call was sent to some of the previous contributors. Thanks to this approach, we received 14 proposals of good quality, six of which were accepted within the framework of micro-grants and one within the framework of community support.

What next? edit

In the upcoming period, within the Community Support program, we are expecting two more article-writing competitions on Serbian Wikipedia. When choosing topics, we take into account topics proposed by the community. We will continue to support projects of individuals who significantly contribute to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, as well as the ones who received our micro-grants. Throughout the year, wiki meetups will be organized once a month, and we are planning to have a representative at the Volunteer Supporters Meeting that will be held in November in Vienna. In addition to these regular activities, we also have the idea to establish regional cooperation with Wikimedians and Wikipedians from the region. Selected models of cooperation can be wikicamps, edit-a-thons etc.

Work of Board and Academic Board edit

Board edit

Throughout the first half of the year, the Board of Wikimedia Serbia held 6 regular meetings, during which 8 resolutions were made. The resolutions were mainly focused on current issues such as awarding prizes to winners of the competitions on Wikipedia, but also sending delegates to international conferences and events. The Board were dealing with project and HR management, but also with financial matters. In addition to internal organizational matters, members of the Board followed and were familiar with international developments in the Wikimedia Movement.

Board Members also participated in other segments of the organization's activities:

  • Some of the Board members were also members of the Microgrants Committee. Within this call for projects, they reviewed received proposals, ranked and selected those for whom the funds were approved.
  • Board members took part in the process of deciding who will be next Wikipedians in Residence. They had two rounds of selection and at the beginning of July, a decision was made on selected candidates.
  • Board members were also delegates at international conferences and events to which they were invited (Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, Wikicamp in Hungary).
  • One of the Board members was a jury member for the CEE Spring competition.

Academic Board edit

During the first half of the year, Academic Board held a meeting where numerous topics were covered. In addition to reviewing the report on the work of the Academic Board and the work on the Education Program, members reviewed the recruitment of new Wiki ambassadors and new members of the Academic Board. They also mentioned possible new models of cooperation within the Education Program.

Academic Board meet-up

Media edit

GLAM Presentations at Museum of Vojvodina
15th Birthday of Serbian Wikipedia

In terms of media, this year traditionally began with the announcements regarding the birthday of English Wikipedia. Birthday was celebrated in January and we had 26 posts in media regarding this topic. The fact that Serbia is number one in editing Wikipedia bearing in mind edited pages compared to the population was also interesting for media. The most important news in February was 15th birthday of Serbian Wikipedia. There were 30 mentions recorded in media regarding this celebration.

WikiGap edit-a-thon also caused great media attention which resulted with 22 posts. In the same month, World Mime Day edit-a-thon was also mentioned in media.

Beside this, we talked about Education Program four time in media and special mention is made on TV N1 on this occasion.

Other projects such as Language Laboratory (realized project in 2017), Exploring Fruška Gora, Wild Wiki Parks, Raška in the valley of the centuries were mentioned in media for 12 times.

Annual Wikipedian conference, WikiLive was mentioned in media 8 times. The most significant report was the one given by Radio Television of Serbia.

Cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Information regarding GLAM workshops for cultural institutions drew attention of various media (Vojvodina, other). Camp for pupils in Homeland Museum in Trstenik also had media coverage.

In total, 187 posts were recorded in the first half of the year, and in additional 280 posts, Wikipedia was mentioned in margins.

Significant links:

Revenues received during this six-month period edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

  • Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
WMF Grant EUR 60,572.00 60,572.00 0 60,572.00 71,973.47 71,973.47
Republic of Serbia Ministry of Culture and Information EUR 4,231.02 0 4,231.02 4,231.02 5,027.42 5,027.42
Revenues from other donations EUR 91.34 2.53 88.81 91.34 108.53 108.53
Membership fees EUR 10.14 10.14 0 10.14 12.05 12.05
TOTAL EUR 64,904.50 60,584.67 4,319.83 64,904.50' 77,121.47 77,121.47

* Provide estimates in US Dollars

In-kind donations edit

Donator In-kind donation Value (in EUR)
Interglider Hosting and server administration service 1,440.00 (120.00 monthly)
Serbia-Korea Information Access Center Space for the celebration of the 15th birthday of Serbian Wikipedia 300.00
Elementary School "Moma Stanojlović", Kragujevac Space and catering for accredited seminar for teachers 300.00
Serbia-Korea Information Access Center Space and equipment for the #WikiGap edit-a-thon 500.00
Embassy of Sweden in Belgrade Catering for the #WikiGap edit-a-thon 100.00
Railway Technical School Space for accredited seminar for teachers 200.00
Elementary School "Jovan Jovanović Zmaj", Obrenovac Space and refreshment for accredited seminar for teachers 250.00
Serbia-Korea Information Access Center Space for the World Mime Day edit-a-thon 300.00
Elementary School "Vuk Karadžić", Donji Milanovac Space and catering for accredited seminar for teachers 300.00
Serbia-Korea Information Access Center Space for the Wiki Live 2018 conference 1,000.00
University Library "Svetozar Marković" Space for the Earth Day edit-a-thon 300.00
Museum of Vojvodina Space and catering for the two-day GLAM workshop 600.00
Secondary Medical School, Zrenjanin Space for accredited seminar for teachers 200.00
Serbia-Korea Information Access Center Space for the three-day GLAM workshop 600.00
Republic of Serbia Ministry of Culture and Information Refreshment for the three-day GLAM workshop 150.00
Institute for Contemporary Education Space for accredited seminar for teachers 250.00
TOTAL 6,790.00

Spending during this six-month period edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
Office EUR 11,134.00 2,618.00 3.047.80 5,665.80 13,229.75 6,732.27 50.89
Staff EUR 48,840.00 12,292.67 12,304.29 24,596.96 58,033.15 29,226.85 50.36%
Services EUR 2,826.00 741.14 616.81 1,357.95 3,357.94 1,613.56 48.05%
Contingency and Board budget EUR 3,000.00 256.71 535.55 792.26 3,564.69 941.39 26.41%
Participation in Events EUR 4,000.00 626.74 2,391.07 3,017.81 2,675.16 3,585.85 75.45%
Educational Program EUR 6,200.00 3,178.29 1,030.11 4,208.40 7,367.03 5,000.55 67.88%
Free Content: GLAM EUR 11,600.00 2,642.45 1,237.35 3,879.80 13,783.47 4,610.09 33.45%
Community Support EUR 11,900.00 2,886.73 4,999.87 7,886.60 14,139.94 9,371.09 66.27%
TOTAL EUR 99,500.00 25,242.73 26,162.853 51,405.58 118,228.89 61,081.65 51.66%

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Translated report edit

Report will be available in Serbian here.

Compliance edit

Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement? edit

As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

  • There were no noteworthy deviations.

Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • Yes

Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • Yes

Signature edit

Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.

Resources edit

Resources to plan for measurement edit

Resources for storytelling edit