Grants:APG/Proposals/2019-2020 round 1/Wikimedia Argentina/Impact report form


Purpose of the report

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This form is for organizations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their results to date. For progress reports, the time period for this report will the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). For impact reports, the time period for this report will be the full 12 months of this grant, including the period already reported on in the progress report (e.g. 1 January - 31 December of the current year). This form includes four sections, addressing global 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.

Global metrics overview - all programs

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Total metrics Participants Newly registered Content pages Diversity Impact Comments
Education Program 7918 547 1689 80% 11 projects supported 8 projects mentored in LATAM and 3 in Europe
Culture & Open Knowledge Program 3424 205 37736 9 cultural communities* *3268 cultural leaders (+300 organizations involved) Mainly books, historical materials and databases in Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wikipedia.
Community Building Program 724 114 8517 340 women involved in our gender activities* 5 communities
Total 12066 846 47942 n/a n/a n/a

Changes in our metrics

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The context affected and modified the development of some of our metrics:

Program Grantee metric Status
Culture & Open Knowledge Program* *Diversity: 15% of the content released is from local heritage at risk The Technical Support Fund was implemented in December 2020 given the restrictions due to Covid - Argentina had one of the longest quarantines in the world with +8 months. This situation has affected the evaluation of this metric directly linked to at-risk and underrepresented cultural heritage funds. We expect to see the impact during 2021.

Instead, we evaluated the impact of our training proposal in involving diverse cultural communities as participants. During 2020 we worked with participants from 9 cultural communities. This diversity shows the importance and potential role of Wikimedia projects in the cultural and heritage field, beyond museologists, archivists and librarians. The 2021 program also responds to the inclusion of these potential allies.

*Impact: 10 organizations adopt open licenses. Cultural institutions are closed, making it very difficult for us to access new content and/or institutions to release under free licenses. For this reason we changed the focus of the program to accompany, train and mentor on open access policies and free licenses. In this sense, we are going to evaluate the number of cultural leaders and organizations trained and mentored on these topics.
Community Building Program** Diversity: 10 new leaders from communities historically excluded as part of WMAR. To identify, strengthen and involve new leaders in our community, meeting and getting to know each other is fundamental. We have incorporated new women and people from other historically excluded communities but distance training takes more time. For this reason and given the context, we are going to focus our evaluation on the number of new women and people from historically excluded communities actively involved in our gender activities.
Impact: At least 5 emerging communities mentored and supported in the region. We have not been able to carry out our fellowship for new leaders/communities because of the context and situation in Latin American countries. Instead, we assessed the number of supported communities in LATAM during 2020.

Executive Summary

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As for all organizations inside and outside the Wikimedia Movement, Wikimedia Argentina has faced a complicated and challenging context. Even so, we have been able to rethink and adapt our programs, design new proposals that respond to the context and needs of our communities and partners, and identify new opportunities.

WMAR's team

The WMAR team has worked throughout the year remotely. In Argentina the mandatory quarantine lasted until the beginning of October, and then we moved to a more lax system where we were able to reconnect with our loved ones.

In this challenging context, the physical and mental health of the team has been our number one priority. In this sense, we designed a year that would allow us to: learn, innovate, and enjoy. To this end, we worked mostly by objectives, in a flexible, learning environment, more horizontal than ever, and with plenty of room to innovate and create new proposals that would allow us to break the monotony of confinement.

Beyond the work, I want to highlight the human group that is Wikimedia Argentina. During 2020 we have supported and accompanied each other in the good and not so good times. The relationships of trust have been strengthened internally and we have even successfully incorporated new people to the team.

Strategy

During 2020 and in faced of the challenging context we defined our strategy the following way:

  • Define our strategy as a living process: flexible, open, and adjustable from which we can learn during its development.
  • Avoid the idea that strategy is only under the domain of senior staff; strategy should be done throughout the organization
  • Avoid complexity and favor becoming a learning and cooperative organization.
  • Define a "responding strategy" not just to the demands and needs of our target groups but to the context and its challenges
  • Prioritize feasibility, continuous evaluation, and innovation.

Programs

The programs - explained below - are the best outcome that we as an organization have been able to deliver during this context, where we are still learning.

  • Education and Human Rights program: we have located, contextualized and adapted our proposals more than ever. This has resulted in the program's greatest impact to date with +7900 participants involved in +66 proposals along with 47 partners.
  • Community program: we focused our efforts in increasing the diversity of our community, identify new leaders and support and recognize the work of our long-standing community. We also have taken the opportunity to address a great remaining issue: to open the organization and our programs to participants beyond Buenos Aires.
  • Culture and Open Knowledge: we developed a much more strategic program and strengthened its capacity building, mentoring and resource allocation approach. This has not only resulted in +3200 people trained but also in positioning us as a reference organization for the Argentine cultural communities.

The work we carried out on communication during 2020 is also noteworthy. We had 57 press mentions throughout the first semester of 2020 spotlighting the programs activities on mass communication media. Regarding the social media, we increase our followers and audiences in all the channels. However, we would like to spotlight our growth on Youtube, which allowed us to expand the number of followers almost four times its size meaning +70.000 displays.

Regional Cooperation

We have worked more than ever with the region during 2020. Beyond holding the first Fellowship for leaders of the region we strengthened the peer to peer support system more than ever either by participating in activities, sharing technical resources or supporting the planning and development of communities. Latin America is growing and this is one of WMAR's major commitments for the coming years: to accompany this growth and its sustainability.

Strategy process

We have been actively involved in the strategy process, also accompanying its adaptation to this context. We remain committed to it in order to ensure the greater participation and inclusion of Latin America and its communities during the implementation phase.

Education & Human Rights Program

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Summary


Unlike in other countries, in Argentina the entire 2020 school year was developed in a virtual way in every educational level. In a country in which connectivity and access to internet is not a guaranteed right for all, this implied a challenging context in order to sustain educational continuity.

Access to internet was critical in many Argentinean educational institutions and in many homes. According to data gathered by Unicef (2020), 18% of Argentina’s teenagers have no internet access, and 37% of them have no tablet, notebook or PC to use for online homework.

From an educational perspective, this situation implies that not all educators and students were ready to working online. From a survey on educators from our community, we observed that 66% of educators did not carry out online activities before the pandemic. The context of obligatory virtuality made even more evident the importance of digital literacy in the educators’ training and open educational resources, per example.

To face this context during 2020 we adapted and redefined our projects and goals as the following:

  • Properly responding to the educators’ demands for training and resources.
  • Positioning Wikimedia Argentina in strategic spaces related to public policies of education at a national level.
  • Promoting the role of Wikimedia projects in the Human Rights’ field, both inside and outside the Wikimedia movement.

And we carried out the main following projects:



The Education Program & pandemic context

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Adapting our program to educators’ needs

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The beginning of the lockdown coincided with the beginning of the school year in Argentina. Those first weeks of March were very dramatic, with a huge amount of proposals that were often more confusing than helpful. For this reason, we decided to stop and our first strategy was to listen to the educators’ real needs. It was evident that educators needed support to adapt their classes to the online format and that digital literacy was a priority, but in which aspects did they actually need training? On which tools? How could our program contribute? Listening allowed us to adapt our existing proposals so they could be useful and think of new activities according to the needs of the context.

Thus, during the year we could:

  • Adjust our training proposals for educators to the new reality
  • Go deeper into our work on OER and provide the educators community with educational resources according to their needs.
  • Design new educational proposals using the Wikimedia projects to address educators' challenges.

For these reasons, during 2020, we have focused on strengthening the educators’ skills and abilities through the Wikimedia projects and free culture, and we have done this in the following way:

a) Digital literacy and skill development trainings adapted to the online context

We have adapted and modified our programmed proposals in format, adapting the schedule and reorganizing our calendar, to prioritize the most meaningful initiatives given the context.

What have we done during 2020?

a) Adapting and expanding our online course

During 2020, we carried out 6 online training that we adapted as follows:

  • We adapted our Wikipuentes course to the context by bringing the beginning of the first course forward, from May to April.
  • We incorporated online sessions to answer doubts on editing and support participants in the process.
  • For the first time, Wikipuentes was supported by the National University of La Plata, issuing a joint certification.
  • We expanded our distance trainings offer. In alliance with the University of Río Negro and Portal Educ.ar we designed two new projects with national reach.

Which have been the most important results?

  • 293 people participated in Wikipuentes and 513 articles were edited.
  • The University of Rio Negro's course reached 211 teachers that improve 240 articles
  • The Educ.ar course had 3 editions that involved 1336 participant from all over the country.
b) Wikipedia at the University

Even though universities were the first educational institutions that managed to adapt to the online format, the project faced a few challenges:

  • The educators’ work in the classroom was modified and that partially slowed down the project’s implementation, especially during the first half of the year.
  • Developing a truly inclusive remote project that guarantees the participation of all students, given the limitations to internet access.

Which have been the most important results?

  • For the first time, we developed a 100% remote project and designed mentoring and support opportunities for educators and students.
  • We worked with 12 higher education institutions from 6 provinces, at a national and regional scale.
  • We engaged 371 people in the improvement and creation of Wikipedia articles on different themes: sports, human rights, international law, pig farming, natural sciences, history, engineering.
c) Promoting the creation, use and access to open educational resources

The difficulties faced by Argentinean education during 2020 made the need and the importance of access to Open Educational Resources evident.

This line of work, which we will continue promoting during 2021, got significant results this year:

Which have been the most important results?


b) New projects as a response to educational challenges

The context not only had an impact in the reformulation and adaptation of our educational projects but also we designed new educational proposals to provide proper tools for educators in this context:

  • design new training proposals for educators related to digital literacy, an essential  theme to face the challenges imposed by the context.
  • generate support and counseling spaces that favor the exchange of resources and knowledge among educators.
  • design new educational resources adapted to the needs and resources of Argentina’s educators.

For these purposes, during 2020, we designed new educational proposals:

What have we done in 2020?

a) New educational webinars: strengthening the community of educators in times of crisis

During 2020 together with the National University of Quilmes, we organized the series of Webinars “Education and creativity in times of the coronavirus” as a response to:

  • addressing the lack of training and necessary resources to deal with the needs imposed by the context of forced virtuality.
  • generating proper support networks, especially during the first three months, the most critical for the education community.

What did we do in 2020 and which were the main results?

  • We organized  23 webinars, with 27 experts. 6000 educators enrolled, of which 5255 participated in a continuous way from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, EEUU, España, Italia.
  • We engaged leading organizations as part of the proposal: UNICEF, National University of Quilmes, National University of Avellaneda, Educar, University of Buenos Aires, Sadosky Foundation, Ceibal Plan, among others.
  • We continuously evaluated the quality and satisfaction of the project. As a result, most of the themes were suggested by participants themselves.
  • 80% of participants emphasized that these sessions made them rethink the role of education and create new education proposals using valuable resources suggested by our guest experts.
  • 80% of participants said that the training sessions were useful for planning their classes.

b) New educational resources adapted to the reality of Argentinean schools

As a response to the context and the needs and demands of educators, during 2020 we designed a new series of educational resources: “Teaching with Wikipedia” This series comes from the identification of three needs educators have:

  • Training in the use of the Wikimedia projects beyond editing content;
  • Designing accessible and inclusive material which can be used both online and offline;
  • and which is functional to the national curriculum and the subjects educators address in their classes.

What did we do in 2020 and which were the main results?

  • We designed 5 booklets in which we address Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata and we crosscut them with curriculum areas of the first cycle of high school.
  • Each booklet has a theoretical section, in which projects are explained, and a section with activities for the classroom. In this sense, we strengthened the work of the Wikimedia projects in the classroom, beyond creating content, as tools for learning.
  • To develop them, we called 3 experts in education, technologies and science teaching, who advised as in creating and editing content and activities.
  • We opened a national enrollment, in order to reach every interested educator. 640 educators enrolled to receive the booklets - 220 of them printed- from 24 Argentinean provinces.

What was the impact of this educational approach?

  • Adapting the program to the needs, context and urgency of educators was key to be a relevant program at a local and regional level. This translated into the development of an emerging learning community during 2020, engaging 7270 participants directly and 25 organizations.
  • More than ever, we promoted the development of a program with a national outreach; our educational proposals engaged educators from all the provinces in the country.
  • We forged alliances with very relevant education institutions at a national scale: National University of Quilmes, UNICEF, National University of La Plata or EDUCAR, which allowed us to position the program as a protagonist and ally of the educators community.
  • Through the development of new contextualized proposals, we expanded and positioned the debate about the ways in which the Wikimedia Projects can be useful in the classrooms and can be part of any learning process.
  • The outreach of our Open Educational Resources campaign grew by 1800% in 2020. Not only did we get new educators to contribute their own material but we also positioned the debate, reaching new contexts with the debate on the importance of these resources.
  • The program also grew in outreach within platforms such as Youtube, where our training projects were viewed +40,000 times in 2020.

Main results:

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year Comments
Number of teachers 600 5789 7270 n/a
Number of students 960 59 342 Most of our activities with students were done at the second part of the year.

This numer represents students participating in Wikipedia at Universty and Editing clubs projetcs

Number of articles created/improved 1234 597 881 Due to the pandemic, our activities with universities and school were less than in 2019. This numer represent those activities and the virtual courses done this year.
% Diverse content 80% 45% 80% n/a
Resources designed 10 29 70 Resources developed during the pandemic for teachers, students and educational institutions




Education & Human Rights

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Consolidating Human Rights agenda

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Since the beginning of 2020 we decided to strengthen and promote the Human Rights projects in the Wikimedia movement at a global, regional and local scale. In collaboration with other Wikimedia and Human Rights organizations, we defined a strategic work plan which can be summarized in three items:

  • Promoting Human Rights as part of the Wikimedia Movement agenda.
  • Encouraging the use of Wikimedia projects to promote and advocate for Human Rights
  • Adapting the project to virtuality to engage experts as editors.

How did we work during 2020?

The program was able to quickly respond to the challenge of the context; in this sense, our expertise allowed us to define a new strategy to work in the following way:

  • Prioritize work on urgent subjects from the Human Rights agenda: digital safety, data protection, care-giving strategies from a feminist and dissident perspective, tool self-management from a Human Rights perspective in internet, Human Rights in contexts of confinement, etc.
  • Generate strategic alliances with local, regional and international organizations, taking advantage of the obligatory virtuality in order to offer spaces for encounter, training and network collaboration in a continuous way, focusing on the debate about Human Rights in internet and the Wikimedia Movement.
  • Create new dynamics of online training that adjust to the realities of each community that has been historically excluded from Wikipedia, as well as its history and struggle experiences.

For this purpose, during 2020 we carried out the following projects:

a) Building Wikimedia projects with a Human Rights perspective and from the Global South

During 2020 we promoted editing campaigns with a global outreach and new online training projects at a local and regional scale with a double objective:

  • Engaging long-term editors in the edition of content related to and with a Human Rights perspective.
  • Engaging experts and historically excluded communities in the construction of their history and local memory.

What did we do in 2020 and which were the main results?

  • Together with the WMF and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, we designed and led the development of the first global campaign for the creation and translation of Human Rights, youth and rights content in Wikipedia, which took place between November 2019 and March 2020.
  • We developed new resources and material to lead Human Rights projects in local contexts. In this sense, we coordinated +15 encounters to advise and mentor 7 communities at a global scale.
  • Also, we organized 17 spaces for online training and editing Wikipedia on Human Rights and Historical Memory in El Salvador, Argentina and Colombia, +39 hours of an online workshop in which we trained +380 activists, underrepresented communities, journalists and researchers from the region.
  • We improved 810 articles on LGBTIQ+Historical Memory in El Salvador, Sites of Memory in the World, Crimes against Humanity in the Region, Universal Human Rights System, Human Rights in contexts of imprisonment, among others.

b) Strengthening alliances with Digital Rights organizations from our region

During 2020 we continued working to strengthen our presence and our alliances with Digital Rights organizations from our region, with a double objective:

  • Positioning the Wikimedia projects in the agendas of Human Rights organizations
  • Improving our training on digital rights and our presence in local debates on this subject.

What did we do in 2020 and which were the main results?

  • We strengthened our alliances with Datos protegidos, Karisma, Access now, TEDIC, PPN, CIPDH, Hacemos Memoria, Agencia Presentes y CCESV, with whom we worked on 9 projects during 2020.
  • We developed an internal training space for the team in order to train and update us on digital rights, internet governance, human rights, intellectual property, security and data protection.
  • We advised on digital rights training at a regional level. In collaboration with Wikimedia Venezuela we designed a series of training webinars for the region. We engaged +60 participants from Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua and Venezuela in alliance with leading organizations such Digital Rights, Access Now, Karisma and Enredadas por el Arte y la Tecnología.
  • We promoted the presence of WMAR in coalitions and local debates, in particular those regarding intermediaries liability at a national level. We also incorporated a professional consultant to work on the subject in Argentina.

Which were our results, beyond the numbers?

  • We continued leading and generating training and mentoring spaces on the subject of Human Rights within the Wikimedia Movement. It is worth mentioning that during 2020 we directly supported the development and adaptation of the project in Wikimedia Switzerland and Wikimedia Czech Republic.
  • We managed not only to strengthen but to expand our alliances with benchmark organizations in the field of Human Rights in internet to offer interdisciplinary training proposals on the subject.
  • We adapted our training proposals to an online format that allowed us to lead workshops on editing Human Rights-related content in Wikipedia, engaging experts and historically excluded communities related to Human Rights, memory and crimes against humanity in alliance with organizations and public institutions such as CIPDH (Argentina), PPN (Argentina), Hacemos Memoria (Colombia), CCESV (El Salvador), UNLP (Argentina).
  • We managed to maintain our joint work with volunteers, staff and referents of the Wikimedia Movement, which allowed us to delve into the debate about strategies and guidelines to approach the Wikimedia projects from a Human Rights perspective.


Main results:

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year Comments
# WikiDDHH edit-a-thons 9 4 13 1 onsite edit-a-thon pre pandemic, and 12 remote edit-a-thons.
# articles 206 770 808 UN Human Rights Campaign, Wiki Human Rights Edit-a-thons in Colombia and Argentina.
# participants 597 263 383 UN Human Rights Campaign, Wiki Human Rights Edit-a-thons in Colombia and Argentina.
%diverse content 80% 85% 85% UN Human Rights Campaign, Wiki Human Rights Edit-a-thons in Colombia and Argentina.
%women confortable 100% 100% 100% UN Human Rights Campaign, Wiki Human Rights Edit-a-thons in Colombia and Argentina.

Highlight story: a Human Rights agenda for and with the Wikimedia Movement

Between September 2020 and January 2021, we designed and led a series of interviews on Human Rights in internet. We published 8 interviews of 20 experts who are referents in Latin America, Europe and Africa. The series of interviews was characterized by proposing dialogs with both an academic and social perspective, addressing issues that are considered urgent, such as: misinformation, gender and dissidencies, historical memory, archives and free culture, content gaps in internet, digital communication with a gender perspective or collaborative coverage on Human Rights in Wikimedia Commons. The interviews are now available in our Youtube channel and have been viewed 646 times since being posted in September 2020. These conversations were key to consolidate our regional alliances and position WMAR in the agendas of local and Human Rights organizations in Latin America, such as Access Now, Vía Libre Foundation, Periódicas, Presentes Agency, Network of Journalists with a Gender Vision, and continue consolidating our leadership in this subject within the movement, engaging Wikimedia Chile, Wikimedia Mexico, Wikimedia Tunisie or Wikimedia Switzerland.


What has been the greatest challenge of the context?

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The Covid-19 pandemic brought to light the large inequalities that exist in Argentina. In  the education sphere, the most evident inequality was the difference in access to internet and devices. The possibility (or lack thereof) to carry on with the continuity of learning varied in each school according to the possibilities of students and educators to access connectivity. Taking this situation into account, we had to adapt our education projects to this reality. The way it was designed, the Editing Clubs project implied direct contact with students, which was impossible during the current context, except for three experiences that we managed to develop towards the end of the year, with schools whose teachers and students had guaranteed connectivity. As a result, during 2021 we have paused our Wikipedia editing project in primary and secondary schools. In response, we will continue to promote our "Teaching with Wikipedia" project and train teachers in the educational use of Wikipedia projects in the classroom.



What have we learned and what will we maintain in 2021?

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  • Contextualizing our proposals: in the face a such a huge crisis as the Covid-19, it is important to stop and listen to what the education community needs. Proposals work if they make sense to the people with which we work and that sense lies in listening, exchanging and working together.
  • Continuous assessment and adaptation: it is necessary to continuously revise the proposals, even the ones that have worked for a very long time. Continuous assessment allows us to adjust projects and make sure these changes are updated and useful. Also, it allows us to detect and readapt when an experience is not working and needs to be reformulated.
  • New assessment method: it is urgent to think of new ways to work with the Wikimedia projects in the classrooms. Even though editing is an essential way to participate in the Wiki world, there are many other ways of working with the Wikimedia projects in education.
  • Become allies: the Wikimedia projects are great allies to civil society organizations related to Human Rights content in internet, since they allow to make content visible, reduce gaps and give voice to the stories and struggles of historically excluded communities.
  • Prioritizing training on safety and protection: there are still surveillance, persecution and harassment practices in Internet and in our local context. It is essential to address these issues within the Wikimedia projects, in pursuit of guaranteeing reliable and safe environments where users feel protected and use the Wikimedia projects without any risks.


Culture & Open Knowledge program

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Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on state-funded and private cultural activity all over the world. At an international scale, information gathered by the ICOM or IFLA reveal that at least half of the cultural institutions were not able to properly incorporate digital services, a situation that is even worse in the Global South and especially in Argentina, where cultural institutions such as museums, archives, research institutes and libraries were closed to the public and to their own workers. This led, in general, to the discontinuance of in-person activities with our counterparts and a long adaptation period from offline to online activities.

The context revealed significant structural weak spots concerning resources, especially regarding technical equipment and staff, as well as the urgent need for training in digital conservation inside cultural institutions. This urgency made us not only reformulate our content program but also prioritize new areas of work in order to position ourselves as a relevant organization in the institutional agendas.

In the face of this situation, in 2020 we completely redefined the objectives of the program to the following:

  • Consolidating and strengthening our bonds with cultural communities.
  • Providing resources and designing training opportunities according to the needs and demands of cultural spaces.
  • Promoting and positioning the debate on free culture and policies of open access within cultural institutions.


Adapting our cultural program

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A new approach for a new cultural context.

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The complete closure of cultural institutions revealed a reality that is far too common in the Global South: cultural institutions absolutely lack the resources and means to face a context of total virtuality. Therefore, the context not only redefined our agenda, but also the agendas of all our allies and counterparts. This made us completely restructure the program, and more than ever we focused on capacity building proposals, dissemination of free culture and the development of new projects that allow us to maximize our impact and outreach.

Despite this very challenging year, the context has also been an opportunity that allowed us to:

  • Identify, analyze and research the state of Argentina’s cultural situation, in particular the communities’ needs to generate proposals accordingly.
  • Design a more inclusive and federal program.
  • Design a program that makes training and mentoring a priority.

During 2020 we worked on the following lines of work:

a) A program that is suitable for cultural communities

2020 has been a great opportunity to deal with one of our big pending issues: identifying and gathering information about the state of cultural communities in Argentina, as well as about their challenges and needs:

What have we done during 2020?

a) Assessing cultural communities needs

During 2020 we worked on assessing the cultural communities needs with the objective of:

  • Improving the adaptation and impact of our activities.
  • Identifying potential allies as part of our program.
  • Positioning Wikimedia Argentina as an ally within the cultural sector.

Which have been the most important results?

  • We organized 4 surveys to get to know the use of the Wikimedia projects in cultural environments as well as the interests, needs and challenges of libraries, archives and museums in this context. A total of + 1900 people from + 400 cultural spaces from Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia participated.
  • We correctly identified the opportunities and challenges of the program within the cultural sector and we designed a program that is more suitable for this context. This fostered the development of a much more strategic program, adapted to the context.
  • The analysis was key to define new projects, metrics and identifying our strategic allies during 2020.
  • We generated a new data base of potential allies with interests in line with free culture and the Wikimedia projects (+3500 cultural leaders)

Which has been the main impact of this work?

This work has been key to re-adapted and think strategically and design our new cultural projects, mainly on capacity building, mentoring opportunities and new strategic alliances.

b) A more strategic and federal program

Despite the total closure of cultural institutions, this context has also been an opportunity to redesign a much more strategic, federal and innovative program:

b) New audiences & diverse content added

During 2020, we designed a new strategy not only to involve key alliances to achieve the impact and reach we projected, but to also open the program to new audiences and to keep incorporating missing content. To this end, we are working through the following strategy:

  • We identified and engaged new cultural experts as allies, in order to be able to properly respond to the training demands.
  • We forged alliances with networks of organizations with a large national and Latin American outreach, in order to expand our impact and engage new voices in our program.
  • We made alliances with civil society organizations that are renowned in matters of gender & diversity, digital rights or local culture to broaden our scope and topics.

What did we do in 2020?

  • We defined common agendas with major strategic allies: Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Fundación Espigas, Fundación Via Libre, IFLA LAC etc. with whom we worked in a sustained manner during 2020 and carried out 13 activities. As a result we expanded the diversity of our public - +80% new public in our activities.
  • We incorporated new collaborators and allied cultural experts (+26 referents) as part of the program, which has allowed us to position ourselves as a referent organization within the cultural world.
  • Beyond continuing to develop campaigns such as #1bib1ref, we foster our work on topics such as misinformation, gender & diversity, local culture & science and heritage education, mainly in Wikipedia and Wikidata. We improved 12469 articles involving +200 editors. Our heritage education project was downloaded +1000 times.
  • For the first time we federalized the program and developed 8 training workshops for cultural institutions outside Buenos Aires.

Which has been the main impact of this work?

  • This approach has been key to generating proposals with the scope and impact we projected. We increased our program's impact by 50% during 2020.

c) A program focused on capacity building

The context forced us to come up with faster and more specific answers to the learning needs of our cultural communities. In this sense, during 2020 we worked on:

c) New training opportunities

We redefined and designed a new program based on distance training with the following objectives:

  • Providing theoretical and practical training to workers of the cultural sector so they can face the challenges of the context..
  • Supporting and advising cultural institutions in the process of digital transformation.
  • Consolidating and giving professional status to the capacity building line within our program.

What did we do in 2020?

  • We designed 9 distance training proposals -divided in 36 training spaces- on intellectual property, digitization and open access policies.
  • We trained + 3200 participants from all across Argentina and Latin America in a direct way (+9500 post-visualizations)
  • We assessed the participants’ learnings during all the year. For instance, the need for training on intellectual property dropped from 80% to 61% during 2020.

Which has been the main impact of this work?

  • We identified not only the most important learning topics, but also the necessary resources, such as the lack and need for open cultural resources and the lack of free-of-charge and quality training. This information has been essential to develop the 2021 program.
c) Piloting a mentoring initiative

One of the great opportunities of 2020 has been to be able to design a pilot mentoring initiative along with Fundación Espigas, for cultural institutions that would allow us:

  • Address the questions and difficulties of cultural institutions in this context.
  • Modify our 1-on-1 format to a more inclusive, diverse and federal format.
  • Promote the importance of digitizing projects.

How did we plan it in 2020?

We have designed two mentoring sessions for cultural institutions. The pilot, which we will replicate in 2021, is organized as follows:

  • Define the theme in a concrete way - digitization and intellectual property - and make a call open to the participation of all cultural institutions.
  • Collect all questions and doubts in advance.
  • Select relevant questions and group them by themes or similar problems.
  • Incorporate, when necessary, professionals of the themes to accompany the mentoring sessions

Why has this work been important?

This pilot has allowed us not only to understand what are the major problems of cultural institutions in Argentina in terms of open access but also to design a much more sustainable and appropriate initiative. While we still need to be able to concretize our accompaniment to something more stable, this pilot is the basis to continue working on a mentoring initiative during 2021. As a remarkable result, 836 people signed up and +200 participated from around 100 institutions nationwide.


What was the impact of this new cultural approach?

  • Identifying the demands and needs of our cultural communities has been essential to design an inclusive program with new locally relevant projects for this context, such as the new training and mentoring projects that reach most Latin America and involving organizations, regardless of their size, resources and origin.
  • The context has allowed us to being the development a new assessment method for the program based on the learning process and the strengthening of skills, an essential approach to continue growing in diversity and participation.
  • To consider alliances from a strategic perspective has allowed us to expand our outreach, our impact, and engage 11 new counterparts to our program, while also share responsibilities in long-term projects.
  • This less content-centric approach is allowing us to establish and strengthen our partnerships in a much more sustainable way. This is key to the sustainability of the Wikimedia movement, which in addition to new editors, needs new organizations and their communities to continue to strengthen its mission.


Main results:

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
Promote the free culture in 10 institutions 13 n/a n/a We changed this metric as cultural institutions are closed, making it very difficult for us to implement free licenses policies in new organizations.
Number of organizations directly trained 11 8 11 In-house editing courses with cultural institutions. Around +300 institutions involved in our online trainings.
# new cultural leaders involved in our cultural program 511 2335 3268 +4300 visualizations during the following next two weeks, after our trainings.
Training satisfaction n/a n/a 90% 90% defined our tranings as excellent and/or very good.
# diverse cultural communities reached 5 3 9 cultural managers, archivists, librarians, museologists, curators, international organizations, university professors in the field of culture, public institutions, gallery owners.
Content improved/created n/a 1973 12469 Mainly Wikipedia and Wikidata.
Number of editors involved 750 232 (115 new) 271 (205 new) Lower than originally planned due to the program focus on capacity building.
Reach n/a 19 countries 19 countries We engaged participants from Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Spain, Cuba and Argentina.



Supporting cultural institutions

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Success: expanding our digitization project

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Undoubtedly, last year was very challenging for our digitization project. The complete closure of cultural institutions plus the lack of internal digitization policies have made it necessary for the digitization project to be in-person. This situation has affected our work and above all our results, but it has also opened an opportunity to:

  • Design and diversify our work proposals to support our allies.
  • Distribute and allocate resources to continue accessing underrepresented content and promote the incorporation of long-term digitization projects independent of our presence.
  • Promote and position the project in new cultural spaces.

In this sense, during 2020 we redefined the project in the following ways:

What have we done during 2020?

a) Providing comprehensive support to our long-standing counterparts

We continued working with our long-standing counterparts within the digitization program: Argentinean Academy of Letters, City Libraries, National Academy of History, National University of La Plata. Despite not achieving the expected results in terms of released content, the context has given us the possibility to strengthening our work and presence in these institutions more than ever.

What did we do in 2020?

  • We reorganized our priorities for this context: training, distribution of resources and focus on diversity and underrepresented local content.
  • We organized 6 training and mentoring workshops and we positioned the work of our long-standing counterparts in 11 dissemination spaces.
  • Through a survey, we assessed our digitization project beyond the release of content, through the use and access of content by users.

Which were the main results?

  • The number of visits to the heritage released grew by 95% during 2020.
  • We expanded the program to two new partners that preserve content currently missing in the Wikimedia projects -the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes and Museo Penitenciario.
  • We released 148 book, meaning 23761 pages improved in Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia and Wikisource mostly literature, history books and images content that is currently considered a priority by survey respondents (66%)
  • We identified the project’s greatest challenges: while +50% of survey respondents knows about it, only a small number of them actually uses the material (18%). This information is key to improve the project during 2021 in two areas: socialize the heritage accessible and work with cultural heritage that’s also relevant for Argentinean users.

b) Resources to digitize underrepresented and heritage at risk

One of the 2020 digitization project’s best initiatives was the 1st Edition of the Technical Support Fund to support the digitization of currently underrepresented and endangered heritage in Argentina. Supporting this new institutions with digitizing projects is key to strengthen and improve the diversity of content in the Wikimedia projects and contribute to decolonize the Internet and how the Argentinean history is written.

What did we do in 2020?

  • We launched the first pilot of the Technical Support Fund through an open call for organization from all over the country.
  • The call focused on cultural institutions without digitization projects and/or with underrepresented cultural heritage that is relevant both for the Wikimedia projects and for Argentinean society.
  • We help establish long-term and more independent digitizing projects in new cultural institutions.

Which were the main results?

  • 25 institutions enrolled for the Technical Support Fund, including university libraries, national, provincial and municipal museums and Culture Departments from different city halls.
  • We signed three new agreements with Museo de la Ciudad de Rosario and Municipalidad Adolfo Alsina. In both cases, they have underrepresented heritage on Argentinean history.
  • Through this project, we will guarantee that local endangered cultural patrimony is not only safeguarded and protected but also accessible for Argentinean society. Our next fund in 2021, will be focus on diversity.

What has been the impact of this re defined approach?

  • Prioritization of the digitizing projects in the agendas of our long-standing counterparts.
  • Redefinition of the role and responsibilities of our WIR, beyond the release of content and based on training, technical resources and advising.
  • Taking the project to a national scale and boosting our outreach, in order to gain access to diverse cultural heritage to fully represent the local cultural diversity.
  • Strengthen the program's focus on diversity in order to contribute to the decolonization of Argentine history on the Wikimedia projects and Internet.
  • Assessment of the project and definition of new metrics for 2021 beyond released content, such as the amount of underrepresented content, the amount of growth and continuity of institutions in the project, the growth of institutional-led digitizing projects etc.


Main results:

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
Number of new partners 2 3 4 Due to the pandemic the start of activities was delayed
Content improved/created: 375 books* (96559 pages uploaded to commons)

340 items in Wikidata

52 books (11.866 pages uploaded to commons)

208 items in Wikidata.

1651 in Wikisource

48 Wikipedia.

148 books (23.501 pages uploaded to commons)

208 items in Wikidata.

1651 in Wikisource

48 Wikipedia.

New content uploaded to Commons, Wikidata, Wikipedia and Wikisource by our digitizing project.

Lower amount of new content due to Covid context.

Wikipedia page views 9.784.970 5.475.898 13.119.648 n/a
Commons page views 100.813 89.466 118.209 n/a


What has been the greatest challenge of the context?

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The context revealed something we already knew: cultural institutions do not have digitizing projects (our survey revealed that around the 70%) and a large part of them do not have an adequate cataloging policy either. This also clearly highlights challenges in measuring our program through a content-centric metric as well as reopens the discussion of how we should evaluate cultural programs in the Global South. Even though we did carry out several encounters of training, mentoring and support, the context and the institutions’ own limitations have brought to light how enormously our program depends on face-to-face work.

This situation affected our program metrics and the development of our projects, mainly those focused on content released. Although the results have not been as expected, we have been able to rethink the program and evaluate it further through the diversity of communities trained, their learning process and the development of a new learning community, no small achievement.


What have we learned and what will we maintain in 2021?

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  • Incorporating a new assessment method: we cannot assess the quality and outreach of a program quantitatively exclusively. 2020 has been an opportunity to better focus our assessment on measuring our outreach, support and mentoring projects and skill development and learning initiatives. These are not only much more adjusted to the reality of the program but also to the reality of the context, and they are essential to continue strengthening our objectives and our impact.
  • Designing a new strategy: we have designed projects that are much clearer in their objectives and beneficiaries in order to provide a stronger identity to the program and also respond with quality and relevant proposals to the needs of our cultural communities. This approach has positioned us more than ever within the Argentinean cultural sector and has been key to give a professional status to the program.
  • Encourage independence: if we realized anything during 2020, it is the high level of dependence of the institutions on our face to face projects, especially in the area of digitizing. Therefore, it is essential to continue training and providing resources in an equitable manner, in order to establish strong, long-term digitizing projects led by the institutions themselves.
  • Being flexible and creative: keeping our programs open to creativity and innovation, and flexible in their implementation has been key 2020.. Opening our program to innovation has allowed us to do pilot projects, generate new alliances and consolidate lines of work.



Community Building Program

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Summary

The pandemic brought challenges to us all and it directly affected our community and our program which adapted its objectives to deal with them. In particular, we prioritized keeping in touch with our community and opening short-length spaces of encounter while respecting virtual disconnection times as well as design new proposals that address both the physical and mental burnout from participating in online activities after an entire year and the different availabilities for leisure activities

For these reasons, initially during 2020 our objectives were redefined to the following:

  • Responding appropriately to the demands and interests of our community.
  • Diversifying and reaching new volunteers as part of our community.
  • Providing resources, supporting and strengthening the community at a regional scale.


Local community

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Supporting, strengthening and diversifying WMAR’s community.

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During 2020 the Community Program faced many challenges. Our activities with civil society organizations were mainly cancelled due to changes of their priorities and we also decided to postponed projects, such as our fellowship program for emerging communities due to the context in LATAM.

Still, we could redefine our objectives and develop a support and inclusion program at a local scale, which allowed us to work with our long-standing community and incorporate new editors and volunteers at the same time, especially women.

For this purpose, during 2020 our activities were designed with the following strategy:

  • Regularity: this allowed us to consolidate stable bonds and generate a sense of belonging.
  • Short periods of connection: the activities we designed lasted a maximum of 2 hours, in order to respect the participants’ right to disconnection.
  • Support and wellbeing: We strengthened Wikimedia Argentina’s role as an organization that supports, advises and is present for its volunteers, regardless of their possibilities in this context.
  • Communication flow: We kept opened multiple communication channels as well as conducted targeted communication taking into account the interests of each participant and partners to invite them to those activities that we know are in their areas of interest.
  • Recognition and appreciation: We recognized the work of our volunteers and counterparts more than ever, with meetings, after-office encounters and even presents. We strengthened our bonds more than ever during the pandemic.

With this approach, during 2020 we worked in the following way:

a) Supporting long-standing and new editors and leaders

During 2020, we carried out new activities to involve new editors as well as to continue involving our most active leaders with the aim of:

  • Strengthen, despite personal difficulties, their sense of belonging to Wikimedia Argentina.
  • Encourage the growth and turnover of the historical community of editors.
  • Identify and include potential new volunteers locally as part of WMAR

What did we do in 2020 and which were the main results?

  • We carried out 25 activities. 10 of them have been workshops for beginners, open to the public, which allowed us to take participation to a national scale (9 provinces involved). We involved 150 participants 90% of participants were new editors.
  • We identified the interests of new participants and as a consequence we organized 10 workshops about Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata [1][2][3][4] and on specific subjects such as gender[1].
  • We engaged 39 leaders from our community as mentors during our activities and we identify 7 new potential leaders, currently active Wikimedians.[1]
  • We avoided single encounters and designed 7 follow-up activities to support the incorporation of new editors to the community.
  • We improved +8200 articles in Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons

b) Diversifying Wikimedia Argentina

2020 was an opportunity to work in a systematic, comprehensive and continuous way on one of our main lines of work: gender and dissidencies in order to:

  • Engaging new women participants as active editors in Wikipedia
  • Engaging historically excluded communities in the creation and edition of their own history in the Wikimedia projects.

What did we do in 2020 and which were the main results?

  • We designed 15 new activities to deal with the problem of the gender and dissidencies gap in a comprehensive way. For this purpose, apart from editing content, we designed training spaces to reflect and make the problem visible.[1]
  • We involved 123 new participants in editing activities. 72 were new editors.
  • We improved 293 articles mainly on women's biographies, women's soccer, history of feminism and women's rights.
  • We involved 12 active volunteers in our gender initiatives and we engaged 15 women as potential new community members: they joined our women community group, they participated in new activities or we provided them 1 to 1 mentoring support.

What has been the impact of this approach?

  • Designing open virtual proposals allowed us to reach new audiences and federalize participation.
  • Despite the context of isolation, maintaining fluid communication was a key point to accompany the community and maintain the bonds of belonging.
  • Designing proposals according to what the public was asking for allowed us to generate long projects with very committed audiences.
  • Generate alliances with specialists on gender issues, allowed us to present the issue of the gender gap to a wider audience that was often attracted by the participation of renowned specialists.

Main results:

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress End of year (projected or actual) Comments
Engaged volunteers. 37 28 51 n/a
New women involved n/a 68 94 Only local activities
Improved/created articles 8112 5688 8517 Mainly Wikidata and Wikipedia
% of satisfation 90% 95% 95% n/a
New aliances 3 3 8 See here

Highlight: the first online course on gender and Wikipedia

During the first half of 2020 we organized a series of encounters about Wikipedia and gender which had very good results and was widely accepted by the public. As a way to delve into that line of work, with the support of the National University of La Plata, we organized the first online course on “Gender gap & Wikipedia”. The course was 6 week long, with 2-hour-long online encounters. We addressed the issue of gender in the Wikimedia projects, while also worked with experts on writing with a gender perspective and the graphic representation of women and diversities in the media.

This first pilot allowed us to:

  • Design a comprehensive and continuous training proposal with a fixed group of participants.
  • Comprehensively deal with the issue of the gender gap in Wikipedia and debate proposals in order to reduce it.
  • Consolidate a safe learning space.
  • 100% of the participants were satisfied with the course.

During 2021, one of our priorities will be the design of a distance training program on this subject with regional outreach.




Regional cooperation

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More regional cooperation than ever

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2020 was the year of regional cooperation. Despite the context, every WMAR program worked collaboratively with allied communities within the Wikimedia Movement and also with various organizations with regional outreach. More than ever, we supported each other, shared resources and mentored communities in pursuit of developing and strengthening the region.

This translated into the following goals:

  • Strengthening joint work and a more equitable distribution of our resources
  • Supporting wellbeing among LATAM communities.
  • Advising on the development and growth of emerging LATAM communities

For these purposes, we worked in the following way:

a) Peer to peer learning among LATAM communities

  • We designed the first fellowship program on education, Human Rights and community programs(see the report here) During 5 in-person working days, we work together on projects led by Wikimedia Chile, Wikimedia Colombia, Wikimedia Bolivia, Wikimedia Ecuador and Wikimedia Venezuela on these subjects.
  • We used +160 hours to peer to peer support regional communities. +100 hours were used in mentoring and following-up the Education and Human Rights Fellow during 2020.
  • We supported communities on their strengthening and development. Such is the case of Wikimedia Colombia, with whom we worked together in the development of their first strategic plan and grant application.
  • We advised on the incorporation of a new community to the movement: Wikimedia El Salvador. During 2020, we organized five encounters with this budding community, 3 of them concerning online training with the community of women editors to strengthen their work on Human Rights issues in Wikipedia.

b) Projects and resources for regional communities

  • Leaded by Wikimedia Chile, we designed 3 “Communities in crisis” encounters, in which we supported, shared and suggested ideas to work on difficulties in a collaborative way.
  • In coordination with Wikimedia Mexico and Wikimedia Chile, we organized the 1st online encounter on gender gap and online safety, privacy and violence with a regional outreach. The event was organized in a format of two working days, engaging 30 women leaders from the Wikimedia Movement and 60 new women.
  • We supported the development of 5 initiatives suggested by regional groups. We advised the planning, preparation and financing of proposals led by regional volunteers engaging +100 participants.
  • We designed common resources for the entire region like website of Community Resources. During 2020, the website was visited +31,000 times.

c) Engaging the region in the 2030 strategy

  • We continued leading conversation regarding the 2030 strategy in the region, in particular in Spanish-speaking organizations.
  • We carried out 6 encounters to share and explain the recommendations and the role of communities in their implementation.
  • We organized 2 women leaders meetings to set common position on topics that directly affect us.
  • We organized the meeting to identify our common priorities within the Spanish speaking communities.
  • We promoted the global events on the strategy among regional affiliates through all our channels of communication.

What has been the impact of this approach?

  • More than ever, we were able to consolidate common agendas and projects which translated into around 25 activities during 2020.
  • Despite the context, we strengthened our bonds and work with most LATAM affiliates. The number of activities grew by 147% in 2020 and this was key to reformulate our 2021 program.
  • We could define common lines of work and strategies, especially regarding gender, Human Rights and education.
  • We were able to support proposals beyond the Argentinean borders in a comprehensive way and allocate technical, human and financial resources accordingly.
  • We continued promoting the development and incorporation of a Latin American perspective to the 2030 strategy, and the incorporation of the groups in global conversations.

Highlight: Working with the Wayúu people

The Wayúu are an Amerindian ethnic group of the Guajira Peninsula in northernmost part of Colombia and northwest Venezuela. For several years now, Wikimedia Venezuela has been doing an excellent job in accompanying and supporting the growth of the Wayúu community - as represents the largest indigenous group in Venezuela -as well as its Wikipedia, still in incubator. This is fundamental for:

  • preserving the Wayúu language through the use of the Wikimedia projects
  • incorporating Wayúu culture into Wikimedia projects and so currently underrepresented content.

To carry out this project we have spent +6 months working directly with the community, listening to their needs and developing the appropriate resources [1][2][3][4], as well as establishing strategic alliances along the way. And we feel that there should be no other way to work with communities and indigenous peoples.

This project, which will be born as a pilot, we hope can be replicated and adapted to the needs of other indigenous peoples and thus continue working to promote the Wikimedia movement as the essential infrastructure of all knowledge, as established in the 2030 strategy.


What has been the greatest challenge of the context?

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One of our objectives for 2020 was to work in collaboration with civil society organizations to address issues of agenda and interest to local citizens. However the pandemic and social isolation impacted on civil organizations who reprogrammed their priorities and focused their work on covering the effects of the COVID-19 in their own communities. Even so, we remain in contact with most of our allies, maintaining fluid communication for future initiatives during 2021.

Likewise, the context has also hindered the development of another major objective: supporting the development of new communities at the federal level. Although our activities had an impact at the national level, not being able to travel or carry out face-to-face activities, as well as the impact of the pandemic at a personal level, made us refocus our efforts on accompanying, supporting and thanking the work of our volunteers, as well as working to involve new people in our community.

We hope to take up the idea of new communities at the federal level in another context.


What have we learned and what will we maintain in 2021?

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  • Recognition: respecting volunteers' time, interests and resources, as well as recognizing their work is fundamental to keep them involved in WMAR and strengthen our ties and partnerships, regardless of their level of involvement in 2020.
  • Avoiding one-time meetings: virtuality allowed us not only to federalize our activities but also to give them more continuity. In this sense, follow-up meetings gained strength and allowed us to provide a more fluid and adequate accompaniment to the participants.
  • Adequately address gender inequality: we want a diverse and inclusive community. To do so, we must adequately address the unequal position of women and dissidents in their participation in leisure spaces and use of time. The projects we carry out always take into account the reality of women, their interest and availability; even more so during the pandemic.
  • Boost collaboration: working at the regional level has allowed us to strengthen and reinforce the bond between those of us who share a language and a local context with many similarities. This has translated in the design and development of projects that better represent the multiculturalism of the region.
  • Listening before implementing: the pandemic required us to carry out a great exercise in active listening to our community. More than ever we tried to respond to their needs, adapt to new times and formats and be flexible to meet new demands.

Communication & Advocacy

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Communication & Advocacy strategy

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2020 has also been the year in which we have strengthened our communication strategy as well as our advocacy work at the local level more than ever, with the following objectives:

  • Strengthen Wikimedia Argentina's brand and programs among our audiences and build loyalty among new ones.
  • To boost the reach of our proposals and participation in them.
  • To adequately respond to advocacy challenges and get involved in public policies at the local level

For these purposes, we worked in the following way:

a) Communication strategy

We designed a communication strategy based on the following lines of work and the following results:

  • Our press strategy was focused on spotlighting the programs activities on mass communication media. We had 57 press mentions throughout 2020; the vast majority revolved around our main goal. It is also worth mentioning the systematization of 511 media contacts on our press database.
  • On social media we focused on spotlighting key projects from our programs. It is worth mentioning the growth especially on Twitter and Instagram. On twitter we received 25,588 profile views (18% increased) and our tweets got 1,837,100 impressions (36% increased) and on Instagram we published 62 times (182% increased), received 2332 likes (89% increased) and got 1161 new followers (105% increased).
  • At the project level, the scope of two of our main projects is noteworthy: the Community resources page and the Open Educational platform. Both were visited by 31,701 unique users and 51,250 unique users respectively during 2020.
  • 2020 was a landmark year for the Wikimedia Argentina’s Youtube channel. We increased the number of followers by 423%. We produced 58 videos, which had 74,584 visits, and finished 2020 with a total of 2014 people following our channel, who spent 9509 hours watching our videos.

b) Advocacy strategy

For the first time, we incorporated specialized support to address advocacy challenges at the local level, the following way and for the following reasons:

  • In August 2020 the debate on intermediary liability was reopened in Congress because of a conflict of the vice president of Argentina with Google, for content indexed in the knowledge panel of a vandalism in Wikidata. In this situation and for the first time, we incorporated a specialized consultant -Maia Levy- to design WMAR’s position on the issue and prepare for any public event or hearing on the issue.
  • She monitored legislative initiatives on intermediary liability and kept WMAR up to date with relevant proposals, articles, and debates held by different actors, which were discussed during internal weekly meetings with WMAR.
  • We position WMAR in strategic debates; per example together with other civil society organizations, we participated in private meetings coordinated by Access Now in order to develop a coordinated strategy.
  • Likewise, this consultant, advises us on how to respond to the media (some media have been misinforming about the work of Wikipedia editors and our work as an organization since 2019) as well as generate proactive proposals to address this increasingly complex issue in Argentina.

Movement strategy process

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Supporting the strategy process

We have been actively involved in the strategy process throughout 2020 in different roles such as:

a) Communication of the recommendations with the chapters and users groups at the regional level.

b) We organized 6 meetings to obtain feedback on the recommendations in LATAM, one of them to define Iberocoop's priorities.

c) We worked to maintain a fluid contact with communities in LATAM about the process through different social channels.

d) We are part of the writers groups, implementation design group and actively participated in the global discussions. We facilitated 9 discussions around the world - in India, ESEAP, Wikiwomen, Wikimujeres etc

Throughout the process we have always tried not only to bring the Latin American perspective to the decision-making spaces but also to communicate the development of the process to our colleagues in the region.

We are committed to continue promoting the region's involvement in the strategy phase. However, it is necessary to allocate the necessary resources to guarantee the involvement of movement's diverse communities as it is required for the next phase, where we will really implement the proposed change. It is almost impossible to do it successfully without supporting and guaranteeing the necessary resources for it.

Revenues received during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report)

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Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
FDC Grant USD USD 279,766 USD 163,152 USD 0 USD 116,524 USD 0 USD 279,676 USD 279,766 USD 279,676 The final amount received from 2nd Installment was USD 91.923,00, because the surplus of 2019 Budget (USD 24.646).
Total Revenues Original budgeted sources USD USD 279,766 USD 163,152 USD 0 USD 116,524 USD 0 USD 279,676 USD 279,766 USD 279,676 n/a
Membership fees ARS USD 500 ARS 754 ARS 1,658 ARS 1,502 ARS 1,650 ARS 5,564 USD 500 USD 81 n/a
In-kind donations ARS USD 3,962 ARS 30,000 ARS 0 ARS 14,000 ARS 0 ARS 44,000 USD 3,962 USD 671 Most of the In-Kind Donations we expect to receive were canceled for the international Covid situation.
Facultad de Información y Comunicación - City of Uruguay USD USD 0 USD 0 USD 0 USD 807 USD 0 ARS 807 USD 0 USD 807 This income was not incorporated in the previous budget. It was used in the Education program.
Total Revenues ARS USD 284,228 ARS 10,142,190 ARS 1,658 ARS 8,816,463 ARS 1,650 ARS 18,961,961 USD 284,228 USD 281,234 n/a

Spending during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report)

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Exchange Rate

Exchange Rate Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
ARS for 1 USD ARS 58.90 ARS 65.05 ARS 71.51 ARS 78.51
ARS 61.98 ARS 75.01
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Percentage spent to date ARS Explanation of variances from plan
Staff Expenses ARS ARS 8,624,920 ARS 1,755,765 ARS 2,315,129 ARS 1,795,449 ARS 2,903,935 ARS 8,770,278 USD 136,687 USD 128,336 93.89% 101.69% High inflation and an even higher devaluation leads prices in ARS be higher than expected, but prices in USD lower than expected. Thus, over execution in ARS and under execution in USD.
General Administration ARS ARS 1,930,096 ARS 343,931 ARS 453,502 ARS 390,375 ARS 686,302 ARS 1,874,110 USD 30,588 USD 27,221 88.99% 97.10% High inflation and an even higher devaluation leads prices in ARS be higher than expected, but prices in USD lower than expected. Thus, over execution in ARS and under execution in USD.
Education program ARS ARS 2,262,033 ARS 525,963 ARS 223,940 ARS 292,168 ARS 922,081 ARS 1,964,153 USD 36,057 USD 28,288 78.45% 86.83% The first fellows program is assigned to the education program.
Culture & Open Knowledge Program ARS ARS 2,146,751 ARS 288,402 ARS 509,670 ARS 148,853 ARS 763,977 ARS 1,710,902 USD 35,521 USD 25,047 70.51% 79.70% Lower execution due to covid situation and total closure of cultural institutions
Community Support program ARS ARS 2,588,693 ARS 250,815 ARS 308,253 ARS 268,207 ARS 969,450 ARS 1,796,725 USD 40,913 USD 25,521 62.38% 69.41% Lower execution due to the covid situation. Community travel support and international travel are charged to this program. In addition, the fellowship of new communities was posponed.
TOTAL ARS ARS 17,552,493 ARS 3,164,876 ARS 3,810,494 ARS 2,895,053 ARS 6,245,746 ARS 16,116,168 USD 279,766 USD 234,411 83.79% 91.82% High inflation and an even higher devaluation leads prices in ARS be higher than expected, but prices in USD lower than expected. Thus, over execution in ARS and under execution in USD

Compliance

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

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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.

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

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

Resources

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Resources to plan for measurement

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Resources for storytelling

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