Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Discover, Develop, Invent on Wikipedia, Together/Final Report

Final Learning Report

Report Status: Draft

Due date: 2024-07-31T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Final

This is an automatically generated Meta-Wiki page. The page was copied from Fluxx, the grantmaking web service of Wikimedia Foundation where the user has submitted their midpoint report. Please do not make any changes to this page because all changes will be removed after the next update. Use the discussion page for your feedback. The page was created by CR-FluxxBot.

General information

This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results.

Name of Organization: Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group
Title of Proposal: Discover, Develop, Invent on Wikipedia, Together
Amount awarded: 20047 USD, 93319 RON
Amount spent:

Part 1 Understanding your work

1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.

We planned to develop on three strategic directions: V1. Discover: Starting the process of designing a plan for strategic communication and recruitment of volunteers V2. Develop: Continue activities and campaigns that became traditional for the community but include stronger communication and partnership components V3. Invent: Pilot new ideas and projects In the past 12 months we made progress in all directions but also had to be flexible and adapt to some new objectives.

V1. Discover: As we are putting effort into developing our community of volunteers and increasing our impact, we focused on developing a communication strategy for our user group (A1). This was a consultative process that took longer than planned but we ended up having a strategy for the next two years that can be put in place by our team and the communication specialist we work with (as part of a CEEHUB Grant). Another activity was bringing volunteers closer to our UG. We reached out to volunteers editing and supporting Wikipedia from university partners and to experienced editors. The one-on-one connections proved useful as we supported the reopening of a traditional campaign, Scriere de articole, while also meeting and developing plans with University of Cluj and University of Sibiu. Our conversations and plans with these volunteers include presenting at a future meeting within our community and co-organizing at least one activity from our next grant.

V2. Develop:We are interested in developing existing activities and campaigns. A3.Monthly online meetings continued as planned. We had new participants almost at every meeting and we are planning for 2024 -2025 to have guest hosts for these meetings. A4.Higher Education Programs continued in the same form as before. After we hosted a meeting with university professors we planned for future collaborations; however, we realized we need more people on our team to connect with the professors. That is why we used half of the CEEHUB development grant to hire an education specialist that will be our liaison with the professors, mapping the needs and preparing the needed materials. A5.CEE Spring continued this year with 9 participants. We promoted the campaign a little more but not enough for it to reach new and interested partners. Overall we had 237 pages translated to Romanian but for next year we plan to also update our communication approach to reach out to more editors. A6.Wiki Loves Monuments Moldova&Bike quest continued and expanded through this grant as we were able to cover prizes and costs of meetings and events. 22 participants enjoyed the activities and uploaded 1252 images. As we started a partnership with Chisinau Friends of the Library NGO, we managed to make funds available in Moldova to support these activities. This allowed for more prizes to be awarded and an exhibit of best pictures gathered in these campaigns to be exhibited at the Chisinau Municipal Library in a dedicated expo. A7. Campaigns replacing Asian and Oceania Month. When we wrote the proposal we wanted to open up the opportunity of organizing campaigns to other Wikimedians and the Asia and Oceania Month has been a campaign that used to gather dedicated volunteers. However, when we reached out to the community for volunteers to organize this campaign, there were no takers so we decided to use the funds to support other campaigns like: Writing competition (Concursul de scriere) and Every book its reader. Concursul de scriere - is a writing competition that used to be a tradition in our community. The competition was proposed again by a volunteer with the support of a member of our UG. For a first edition after many years, the participation was good and results satisfactory, so much so that we proposed to continue this competition in the next grant. https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Concurs_de_scriere Every book its readers took place in april 2024, an international campaign dedicated to wikipedia pages about books. For us it was the second year we ran it and it proved to take place in a very busy period for us. 7 users took part in this campaign and 37 edits were registered. We also organized an online meeting to discuss and explain the Wikipedia principles to librarians interested in promoting literacy. A8. 1LIB1REF 2024:We continued our tradition in organizing 1lib1ref events but we invested more resources in organizing events throughout Romania and Moldova. We had 8 public events (1 online and 7 face to face, one of them in Moldova and the other ones in Romania) with 148 librarians from public libraries. The number of users that made contributions and added references on Wikipedia was 56, reaching a total number of 905 edits on 444 pages. The online meeting was very popular; however, the workshops were more efficient in bringing in editors. We had three new event organizers that participated in the campaign. A9. Wikimartisor2024:This is a campaign that we initiated last year. We manage to get 35 new articles and 412 edits per total, as we developed the content about women from Romania and Moldova on Wikipedia. The list of suggested articles was very helpful. Although there is a serious lack of materials about many historical figures in Romania and there is still work to be done, this campaign is very important for a better understanding of women representation on Wikipedia in our countries. WMROMD will have 2 members present about this campaign and the lessons learned A10. Week of volunteers: we hoped to work with the communication specialist to have content available to promote the activity of Wikimedia volunteers in Romania and Moldova. However our attempts to bring forward stories about Wikipedia editors were not successful.This year the theme chosen by Week of volunteers organizers in Romania was gender balance and since this conversation is not one very open in our community we could not organize ourselves to propose anything of substance in the time available. So we chose a different route. Focusing on numbers of volunteers and contributions we proposed 7 scenarios for short informative videos about our community of editors. The videos were created and will be shared in July, August and September on our social media channels. Overall we are happy with the results of our campaigns. They were successful, with new organizers joining our team and new approaches in planning and organizing the campaigns.

Third direction was to innovate, invent new approaches: V3. Invent. We piloted a A11.Wikimedian in residence program in Craiova. This program involved an intense exchange of experience, good content, reliable sources, a professional sharing environment and enthusiasm on both sides (wikipedian in residence and host). In five days 10 new articles were written and 85 were improved on Wikipedia by 8 editors. 77 images were uploaded on Commons.This project is a different approach that could help GLAm partners to better understand the importance of contributing to Open Knowledge projects. A12. Wikiseniors was a project we wanted to implement focusing on seniors. As the co-financing grant we applied for did not come through, we had to rethink our approach. We focused on one library that has experience working with seniors and we offered two in person workshops at the Onești Municipal Library. During two training sessions (2 days in May and 3 days in June), we addressed a number of 13 seniors who became new editors. Seniors were the most enthusiastic new editors in our experience („Wikipedia is fun”, „Wikipedia gives addiction”), they were surprised to find out that anyone can contribute. Unlike other categories of new editors we've met so far, seniors understood volunteering well. They also invested time in documenting activities before starting to contribute to an article. They also started to donate money for Wikipedia and they were proud of their work. Since we could not implement the project as planned we used the rest of the money to organize an international workshop "Getting Helpful Health-Related Information on Wikipedia". WMROMD in partnership with the “Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu Municipal Library, Wikimedia Armenia. The Association Friends of the B.P. Hasdeu Library organized this event in Chișinău on June 21-22, 2024. Building on the experience of Wikicamps organized by Wikimedia Armenia, we had participants from four countries planning a series of wikicamps (including an international one) on health related topics. A13.International Roma Day. We aimrd at creating a community of volunteers and partners invested in documenting and promoting Roma people and culture. We partnered with Seneca Anticafe and Cu alte cuvinte NGO and we organized one event for International Roma day. We learned that a more effective communication strategy is required as many people don't know much about the Roma minority. We had 8 new articles created, 66 new edits on Wikidata as well as 3 images from children’s books uploaded on Wikimedia Commons.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?

Investing quality time in building trust and relationships with new Romanian language Wikipedia volunteers has proven useful. We are not only increasing the number of volunteers committed to editing but also engaging them in additional activities, such as organizing editing events.

Maintaining close connections with Wikimedia affiliate organizations and partners in our region has been a very successful approach. Our interactions and meetings with CEEHub were particularly beneficial, and being awarded a grant to hire new staff was both surprising and instrumental in our development.

We also piloted a project with the Tyap Wikimedians User Group in the fall of 2023. In June 2024, we organized a regional event in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, with Wikipedians from Moldova, Armenia, Ukraine, and Romania. The workshop in Chisinau was a collaborative event where participants worked together to develop proposals for future activities. We have also made plans to continue supporting the Tyap Wikimedians User Group.

3. Would you say that your project had any innovations? Are there things that you did very differently than you have seen them done by others?

Our workshop in Chisinau was an innovative approach for us. We are not sure if other small affiliates are organizing similar workshops, but having a few days to meet and collaborate with other Wikimedians from the CEE region was a fruitful and positive experience.

For the 1lib1ref campaign, we supported librarians in organizing their own local events, which proved to be a successful approach as we reached the largest number of librarians ever. It also allowed for librarians from small rural libraries to learn about Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing. This support included financial assistance to cover small costs, which was appreciated by the organizers.

4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.

We reached out to different communities through our partners. Public libraries continue to be trusted partners, helping us reach new communities like seniors. The public library in Onesti hosted two rounds of senior editing events, and the community responded positively, investing time to learn and edit Wikipedia. The county library in Dolj hosted our first Wikimedian in residence while the County library in Giurgiu became a trusted long term partner for our UG.

We also started reaching out to new NGOs to co-organize thematic campaigns, such as Wikimartisor and International Roma Day. While the response from NGOs was positive, it became clear that for these partnerships to work, our community needed to invest more time, which we did not have to spare. The communication and planning aspects of these collaborations required more time and resources. Although we managed to initiate these partnerships, we have yet to make them sustainable and successful. The positive aspect is that more NGOs have heard about our work and are eager to collaborate. As we plan for the 2024-2025 grant and benefit from the help of a communication specialist through the CEEHUB grant, we will continue to bring in partners and volunteers to support Wikimedia projects.

5. Documentation of your impact. Please use the two spaces below to share files and links that help tell your story and impact. This can be documentation that shows your results through testimonies, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, etc.) social media posts, dashboards, etc.

Upload Documents and Files

Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

A1

6. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups	Agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community	Strongly agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups	Agree
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors	Agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	Strongly agree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement.	Strongly agree

7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?

Our user group now has a team dedicated to supporting campaigns and partnerships related to topics on women and minorities. We are investing in creating trust and lasting relationships with our new partners, as well as bringing new volunteers on board who are interested in contributing to these topics. The more we talk about and present our work, the better results we will achieve.

At the same time, we are learning from other affiliates, which is helping us open up to new communities, such as high school students and college students, for future campaigns.

Part 2: Your main learning

8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?

Main lessons: Q1.We developed a communication strategy and realized that time constraints are a major issue. With the CEE Hub grant, we hired a communication specialist to explore more effective engagement methods. Q2. The 1lib1ref campaign last year brought together seven organizers who held events in Romania, Moldova, and online. Financial and technical support proved useful. Highlighting volunteers' work also motivated them. We plan to invest more in promotional activities. Q3. Dissemination requires strong communication skills and trust-building, demanding more involvement and time. Initial steps were promising. Our investment in the International Roma Day campaign is yielding results. "Cu alte cuvinte," an NGO partner, now plans to apply for a grant to continue collaborating on Roma-related Wikipedia articles. Q4. What topics are new volunteers more invested in? Seniors enjoyed writing about artists, movies, and cooking—topics they found fun. For Wikimărțișor or International Roma Day, many biographical articles lacked Wikidata information or drafts, making it harder for beginners. Q5. Do prizes attract new participants? Yes, prizes attracted new participants but were less effective for experienced editors. The "Concursul de scriere" saw many experienced editors participate, but only some claimed their awards. This underscores the importance of a positive collaborative environment.

9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?

We learned valuable lessons about planning, timing, and flexibility. When we initially proposed organizing the Asia and Oceania Month campaign, we aimed to involve other Wikimedians. However, when we reached out, there were no volunteers to lead the campaign. Consequently, we redirected funds to support other initiatives such as the Writing Competition (Concursul de scriere) and Every Book Its Reader.

Unable to implement the original project related to senior editors, we used the remaining funds to organize the international workshop "Getting Helpful Health-Related Information on Wikipedia." In partnership with the Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu Municipal Library, Wikimedia Armenia, and the Association Friends of the B.P. Hasdeu Library, we held this event in Chișinău on June 21-22, 2024. Building on Wikimedia Armenia's Wikicamps, participants from four countries planned a series of wikicamps on health-related topics, including an international one.

Timing and available resources are crucial for planning and executing relevant activities. It's also essential to keep volunteers engaged and happy, ensuring their continued support and enthusiasm.

10. How do you hope to use this learning? For instance, do you have any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future?

As we expand our pool of campaign and event organizers, we aim to increase the number of face-to-face events in both countries. For each campaign, we are preparing communication plans and implementation calendars to ensure activities do not overlap.

Inspired by our Armenian colleagues, we aim to reach more students and even high schoolers in both Romania and Moldova.

Simultaneously, we will continue to develop partnerships with NGOs and universities and remain open to new initiatives and collaborations.

11. If you were sitting with a friend to tell them one thing about your work during this fund, what would it be (think of inspiring or fascinating moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes, or anything that feels important to you)?

12. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).

Upload Documents and Files

Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

N/A

Part 3: Metrics

13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
strategic planning meetings	members of the user group meet and discuss about planning a communication strategy and about managing volunteers (A1, A2)	5	N/A	N/A	N/A
Students	Students engaged in undergraduate program engaged in a course to edit Wikipedia (A4)	100	N/A	N/A	N/A
Community online meetings	Regular online meetings for the community of editors (A3)	12	N/A	N/A	N/A
Materials promoting volunteers	Wikipedia volunteers will be promoted through social media and articles during the Week of Volunteers (A10)	10	N/A	N/A	N/A
'	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Additional Metrics
Additional Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	2 University Libraries 3 Universities 5 New NGOS	10	N/A	N/A	N/A
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications	People reached on a monthly basis	6000	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of activities developed	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of volunteer hours	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target
Number of participants	A4 - 105 A5 - 20 A6 - 40 A7 - 20 A8 - 50 A9 - 20 A11 - 5 A12 - 55 A13 - 15	330
Number of editors	A4 - 100 A5 - 20 A6 - 0 A7 - 20 A8 - 40 A9 - 15 A11 - 3 A12 - 55 A13 - 3	256
Number of organizers	A4 - 3 A5 - 3 A6 - 2 A7 - 2 A8 - 7 A9 - 2 A11 - 2 A12 - 7 A13 - 1	29

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Wikipedia	A4 - 50 A5 - 300 A6 - 500 A7 - 500 A8 - 300 A9 - 100 (out of which 20 new articles created) A11 - 20 (out of which 10 new articles created) A12 - 300 A13 - 30	2100	N/A	N/A	N/A
Wikimedia Commons	A6 - 3800 new images A11 - 20 new images A12 - 80 new images	3900	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?

N/A

15. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future.

N/A

16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).

Upload Documents and Files

Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

N/A

Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships

17. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension
A. Financial capacity and management
B. Conflict management or transformation
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values)
D. Partnership building
E. Strategic planning
F. Program design, implementation, and management
G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation
H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer)
I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers)
J. Governance
K. Communications, marketing, and social media
L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability
M. On-wiki technical skills
N. Accessing and using data
O. Evaluating and learning from our work
P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders
N/A
N/A

17a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?

N/A

19. Partnerships over the funding period.

Over the fund period...
A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame)
B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups
C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups

19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

N/A

19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

N/A

20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?

Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration

21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?

22. How has your (for individual grantees) or your group/organization’s (for organizational grantees) sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

N/A

24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

N/A

26. Are there other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in your motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects? (for example, Black Lives Matter, Feminist movement, Climate Justice, or other activism spaces) If so, please describe it below.

N/A

Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration

We are interested in better supporting peer learning and collaboration in the movement.

27. Have you shared these results with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?

28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?

29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?

N/A

Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance

30. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

31. Local currency type

32. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.

Report funds received and spent, if template not used.

33. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.

N/A

34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

N/A

34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

N/A

34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

N/A

35. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund 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.

36. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

37. 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 Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.

38. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.