Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wiki Loves Earth 2023 in Serbia (ID: 22105777)

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Applicant Details edit

Please provide your main Wikimedia Username.

Ivan25

Please provide the Usernames of people related to this proposal.

n/a

Organization

N/A

Are you a member of any Wikimedia affiliate or group, including informal groups like Wiki Fan Clubs, emerging language communities, not recognized Wikimedia groups etc.? Please list them all.

Wikimedia Serbia

Grant Proposal edit

M. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.

Wiki Loves Earth 2023 in Serbia

Q. Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries? (optional)

Local

Q2. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

R. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has.

1. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important.

Wiki Loves Earth is an international annual photo-competition. It was organized in Serbia for four consecutive years (2014-2017), but since then competition has been on hiatus. Some very noticeable results have been made on the local level, especially in 2016, when one photo from Serbia won the international title for the best WLE photo.

Edition 2023, would be returning for Serbia. Our goal, after a long break, is to put Serbia on the global WLE map again. After five years, a lot of stuff has been changed: List of protected areas is out of date, articles are out of date, Wikimedia Commons lacks photos of nature from Serbia, and there are dozens of unwritten articles about multiple protected areas.

Based on all mentioned above, WLE 2023 in Serbia will not only be a photo competition, but also huge action in expanding existing and writing new articles, improving data and templates on WP and WC, uploading new photos of nature protected areas. All in all, WLE 2023 will cover photo-competition, edit-a-thon and photo-walking tours.

2. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.

Although this is a project whose primary goal is to collect photographs of protected natural assets, there are actually a few other secondary goals that are important for Wikimedia's mission and vision in Serbia. The key strategies for achieving the goals are:

Content enrichment of Wikipedia and its sister projects

Collecting media content by organizing WLE competitions
Filling the gap in textual and visual content through the organization of an edit-a-thon
Improving the quality of the content by using new photos

Increasing participation in Wikimedia projects and the volunteers’ diversity

Attract new editors and participants to Wikimedia projects
Increase the diversity of the community

Supporting and developing the community of Wikimedia volunteers

Support for individuals, informal groups and informal communities and their projects
Cooperation between groups
Increase the community's motivation and awareness

Boosting awareness about WLE, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and free knowlages

Media promotion and support in traditional and new media and platforms
Starting a local WLE site as a support for all competitors and interested parties, a standard step which is already shown as very useful and beneficial.

3. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

Review and revise the entire database of existing protected natural heritage and compare them with new lists.
Updating lists and adding new protected natural assets
Make statistics on the coverage of protected natural heritage in Serbian Wikipedia. This can be useful for tracking the metrics of how many new protected natural assets will be covered by new articles. Also, this information may be useful for one of the next CEE Spring projects, where articles would be translated into other languages.
Creating a website and entering all relevant information
Creating guides and instructions with tips on how to take quality photos and how to upload them.
Looking for a local GLAM/or other partner.
Editing and creating templates
Attracting the community
Organizing between 2 and 3 photo tours. (making lists and maps, finding sites, organizing tours, etc)
Organization of competition in May-July and monitoring its process
Providing technical support during photo-uploads.
View and select all submitted photos.
Search and selection of jury members
Prepare tools for the jury
Selection of photos for the jury
Selection of top 10 photos on local level.
Organizing two exhibitions. The first exhibition will be related to the Award ceremony. The second exhibition will be the promotion of the project and the continuation of good practice for the future projects and cooperation.
Send a photo to an international selection.
Creating promotional material.
Running a PR campaign and cooperating with the media.
Regularly sending press clippings and running pages on social networks.
Organization of an edit-a-thon (creation of pages and events, monitoring, providing support, etc.)
Other ad hoc jobs

4. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign or event? If so, please select the relevant campaign below. If so, please select all the relevant campaigns from the list below. If "other", please state which.

Wiki Loves Earth

5. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

Ivan M, M.Sc in Geography - User:Ivan25, as the main coordinator and organizer;
Nikola T. - User:Nter25, tech support (WP, WN, WC);
Nevena M - User:NenaMat, photo-walking tour coordinator.

6. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Geography, Other global topics for impact (topics considered to be of global importance)

6.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

Lack of updated and newly written articles about natural heritage on Serbian Wikipedia, but also lack of new photos are the main issues on a local level. Years of outdated natural heritage lists made one great gap with the current situation - dozens of “invisible” new protected sites without proper wiki coverage. Our main goal is to decrease this gap and to improve and cover all deficiencies in Wiki projects related to natural heritage in Serbia.

7. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Education, Climate Change and sustainability, Culture, heritage or GLAM

8. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities?

Not applicable

9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities?

Bearing in mind that this project has several main goals and levels, the target groups differ.

To collect photos: Target users are photography lovers and admirers of nature. They don't have to be Wikimedians. It is enough if they like the idea of WLE and the concept of Wikimedia, and that they want to participate in the competition. They can be professionals or amateurs/enthusiasts from different spheres.

The target group for the edit-a-thon are existing and new users of Wikipedia in the Serbian language who are willing to write about natural heritage.

10. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants?

During the project, we will place special emphasis on security: Both the nature and the participants. Dozens of natural heritage sites are located in inaccessible places, so we will write instructions for behavior and treatment of the site being photographed. Special precaution will be taken in term of the importance of avoiding any contact with animals and plants. During the photo tours and exhibitions we will take care about COVID19 safe instruction, WMF FSP, and the Universal CoC.

11. Please tell us about how you have let your Wikimedia communities know about the planned activities and this proposal. Use this space to describe the processes you carried out to make the community more involved in planning this proposal. Please link the on-wiki community discussion(s) around the proposals.

The idea of the organization was presented on the internal list of Wikimedia projects in Serbia and was announced to the local chapter, where it was well received. Also, the Wikipedia community in Serbian language is informed, as well as in the groups of Wikipedians in informal conversations. In a short time, the idea was well received and there are a couple of months left until the competition, so additional support is expected in the upcoming period.

12. Are you aware of other Rapid Fund proposals in your local group, community, or region that are being submitted and that align with your proposed project?

No

If yes:

12.1 Did you explore the possibility of doing a joint proposal with other leaders in your group?

N/A

12.2 How will this joint proposal allow you to have better results?

N/A

13. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedia partners to implement this proposal? Required.

Yes

13.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.

Idea is to make some contacts with the local Institute for Nature Conservation, but potential cooperation depends fully on their willingness to take part. Potential cooperation with the INC will be based on acess of their databases and spreading the word about the photo-competition.

14. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of THREE options that most apply.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Improve User Experience, Identify Topics for Impact

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation edit

15. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

The goal of monitoring the implementation of the project is to continuously evaluate activities, collect data and use resources to improve Wikimedia projects, but also volunteer commitment and involvement. Some of the issues to be addressed are:

Can this project be successfully implemented after the hiatus of several years?
How did the hiatus affect the old participants?
Is this project effective for encouraging Wikipedia volunteers to update and improve existing articles which do not fall into the most popular topics?
Is this project effective to identify and attract other members who are not official and active members or local Wikimedia chapters but are interesting to organize and participate in some Wiki project?

16. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following spaces provided.

Main Open Metrics Data
Main Open Metrics	Description	Target
Participants	in photo competition	40
Editors	edit-a-thon, photo update, writing, checking	15
Photos	number of uploaded photos	1500
Articles	number of newly added and improved articles	100
N/A	N/A	N/A

17. Core quantitative metrics.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target
Number of participants	competition: 40, edit-a-thon: 15	55
Number of editors	edit-a-thon, photo update, writing, checking	15
Number of organizers	N/A

Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target
Wikipedia	number of new/improved articles	100
Wikimedia Commons	number of uploaded photos	1500
Wikinews	number of news	15
Wikidata	number of natural heritage sites	50
N/A	N/A	N/A

17.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

Used photos (%) -- percentage of used photos in Wiki projects in first three months following the competition -- 15%
Photo walking tours -- number of organized tours -- 4
Exhibitions -- number of the exhibitions following the competition -- 2

18. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support.

We will use one of the jury voting tools that we localized in Serbian for WLM 2022, and we will update it for WLE. We also intend to use Wikimetrics and Programs and Events Dashboard tools for the edit-athon and other tools such as GLAMorous for category monitoring and tracking image usage.

Financial Proposal edit

19. & 19.1 What is the amount you are requesting from Wikimedia Foundation? Please provide this amount in your local currency.

4700 EUR

19.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

5000 USD

20. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sn8F9Ov60LdmF-4cIry7OOh6yWemSH7nZYzk20h9gNA/edit?usp=sharing

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Endorsements and Feedback edit

Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.

Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:

Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).

Endorse