Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/WoALUG 2023 Annual Plan Activities

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Applicant details

Wikimedia username(s):

Margott, Arianit, Ritamaliqi, Vyolltsa

Organization:

Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group

G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?

Applied previously and did receive a grant

H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?

Yes

H.1 Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?

Ipko Foundation

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

Yes

M1. Fiscal organization name.

Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova

Additional information

R. Where will this proposal be implemented?

Albania

S. Please indicate whether your work will be focused on one country (local), more than one or several countries in your region (regional) or has a cross-regional (global) scope:

International

S1. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

T. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)

https://wikimediashqip.org/

https://www.facebook.com/SQWikimediansUG https://twitter.com/SQWikimediansUG https://www.instagram.com/SQWikimedians_UG/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPNAkpyGf_PS0Gh3n8nBTVQ

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

Yes

M1. Fiscal organization name.

Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova

Proposal

1. What is the overall vision of your organization and how does this proposal contribute to this? How does this proposal connect to past work and learning?

In the next two years, WoALUG has the same vision based on the outcomes and lessons learned from our experience so far. We would like to keep the same pillars goals’ alignment and try to develop more action programs, activities, edit-a-thons, competitions to collaborate with educational Institutions, GLAM, and Outreach in Albania and Kosovo, increasing and retaining and the number of contributors, expanding the diverse content, and retaining the editors. At WoALUG, we have achieved to increase the number of schools with whom we collaborated in 2022. We have had a successful collaboration with one high school in Albania where we were able to implement the Wikimedia platforms as part of the curricula program. Also, we will focus on enhancing other GLAM and Outreach partnerships to promote the Wikimedia Movement's goals and objectives in Albania and Kosovo. Part of our strategic vision is increasing and retaining volunteer work and contributors by narrowing down the content on Wikimedia projects.

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

We are trying to be more visible in all the programs. In this way, we have increased the number of GLAM collaborators and organizations, and Educational institutions and/or schools have access to Wikimedia projects, improve and contribute to them. We feel it is important to highlight the benefits that all the stakeholders get from participating in our projects through edit-a-thons, activities, online and/or offline competitions, and information sessions about what they can learn and what impact their work has on the Albanian-speaking community. Some of the challenges we are trying to solve are that people have to realize that everyone can improve the content on the Wikimedia projects. At the same time, we are informing the community we are closely working to set themselves free and be courageous to change and improve the content on Wikipedia. Another challenge is the bureaucracy we come across at different levels and entries. People would not find it interesting to contribute to the community. Students at schools do not have the technological tools to work on Wikipedia, an ICT lab is missing in schools, and/or teachers lack the desire to work on involving students in Wikipedia articles. In some other cases, many collaborators think it will require so much work to develop, create or improve the content on Wikimedia Projects.

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

Some of the approaches or strategies we have used so far within the WoALUG context and experience are access to free knowledge (narrowing down the content gap), user experience improvements (retaining contributors), and community involvement (increasing the number of Wikipedians). For each of the strategies, we plan to intensify the collaborations with schools through wikiclubs, information sessions through school-related objectives, or curricula framework, GLAM and/or Outreach activities while celebrating or working on important milestones and related-human rights themes. Activities to include: In-person meetings, follow-up meetings and contacts through social media and different communication channels, better insights and promotions of our activities edit-a-thons, information sessions, outreach to underrepresented communities, educational institutions, or partners who contribute to education (through Council of Europe in Tirana) through formal partnerships, conducting workshops for better promotion and sustainability (through Wikigap/ Swedish Embassy in Albania and Kosovo), and much more.

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

edit–a-thons, wikiclubs, competitions, cooperation with GLAM and heritage institutions, diversity, culture, and technology.

We want to continue using these activities as they have been very effective with our work goals and objectives. New and experienced users and the community find these activities helpful.

5. Do you want to apply for multi-year funding?

Yes, for 2 year

5.1 If yes, provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan?

Our User Group will continue to work on all the main programs of Education, GLAM and Outreach for the full 2 years. In 2023-2025, we plan to support contributors on Wikipedia and other projects. Moreover, we want to intensify our outreach, GLAM, and educational institutions.

There will be a slight change in the operational calendar in the first and second years of funding, trying to highlight the activities that deserve to be addressed to our intended communities.

6. Please include a timeline (operational calendar) for your proposal.

Operational Calendar - WoALUG.pdf

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

Board Name: Greta Doçi Role: Board Member - Tirana, Username: Greta Responsibilities:

Name: Arianit Dobroshi Role: Board Member - Prishtina Username: Arianit Responsibilities:

Staff Name: Rita Maliqi Role: Project Manager covering Kosovo Username: Ritamaliqi Responsibilities: Identify and coordinate activities, timeline, and budget to execute within program’s grant application Network, research and reach institutions, organizations and individuals to create further collaborations and partnerships Manage activities, allocate resources, coordinate and organize duties and tasks within the timeframe Organize events and other promotional activities Develop and implement a communication plan for the User Group Send press-releases, reach out to media and manage social media marketing to promote events, user group and the free knowledge concept of Wikipedia Develop and monitor user group’s reports, proposals, presentations, and other documentation Administer the budget, by executing, monitoring and recording expenditures

Name: Vjollca Merdani Role: Project Manager covering Albania Username: Vyolltsa Responsibilities: same as above

8. 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.

Content Gender gap, Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context), Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial

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

School involvement in the Wikimedia Context GLAM collaborations Outreach collaborations

9. 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, Human Rights, Culture, heritage or GLAM

10. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Please note, we had previously asked about inclusion and diversity in terms of CONTENTS, in this question we are asking about the diversity of PARTICIPANTS. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Gender Identity, Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background, Linguistic / Language

11. What are your strategies for engaging participants, particularly those that currently are non-Wikimedia?

Education Outreach Editathons Hackathons Media Outreach Competitions Wikimedians in Residence Based on our experience, and projects so far, we plan to organize different types of activities developed on inclusive programs such as Education, Outreach, and GLAM. With regard to Education, we want to organize activities with high school and university students for different topics to raise their awareness about the Wikimedia Movement's importance in our countries. To do so, we will develop online and offline workshops, edit-a-thon, competitions in all the Albanian-speaking countries: Albania and Kosovo. Not only do we want to increase the number of articles and multimedia content, but also we want to expand it in education institutions. With regard to GLAM, we plan to focus on digitizing the content image and contributions to GLAM institutions and collaborations. We want to do this through numerous activities and collaborations with galleries, libraries, and museums such as Wikimedians in Residence. With regard to Outreach, we will continue our social media activity and work with traditional media in order to reach as many types of audiences as possible. For each program, we want to organize events and activities on a regular basis that aligns with the Wikimedia Movements’ thematic project, such as CEE Spring, WPWP, WikiGap, WikiLovesMonuments and Educational programs; more inclusion of new and senior audience; engaging activities.

12. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants and promoting the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy, and/or equivalent local policies and processes?

To create a safer supportive environment, we fully follow the UCoC and Friendly Space Policy. Usually, we present this policy at the beginning of our online or offline sessions to participants. This way, they are informed about their rights and what to expect at our events.

In the interest of a friendly equitable background and environment and a warm welcoming to Wikimedia projects, we ask them to fill out forms of registration for events, edit-a-thons, or activities to prior know what to expect in the future, such as asking people to previously create their account on Wikipedia, or whether they know anything about Wikipedia and other platforms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Universal_Code_of_Conduct

13. Do you have plans to work with Wikimedia communities, groups, or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?

Yes

13.1 If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.

Yes. So far, we have increased the number of collaborations in 2022, both in Kosovo and Albania. This year, we expanded our collaboration with more organizations that were involved and engaged in our community. Every year, we plan to join initiatives of affiliates abroad whenever the opportunity arises such as WikiGap, WPWP, WMCEE, Wiki Loves EuroPride, Wiki Loves Folklore etc.During and after the pandemic, we have always been close to our Wikimedia community to discuss our program, projects, and activities. For this, we have used several communication channels such as village pumps, and social media, Telegram channel. Specifically for this proposal, we shared the strategic proposal for 2023-2025 with our community members on Telegram.

14. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?

Yes

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

We hope to continue working with all the partners we have worked with so far. For each project we have organized with different partners and organizations, we have used different communication channels. For example, to inform our community, we have used our monthly meetings with community and the group, social media platforms, Telegram, and banners on SQ Wikipedia, the community portal and collaboration of the week section on the Sq Wikipedia landing page. We have asked for activity inputs to this plan from our members on our Telegram group (WoALUG). Also, we hope to be working again with different projects, such as Wikimedia CEE Spring or other partners. We believe they value our work through adding specific contextual content, sharing WoALUG’s work on respective social media, getting back to collaborating with us, and supporting our Group to reach out to new partners. These include: Swedish Embassy with WikiGap project WPWP CEE Spring Historic National Museum National Gallery of Kosovo PRO LGBT in Albania https://twitter.com/SQWikimediansUG/status/1575124129690288128 https://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Kuvendi#Summer_of_Wikivoyage_2022%2C_Kosov%C3%AB_dhe_Shqip%C3%ABri https://twitter.com/SQWikimediansUG/status/1564539273763848192 https://twitter.com/SQWikimediansUG/status/1532346389451218950 https://twitter.com/SQWikimediansUG/status/1527947188340400129 https://twitter.com/SQWikimediansUG/status/1526205058987266049 https://twitter.com/SQWikimediansUG/status/1522127301483372547

15. How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?

16. What kind of risks do you anticipate and how would you mitigate these. This can include factors such as external/contextual issues that may affect implementation, as well as internal issues, such as governance/leadership changes.

Finding board members willing to serve.

Not having a fiscal sponsor.

17. 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.

Improve User Experience, Manage Internal Knowledge, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt

18. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.

Yes

WoALUG Strategic Plan 2023-2025.pdf

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

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

Based on the lessons learned so far, we want to center on retaining more skilled and experienced users and/or people to add up the contributor's capacities in order to build the content on Wikimedia projects in Albania and Kosovo. Also, we plan to work with other groups that have not been engaged so far by pushing outward our activities throughout the country, not centered in a few areas. As we draw lessons from our experience, we think to focus even more on promoting and developing qualitative and quantitative content by increasing the number of GLAM, Education, and Outreach programs and activities’ topics and collaborations and by inviting more people to have access to Wikipedia and its sister projects.

20. 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 space provided.


Main Metrics	Description	Target
Participants	individuals who attend or benefit from the proposal’s activities, either in person or virtually. Does not include social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.	488
Editors	people who edit Wikimedia projects, creating or improving content as a result of grantee activities	396
Organizers	(people that make sure that activities can be implemented by providing the necessary time, support, and knowledge - such as coordinators, trainers, facilitators, etc	5
New content contributions per Wikimedia project	contents created or improved). Please disaggregate between Wikimedia projects and/or languages when that makes sense in the context of your organization. Wikipedia: 830 new and improved articles Wikidata: 380 new and improved items Wikivoyage: 50 new and improved articles Wikimedia Commons: 1100 pictures	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

Here are some additional metrics that you can use if they are relevant to your work. Please note that this is just an optional list, mostly of quantitative metrics. They may complement the qualitative metrics you have defined in the previous boxes.


Additional Metrics	Description	Target
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	N/A	N/A
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	N/A	N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications	N/A	N/A
Number of activities developed	N/A	N/A
Number of volunteer hours	N/A	N/A

21. Additional core quantitative metrics. These core metrics will not tell the whole story about your work, but they are important for measuring some Movement-wide changes. Please try to include these core metrics if they are relevant to your work. If they are not, please use the space provided to explain why they are not relevant or why you can not capture this data. Your explanation will help us review our core metrics and make sure we are using the best ones for the movement as a whole.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target
Number of participants	N/A	N/A
Number of editors	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers	N/A	N/A

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target
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

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

N/A

22. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?

Outreach Dashboard Google Sheet Google Forms

Financial Proposal

23. & 23.1 What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency. If you are thinking about a multi-year fund, please provide the amount for the first year.

41042.1 EUR

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

40705.55 USD

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

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FFPgknW34iXbRvBnLO6tdqgfjSvbdckwHFtpC58zZY0/edit?usp=sharing

WoALUG 2023 Activity Plan-Budget.pdf

23.4 Please include any additional observations or comments you would like to include about your budget.

N/A

Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.

Final Message

By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

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

Yes

Feedback

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