Grants:Project/MSIG/Wikimedia Poland/CEE Needs Research

statusfunded

Movement Strategy

Wikimedia Poland/CEE Needs Research

As preparation for launching a regional hub, we want to understand the needs and challenges of affiliates, user groups and communities in Central and Eastern Europe. We plan to gather information through a series of interviews and group workshops, and then analyze the data.

target40+ Wikimedia CEE organizations and communities (full list)

start dateJune 15

start year2021

end dateNovember 30

end year2021

budget (local currency)7,627.33 PLN

budget (USD)1 999.94 USD

grant typeorganization

non-profit statusyes

grantee• TOR

contact(s)• lukasz.garczewskiwikimedia.pl• szymon.grabarczukwikimedia.pl

organization (if applicable)• Wikimedia Poland

website (if applicable)• https://wikimedia.pl/

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Review your report

Applications are not required to be in English. Please complete the application in your preferred language.

Project Goal

Choose one or more of the following goals. You can add or delete goals as needed.

1. Complete research to support a draft implementation plan
   1. Identify needed services and support measures: Our research-based snapshot of current issues and challenges in the region will serve as a basis for constructing the Wikimedia CEE Hub as an effective support organization for communities and affiliates,
2. Develop documentation about your draft plan
   1. Create a prioritized list of challenges and opportunities for the region and each country individually.
3. Encourage and facilitate community participation in your plan
   1. Increase engagement of underrepresented communities: The research process itself, through its large scope and inclusive nature, will provide a good starting point for smaller and underrepresented communities & groups to join the future regional hub and shape it’s priorities. We expect this to result in a more diverse representation of Wikimedians active in hub-related activities in the future,
4. Provide resources for similar strategy implementation future work by others
   1. Share regional needs research method: Data gathered and research process description (published on Meta and communicated through Diff and other channels) can encourage other groups and communities to self-diagnose and foster a dialogue between different regional and thematic hubs that will help us all grow together.

Project Plan

Activities

1. What movement strategy initiative will your implementation work focus on? Please select one of the initiatives described here.

   Ensure Equity in Decision-Making > Regional & thematic hubs

2. What community or communities will be involved in this movement strategy implementation work?

   40 entities (Wikimedia Affiliates, User Groups and Wikimedia project communities) from Central and Eastern Europe, see Research Communities list for full details

3. Do you have any specific implementation ideas to support this initiative? Are you aware of any specific ideas in your community? If so, please briefly describe 1-2 of these ideas here.

4. Please describe your specific activities below to develop a draft implementation plan. What will you do to support your goals to implement this initiative from movement strategy? If possible, please provide a general timeline for these activities. When will they begin and how long will your activities take?

   We plan to investigate and compile the needs of Wikimedia communities and affiliates from Central and Eastern Europe, create a prioritized list of challenges and opportunities for the region and each country individually.

   The results of this research will be used in three key ways:

   to inform the shape and function – i.e. formal structure and services provided – of a Wikimedia CEE Hub, which we plan to form in 2022,

   • to provide to the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Movement at large well-structured and actionable information on the condition of affiliates and communities, which can then be used to inform the implementation of our Movement Strategy, as well as feed into planning processes,
   • to highlight common issues or challenges, and encourage communities and affiliate organizations to work together in resolving these issues.

   We intend to conduct this research through:

   • a review of public documents related to CEE communities, user groups and affiliates (including but not limited to: grant requests, grant reports, on-wiki activity and community health metrics),
   • online 1-to-1 or 1-to-group interviews, based on prepared research questions and free discussion with follow up questions, online surveys,
   • a series (minimum 2) of facilitated workshops and group discussions with sets of diverse participants, intended to review gathered data and deepen its understanding.

1. How have you let relevant Wikimedia communities know about this proposal?

   You are required to provide links to on-wiki pages to inform these communities about your proposed work. Examples of places where this can be done include community discussion pages, affiliate discussion pages, or relevant project talk pages.

   CEE communities are being informed about this application via posts in relevant discussion/announcement spaces. More links will be added here as messages are translated and posted.

   pl: wikipedia, wikt , wikisource

   hu: huwiki, huwiktionary, huwikisource, huwikibooks, huwikiquote

   uk: ukwiki, ukwikiquote, ukwikisource, ukwiktionary, ukwikinews, ukwikivoyage

2. How will you keep your community updated about progress and outcomes for these activities? Who will be responsible for communicating these updates? Please add the names or usernames of these individuals below.

   (a) Outreach and invitation to participate

   Organizations and communities will be approached and invited to participate in our research and following discussions through a variety of means:

   • open call for participants (especially for survey-based research),
   • targeted outreach to active and vocal community members or affiliate leaders (boards & EDs),
   • one-to-many communication on relevant Wikimedia project notice boards and mailing lists. Special care will be taken to approach each community in their own language, if possible. We will also leverage the contacts and relationships of our planning group (see 3.1. above) to pick the best person or persons to reach out to each targeted community. Both of these are critical to maximize participation and minimize the impact of international or inter-ethnic tensions present within the region. We believe we can construct a communication and outreach plan which brings representatives of the entirety of Wikimedia’s CEE community together in the spirit of sharing and collective learning – despite existing Wikimedia-related and unrelated tensions.

   (b) Presenting results

   We plan to organize at least 3 on-line workshop meetings for participants from the communities involved, where findings will be shared, discussed and analyzed.

   Preliminary results will be presented at CEE Meeting in October 2021.

   Final results will be shared by the end of November 2021 as a document, and links will be shared with Wikimedia affiliates via email and with communities through on-wiki notice boards and relevant discussion forums.

   People responsible for communication: Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL)

3. If you are organizing community discussions, what is your facilitation plan to support productive discussions around movement strategy implementation? Please also provide a link to a Friendly Space Policy that will be implemented to support these discussions. If you are not doing these activities, please write N/A.

   We plan to hire a facilitator with experience supporting collaborative decision-making and ideation processes.

4. If you are requesting funding for online tools or services to support participation, please describe these services and how they will be used. If not, please write N/A.

   N/A

5. If you are translating any materials, in what languages will you be supporting translation? Who will be responsible for doing the translations? If not, please write N/A.

   We hope to find volunteer translators (or apply for a subsequent translation grant) in order to provide translations as needed during on-line interviews and workshops, as well as when communicating with communities (announcements, important status updates). We will react to language needs of people participating, so we don't want to assume a list beforehand, but we expect supported languages to include English and Russian as the most popular 1st or 2nd languages in the region. Translations will be provided by volunteers, provided volunteers with needed language skills are available.

6. What other roles are important for these activities? Please describe these roles and provide the usernames or names of who will perform these roles.

   Communication: Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska

   Facilitation: Bhavesh S Patel Project manager: Łukasz Garczewski Researchers & interviewers: Łukasz Garczewski, Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska, and volunteers Oversight and community insights: Philip Kopetzky, Gergő Tisza, Kiril Simeonovski, Mykola Kozlenko

7. Are you running any in-person events or activities? If so, you will need to complete the steps outlined in the Risk Assessment protocol related to COVID-19. When you have completed these steps, please provide a link to your completed copy of the risk assessment tool below:

   N/A

8. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?

   Please see #Background information section below for detailed info on the thinking and prior discussions about this project and the CEE Hub.

   Timeline of prior work and planned work (items within the scope of this grant request are shown in bold):

   • October 2020 – June 2021: Planning process
   • June 2021 – October 2021: Research phase
   • October 2021: Processing results
   • October 2021: Sign-off of Hub proposal based on research phase at CEE Online Meeting 2021
   • November 2021: Documentation and sharing of research process and results
   • from October 2021: Work on setting up CEE Hub begins As this grant is part of an ongoing process, the project's stated start date (June 15) refers to planned activities covered by funds and staff provided by the organizers (see Budget section for details), including but not limited to document-based research, communication and interview scheduling. We want to start preparations as early as possible, so that we are ready to go as soon as funds are approved and transferred. If needed, we are open to adjusting the start date for a clearer delineation of work funded through this grant.

Outcomes

After your activities are complete, we would like to understand the draft implementation plan for your community. You will be required to prepare a document detailing this plan around a movement strategy initiative. This report can be prepared through Meta-wiki using the Share your results button on this page. The report can be prepared in your language, and is not required to be written in English.

In this report, you will be asked to:

• Provide a link to the draft implementation plan document or Wikimedia page
• Describe what activities supported the development of the plan
• Describe how and where you have communicated your plan to relevant communities.
• Report on how your funding was spent

Your draft implementation plan document should address the following questions clearly:

• What movement strategy initiative or goal are you addressing?
• What activities will you be doing to address that initiative?
• What do you expect will happen as a result of your activities? How do those outcomes address the movement strategy initiative?
• How will you measure or evaluate your activities? What tools or methods will you use to evaluate your activities?

To create a draft implementation plan, we recommend the use of a logic model, which will help you and your team think about goals, activities, outcomes, and other factors in an organized way. Please refer the following resources to develop a logic model:

• Overview of logic models on Meta-wiki
• Example logic models for reference for other movement activities (such as partnerships and edit-a-thons)
• Blank logic model template on Google Drive

Please confirm below that you will be able to prepare a draft implementation plan document by the end of your grant:

• Yes, confirmed.

Optionally, you are welcome to include other information you'd like to share around participation and representation in your activities. Please include any additional outcomes you would like to report on below:

Budget

How you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!

Our budget is outlined in a separate CEE Needs Research spreadsheet.

Please note that the budget shows total costs of this project, which are then divided into costs to be financed through this grant application, and costs covered by the Wikimedia affiliates engaged in this project (mostly Wikimedia Poland). Of this latter type of cost, the majority is in the form of staff work already performed as preparation and planning for this project, as well as staff time committed to bring the research described above to completion. These staff costs are calculated based on an estimated time needed and estimated cost per personhour.

Also note that we expect to receive help and support in the form of volunteer work performed by Wikimedians (especially those noted in the "Communities involved in planning" section below). This help will include some translations, direct communication with communities, and taking part in analyzing gathered data. These expected volunteer contributions are not included in the budget.

• CEE Needs Research costs spreadsheet
• Total project costs: 14 950 USD
• Cost covered by grantee: 7 180 USD
• Total grant amount requested: 1999.94 USD

Background information

Communities involved in planning

The concept for a CEE Hub was started after discussing the topic at last year’s CEE Online Meeting, by setting up a group of people from Ukraine, Serbia, Poland, Croatia, North Macedonia, Hungary, and Austria. This group then started discussing the approach to a hub and conducted three meetings in November 2020 to go through the approach with the CEE communities and get a go-ahead for further work into this approach. With the commitment of resources WMPL in January 2021 and enlarging the group to also include members from Armenia and the Czech Republic, we were able to start the process of designing the proposal you a currently reading: conducting a research and outreach phase that would inform the needs and structure of a potential CEE Hub. This project stems from ongoing discussions held over the last 12 months between a group of interested community members and affiliate members or staff, including:

• Michał Buczyński, Wikimedia Poland
• Klára Joklová, Wikimedia Czech Republic
• Philip Kopetzky, Wikimedia Austria
• Mykola Kozlenko, Wikimedia Ukraine
• Miroslav Loci, Wikimedia Serbia
• Ivana Madžarević, Wikimedia Serbia
• Susanna Mkrtchyan, Wikimedia Armenia
• Kiril Simeonovski, Shared Knowledge (Wikimedia Macedonia)
• Gergő Tisza (Hungary)
• and others

Historical background and state of CEE (aka context)

Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe (Wikimedia CEE or WMCEE) is a developed regional partnership between the Wikimedia communities from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The main goal of the partnership is to foster community growth and development through mutual collaboration. The partnership was established during a meetup held at Wikimania 2011 where representatives of nine communities from the region agreed on the necessity to join efforts in capacity building and community development. Almost ten years from its inception, the Wikimedia CEE network has grown from nine to more than thirty language communities from virtually every country in the region. The concept of Wikimedia CEE has eventually impacted Wikimedia communities from other parts of the world to pursue community development through regional integration and collaboration.

Connection to movement strategy

The Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy aims to establish an equitable future for the open knowledge movement, where everyone who so wishes can fully participate in the curation and dissemination of knowledge, without being hindered by language barriers, cultural differences, politics and limitations of geography such as time zones or travel costs. One of the key strategic recommendations for achieving this is regional hubs: support structures that supply communities in their region with capacity building and resources, proactively identifying and advocating for their needs, while reducing the linguistic, cultural, political and geographic distance between the supporter and the supported. With the words of the strategic recommendation Ensure Equity in Decision-Making: “Regional and thematic hubs will empower existing and future communities to have the capacity and resources to make and implement their own decisions to meet their differing needs. This will ensure sustainability, resilience, and growth for the whole Movement. Regional hubs will allow contextualizing activities, tools, and information. If appropriately resourced, they will empower groups of affiliates to collaborate on capacity building, knowledge transfer, and coordination.”

While different regions might have different needs and the creation of hubs should not be a one-size-fits-all process, it is usually preferable to build upon existing collaborations with a proven track record - regional hubs should be “designed both on identified needs and patterns of success, including networks developing organically”. Wikimedia CEE, as an organically developed network of collaboration and capacity sharing with a track record of almost a decade, is a natural candidate for a regional hub.

The recommendation calls for the hubs to be based on identified needs and local decision-making: “The concrete scope and functionality of these structures will be decided by communities and organizations based on their contexts and needs.” Therefore, a prerequisite to creating the roadmap for a hub is to research and identify the needs of the communities in the area, to understand their local contexts, and to confirm their willingness to participate in and collaborate with the would-be hub.

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