Grants:TPS/WikiMujeres/AWID 2016 Forum

This Wikimedia Participation Support request was funded in the fiscal year 2014-15. A report is available.

statusfunded

Travel & Participation Support

AWID 2016 Forum

summaryLeading teach-ins about editing, open licensing, and mapping gaps and opportunities in women's knowledge production on Wikimedia projects.

event locationCosta do Sauípe, Bahia, Brazil

event websitehttp://www.forum.awid.org/forum16/

event date(s)September 7-11

amount requested$8100

home countryMexico, Spain, USA, Argentina

creator• Seeeko

submitted on18:02, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

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Proposed participation

The Association for Womens' Rights in Development (AWID) is holding their 2016 Forum in Bahia, Brasil this September. The Forum is held every three years, and is the largest gathering of women's rights individuals and organizations outside the UN system; nearly 2250 people from over 140 countries attended recent Forums.

AWID's executive director and one of the main organizers of the Feminist Internet Exchange have invited us to put together a delegation from Whose Knowledge? and Wikimedia to attend, primarily to participate in the "Feminist Internet Exchange" track of the event. Women and feminist activists and organisations working on rights issues all around the world will be attending this forum, and we see it as a good opportunity to accomplish 3 things:

1. Kickoff mapping of gaps and opportunities with a whole network of organizations (underrepresented in the Wikimedia movement so far) who can work with us to share women's knowledge on Wikimedia projects, as part of the Whose Knowledge? campaign
2. Hands-on introduction to Wikipedia editing and open licensing for a large group of feminists who are strong multipliers in their own countries.
3. Representing Wikimedia in a panel discussion about the intersection of gender and technology

The Wikimedia delegation's activities will include:

1. Pre-forum discussion: 1 day of conversation to "Imagine a feminist Internet." On September 7, joining about 60 participants to bring issues and solutions relevant to Wikimedia editing and licensing into the discussion.
2. Adapt Methodology:
   1. presenting how Whose Knowledge aims to address systemic bias on Wikimedia projects
   2. presenting about experiences with open licensing and Wikipedia editing
3. FemHack Lab:
   1. mapping gaps and opportunities in digitizing women's knowledge for use on Wikimedia projects
   2. hands-on teach-ins about editing and open licensing for Wikimedia
4. Panel discussion: Wikimedia + Care + Urgent Action Fund have had a panel submission accepted to share "Practices, Pitfalls and Promise: Learning from efforts to bring together Feminist Organizing and the Digital Commons." This panel will reflect on our recent efforts to bridge “open tech” culture and feminist organizing, and explore future opportunities to more intentionally and collaboratively harness the potential of the digital commons for our movements.

Note that AWID hasn't published full details of the program (panels etc) online, but we'd be happy to provide private supporting documentation about our expected participation as needed.

Participants

Participants in the delegation include:

(funding still needed)

• User:Wotancito - active leader of Editatona and other gender gap projects in Mexico
• User:FloNight - co-founder of WikiWomen User Group, representing Wikimedia in panel discussion
• User:Anasuyas - Whose Knowledge? coordinator - coordinating the delegation, looking at alternative funding to assist with travel.
• User:Seeeko - Whose Knowledge? coordinator - coordinating the delegation, looking at alternative funding to assist with travel.

(funding already confirmed)

• User:Raystorm - WMF Board member and co-founder Wikimujeres Grupo de Usuarias
• User:Anna Torres (WMAR), or another staff member from WMAR - to be funded by WMAR
• User:Jaluj - active in gender-focused content in Argentina - to be funded by WMAR

Additionally, we've been speaking with some WikiWomen who will be unable to attend but plan to support online (e.g.User:Netha_Hussain).

Because of the nature and scale of the forum, it is important to have a group of international WikiWomen at this event, rather than just 1 or 2 representatives, so that we can bring multiple perspectives and local views, network across multiple languages and contexts, and share our diverse experiences from the Wikimedia movement with other attendees. We understand the limits of TPS funds, and are also trying to find alternative/partial sources of funding for delegation participants from the Global North to reduce the overall size of this request. However, for the time being we've decided to draft the entire scope here, to give a sense of the overall aim, and make clear which participants have already secured other travel funds. If the grants team feels another funding stream other than TPS would be more appropriate for this request, or would prefer us to break things out some other way, please advise :)

Goal and expected impact

As a result of this delegation's participation in the event:

• Hundreds of women working on rights around the world will become aware of Wikimedia projects as a potential space for sharing knowledge from women, the Global South, and other marginalized communities. We expect them to take this awareness back to their home communities, and then later engage in future campaigns (Whose Knowledge? and other local gender gap events) aimed at addressing systemic bias on Wikipedia and other projects.
• Some content about women activists and women's rights around the world will be created for Wikipedia, Commons, etc during the event itself.
• Ethics and practices around open licensing will be communicated, serving to make more women's rights data accessible.
• We'll build v1 of a freely-available, open source map of gaps and opportunities in women's knowledge that remain missing from Wikipedia, Commons, and other Wikimedia projects. This will be shared with Wikipedians (and Wikipedians-yet-to-be), grown with other participants over time, and used to help address systemic bias in Wikimedia projects at a series of events we plan to facilitate over the next several years.

Budget breakdown

• Registration: $300 per person (@ the special group rate for 5+ people) x 5 people = $1500
• Airfare: 3 roundtrip flights from USA @ $1100 each, 1 roundtrip from Mexico $900 = $4200
• Accommodation: 6 nights x 4 people @$100 per person per night (sharing rooms in reserved Forum location) = $2400

Total: $8100

We understand this request is higher than most that TPS receives, and would appreciate a conversation about partial funding if full funding is not available. Meanwhile, we are pursuing other funding options for some members of the group (noted above), and any funds found will be used to offset the total amount requested here.

Other instructions

• Any direct help with registration and booking flights/hotel would be appreciated, if possible.