Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Building the Wikimedia Movement in Georgia
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General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 463,453 GEL edit
Congratulations! Your proposal is approved for partial funding over a period of three years in the amount of 463,453 GEL with a grant term starting 1 January 2024 and ending 31 December 2026. This total is distributed over three years in the following manner:
- Year 1: 147,011 GEL
- Year 2: 154,362 GEL
- Year 3: 162,080 GEL
This multiyear grant incorporates a 5% budget increase between Year 1 and Year 2, and also between Year 2 and Year 3. You will be able to submit a different budget for Year 2 when your annual plan and other changes are submitted, but please keep in mind that there are significant growth limitations on the budget for the General Support Fund.
The committee enthusiastically supports Wikimedia Community User Group Georgia’s transition into multiyear funding this year. The User Group continues to play an important role in the CEE/CA region, both in terms of its immediate impact supporting volunteers in Georgia as well as providing important support to other affiliates in areas such as movement events, advising on broad programmatic activity, and public policy advocacy practices. The committee is grateful to see your organization’s longer term aspirations and goals over the next three years to identify discrete content gaps, quality improvement, prioritizing convenings, and continued research to support public policy changes.
The committee was not able to support the requested level of growth in the proposal. While we understand that this request is partly based on increases in inflation in Georgia, and that inflation is an eligible rationale for requesting an increase, the overall budget for funding in the region has grown only about 8.5% overall since last year, and funding growth next year is expected to be even smaller. We also lack sufficient funds to fully cover the recent effects of inflation in the region. The committee stresses the need to 1) prioritize your current budget, 2) prepare subsequent funding requests that are more modest in growth, and 3) invest time into seeking other funding sources to support additional growth your organization because the General Support Fund is currently not able to support significant financial growth for affiliates, and will not be able to do so in the near future.
The Regional Committee had a number of additional comments and questions, which you are welcome to respond to when you are able:
- One area the committee wanted greater detail around was around your organization’s work around gender. Is it possible to provide more documentation around how your organization has improved coverage of women on Wikimedia projects, or supported more participation by women? Links to event pages, summaries of outcomes, or similar documentation would help us understand your impact in this area better.
- The committee acknowledges that WM UG Georgia has made a lot of progress towards Freedom of Panorama-related public policy advocacy work. What needs to happen next?
- What aspects of copyright policy or topics will you be looking into?
- What information are you hoping to gain from your research that will help you prepare an advocacy strategy? Will the findings from your research be shared with other affiliates in some way?
The committee appreciates your organization’s support in the CEE/Central Asia region and overall impact in Georgia in supporting local volunteers.
On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 07:45, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hello @I JethroBT (WMF),
- First of all, I apologize for the late response to your questions. Unfortunately, family and personal issues didn't give me the opportunity to answer you on time.
- As an WMGE and the Georgian Wiki community, we thank you and the committee for review and confirming funding for our organization. Although we have not received the full funding that we requested, we fully understand the current situation. For this reason, the organization will review its plans and budget and make appropriate decisions to ensure it is compliant with the funding provided. In addition, the organization will actively seek other donors for its programs and projects.
- Regarding your questions, here are our answers:
- Wikimedia Georgia works as much as possible on the topic of gender, we have special projects aimed at growing content in Wikimedia projects about women. So, every year we hold a contest (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023) to write more articles about women in the Georgian Wikipedia, which has given us the opportunity to grow Wikipedia articles about women.The organization also adheres to gender equality as much as possible in its projects and events, for which we use quotas in our work. Also, we are trying to attract more women to the work (membership) of our affiliate.
- At the moment, the issue of changes to the copyright law of Georgia is being considered by the Parliament of Georgia. The only obstacle to the adoption of changes is this file on Wikimedia Commons, where the occupied territories of Georgia by Russia are shown in a different color, and representatives of parliament ask us to change this file. WMGE will work with the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal and Global Advocacy team and the Wikimedia Commons community to remove obstacles along the way.
- Our goal is the development of the Georgian Wikisource and mainly we are trying to bring to the project new content. We want to change Georgia's copyright law so that we can enrich Wikimedia projects with content from Georgia's national libraries and archives. Our goal is for resources protected by the Georgian government to be available in Wikimedia projects.
- We want to learn more about copyright in the EU and other regions, where copyright is much softer than in Georgia, and propose changes to the Georgian Parliament on this basis. To do this, we are going to conduct a research and develop a strategy for advocacy in Georgia. We will share all resources we develop through Doc's and materials, and meetings as necessary, with other affiliations and the Wikimedia community.
- I hope I was able to answer your questions thoroughly. If you have any other questions or comments, I will be happy to hear and answer them.
- Thank you for your support of the Georgian community.
- Kindly, — – Mehman (WMGE) 19:35, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
