Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia Korea Strategic Annual Plan 2024

Proposal Feedback and Invite for Response

Thank you for submitting your application. After the review process please find the feedback - comments and questions below for your response;

• We first recognize that you are continuing to build on what you already have been working on with a few changes here and there including additional capacity, partnerships  and finding office space.
• Regarding the space, we are keen to learn more about what you hope the office space can provide to support your organization and community. At the end of the year, what are you hoping the space will offer.
• Conference participation budget: how many people allocated to the conferences e.g Wikimania and what is the criteria you will use for selection of those who will represent the community.
• We see an opportunity for you to build a community of tech enthusiast in their community and not just on GLAM - you could be the lead on this for ESEAP. We see the region succeed in content generation and see this as an opportunity - what are your thoughts on you building a tech initiative.
• Would you kindly share a quick status on where things are with your current program implementation progress.  2-3 paragraphs will be sufficient.
• We also see an opportunity to expand your work on youth beyond Korea - any thoughts on pursuing this?

Here are our answers:

• We first recognize that you are continuing to build on what you already have been working on with a few changes here and there including additional capacity, partnerships  and finding office space.
• Regarding the space, we are keen to learn more about what you hope the office space can provide to support your organization and community. At the end of the year, what are you hoping the space will offer.
  • Before Covid-19 pandemic, we regularly hosted offline meetups to innovate the Korean Wikipedia. In the meetups, users discussed the project’s problems and found solutions. As a result, we executed some solutions suggested in the meetups. For example, we changed the front page of Korean Wikipedia, and made it more user-friendly. We plan to resume the regular meetup for Korean Wikimedia’s innovation, and we will use our office for the meetup’s venue.
  • We have held a strategy meeting attended by board members since last year to improve our current activities and launch new projects. We plan to extend the meeting and allow our members to attend the event. We will hold the strategy meeting regularly to collect our members' and users’ ideas, and our office will be used for this activity.
  • After Covid-19 pandemic ended, we need to resume our office programs to educate newcomers or underrepresented users. We will host these events in our office.
  • Users need to apply for grants or funds to Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia Korea for them to organize offline events. The process takes time and effort from voluntary users. We need to simplify the process to support more users, and we will provide the organizers with our office as a free venue.
  • As we suggested in the application, we plan to employ one more full-time staff member. We need to manage our staff’s work more efficiently, and communicate with each other faster. Staff members living in the Seoul Capital Area will commute to the office and we will boost their work efficiency and communication.

• Conference participation budget: how many people allocated to the conferences e.g Wikimania and what is the criteria you will use for selection of those who will represent the community.
  • We plan to send one grantee to Wikimania and two grantees to ESEAP conference.
  • We consider applicants' contribution to Wikimedia projects, and what he/she want to learn and share for the Korean Wikimedia commonity when we choose the grantees.
  • For example, this year's grantee shared what he learned about generative AI disscussed in Wikimania.

• We see an opportunity for you to build a community of tech enthusiast in their community and not just on GLAM - you could be the lead on this for ESEAP. We see the region succeed in content generation and see this as an opportunity - what are your thoughts on you building a tech initiative.
  • We need to identify who is willing to participate in the technical community, and then, we will help the community when we conclude that there are enough potential members.
  • Our new staff members will research the Korean Wikimedia’s needs and set up plans to support the technical community.

• Would you kindly share a quick status on where things are with your current program implementation progress.  2-3 paragraphs will be sufficient.
  • We excuted most of our projects as we planed last year. We hosted a photo walk for teenagers in cooperation with Seoul Youth Center in the spring. During the summer vacation season, we ran a photo walk project for adult users and held a offline event for teenage users. We also finished the Old Hangul Digitization project on Korea Wikisource succeessfully. We organized our annual conference last month, and uploaded presentation videos on the Commons.
  • We launched a volunteer acitivity to improve medicine-related aricles, and it will finish this month. Now, we are planning another Wiki Tambang photo walk project, and a collaboration project with National Library.

• We also see an opportunity to expand your  work on youth beyond Korea - any thoughts on pursuing this?
  • We are willing to extend our activity beyond South Korea. As a member of the ESEAP community, we will cooperate with other ESEAP community members. For example, we launched a sub-event of Wikimedia Asian Month edit-a-thon in cooperation with Wikimedia Taiwan to improve friendship between Korea and Taiwan, and Wikipedia articles related to two countries. In addition, we will suggest a collaboration project to Wikimedians of Japan User Group
  • We will consider hosting a ESEAP conference in South Korea in the future.
  • Our new staff members will be responsible for the cooperations with the ESEAP community members.

Motoko (WMKR) (talk) 19:25, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Please find additional feedback and comments to elaborate further below;

The overall strengths of the proposal	Recommendations and general feedback and questions	Responses by Applicant to the feedback and questions
"volunteer hours to them through a government-run platform" seems to be the strength. I wonder if other countries have this system.(YS) There is clear operational and organizational thought, and an appearance of logistical and governance experience. TB This proposal seeks to embrace underrepresented groups such as disabled and LGBT groups. In addition, it also reflects on how they are trying to equip partnership staff which is crucial for external communication. NF Opportunity to do more programs. GS They are involving more board members in the execution of the program. BB	9-1-1, 9-1-2, (Education)  I hope there is more information. Please provide the information. YS There is no specific mention of a feedback strategy, however it is clear that the programs are being laid out thoughtfully, suggesting feedback is likely being collected at some point. There is quite an amount allocated to souvenirs and prizes, it would be helpful to get more information regarding these. Profit motives have caused some poor editing in some outreach events. This does not reflect on the organizers, and just for feedback and learning for the committee, it would be useful perhaps to get an idea of what the repeated bank fee cost is and how that impacts their activities. Noting that they plan to rent an office, it would be helpful just to get a picture of what the other venues being rented are. There is variation in cost, suggesting thought has been put behind specific venues for each event. Put the ESEAP conference into the timeline! :) TB It is written in the Strategic Plan document that government museums are closed. So, what are the target partners to reach out to? Because you plan to increase the partnership staff. The budget plan is not clear because some points are not detailed (except the number of details of 3 staff in the salary section). For example, how many people will you send for international conference trips? How will Wikimedia Korea recruit partnership staff? Will it be open or closed recruitment? How will Wikimedia Korea select the participants to be sent to the international conference? Please complete the budget in detail with counts per item. (NF) Wikimedia Korea plans to upscale the organization with paid staff. Add a thematic program. I agree with Butch to add a tech program for Wikimedia Korea. Could you detail your budget with the number of units? Eg: (1) Wikimedia Thailand (using WMF format) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R8E0GZKq4LKqTQoyiPcpHjE-Ag_104vWlmlcZKURHco/edit#gid=2099383086 (2) units Wikimedia Indonesia (adapted from WMF format) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w8E8FY0IiwsZmCMKS5YkX67iFP1uFXMs65XLfZjFwwA/edit#gid=245847844 Same makeup as last year, should explore innovating new programs. Provide knowledge, technical and some financial assistance  such as local transportation subsidy on Korean delegation on conferences next year such as Wikimania in Poland (July-August), Wikimedia Summit (April), ESEAP Conference 2024 Malaysia (May), Libraries conference (May), Youth Conference (June) South Korea has potential in participating in Technology, MediaWiki. Is Korea (Youngjin) exploring possibilities in seeding, incubating and developing a small tech community?(BB) Overall almost similar from last year but with greater focus in partnership which justified their request of 1FTE (partnership manager) +1 any initiative to start technology or media wiki development project in ESEAP (KSH)	We detailed our budget. Please, check the sheet linked in the proposal. Bank fees are so small that they don't affect our activity. We added ESEAP conference to our timeline. We agree that the new staff member should be in charge of supporting the Korean tech commnuity. We will employ a staff member through a closed recruitment. The board will decide who will be employed. We will reach out to disability, LGBT, local expert organizations. Motoko (WMKR) (talk) 22:16, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Expert Review - Education

Reviewer 1:

• Measures to maintain or improve community health, safety, and inclusivity are considered.: They could be more specific about the profile of the audience and community involved.
• Proposed activities and strategies are clear and respond well to the challenges presented:They may need to develop better what kind of profile will be hired and describe each role in detail.
• Look for more connections with organizations to make a boarder impact

Reviewer 2:

• With reference to education , Teachers were not included in program of activities. Training teachers should be one of the ways to have constant volunteers . If they are trained on how to use wiki in the classroom and it is introduced in the curriculum , this will help sustain old volunteers and provide capacity building for new volunteers
• I agree with the shared perspective that a teacher's viewpoint is essential. Teachers can play a pivotal role in facilitating expansion by serving as the key to unlocking opportunities for a TOT program. Educators should be involved in the planning and implementation.
• There is a good feedback channel with the community.
• No clear activities for recruitment
• No teacher training activities
• This is a one-year project, are you saying that for a whole year only 100 WikiData new items will be created? 25 WikiSource?  and 20 Wikiquotes?

We highly recommend you get in touch with the regional program officer to support you in understanding the questions raised or if you find it useful to meet with the committee as well, please let them know and they can organize a conversation meeting.

Thank you, and we look forward to receiving your responses to support us in the next steps. On behalf of the ESEAP Regional Committee and Staff - VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 12:35, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Here are our answers:

• The new employee will be responsible for "training educators" as we mentioned in the proposal. The educators include shcool teachers. The parnerhsip manager will look for more partners and plan cooperational events.
• The new employee will help us to reflect on the commnuity's feedback through surveys or interviews.
• Wikidata items include all of values and lavels edited. Therefore, total edit counts are more than the edted items. Usually, Wikisource articles are much longer than Wikipedia articles. A diligent editor completed 1-2 aricles for 2-3 months. Editing Wikiquote is a sub-project. We will introduce Wikiquote while teahching Wikipedia editing.

Motoko (WMKR) (talk) 22:30, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

General Support Fund Approved at 132,800,000.0 KRW

Dear Wikimedia Korea,

Thank you for submitting your application seeking General Support Funds - Wikimedia Community Fund. The ESEAP Regional Committee and Staff reviewed, discussed and deliberated upon your application and made the decision to fund you at the 132,800,000.00 KRW for the grant period 1st January 2024 to 31st December 2024.

Here are a few points to note;

• We see the staff request made to be important for supporting your community and especially for growing the tech community.
• Thank you for providing clarity on the conference participation process.
• We hope to learn about the value the office adds to your community, convening support in future learning conversations and reports.
• As you work on the issue of diversity, we invite you to be clear on how you will assess the progress of your intention and effort, together with documenting the process and learnings that come with the efforts. Additionally we will be keen to learn more about your effort in encouraging more meaningful participation beyond participation.

We hope to continue having regular conversations over the course of your grant implementation. Do set up a regular schedule to connect with your ESEAP Programme Officer based on your needs. The reporting requirements for the grant will shared in your grant agreement and on Fluxx. All reports are to be completed and submitted via Fluxx.

Once again, Congratulations! We thank you for your participation in the grant application process and hope to continue to journey with you as you embark on a new year of project implementation. VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 11:54, 15 December 2023 (UTC)