Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia CEE Spring 2023

Regional Committee feedback and questions

Hello Philip Kopetzky and Kiril Simeonovski. Thanks for your proposal to continue the annual CEE Spring campaign in 2023. The CEE/Central Asia Regional Committee had just a few points of initial feedback in its review of the proposal, and no significant concerns about the overall direction, activities, and goals of the campaign:

• The committee supports your work to include new communities in the campaign, such as Romani communities in the region. Could you describe more about how you will identify these communities and make these connections?

• Regarding your response to question 12 (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?), we want to acknowledge that the committee and Community Resources team do not expect affiliates to monitor each language community for possible safety issues during the campaign, even if such capacity was theoretically available. However, we do want to understand how you may be supporting local organizers to find or create conduct policies as preventative measures, and if there are policies that support good practices in your own internal communications and conduct on the international team. Could you elaborate more on how these practices are incorporated into your work?

• Relatedly, one minor point is that the use of the term “police” in It is simply impossible without an unreasonable raise in staffing time on this project to police 35 different language projects seems somewhat strong, and could probably be rephrased to something closer to “monitor” or “review” to better reflect the role organizers have around this work. More broadly, we agree with you that local organizers should be responsible for responding to safety concerns when they arise.

In terms of the schedule for our review process, please complete your review and responses to committee feedback by May 8th. After this time, the Regional Committee will begin a final review of the proposal to make a formal decision. Thanks again for your work on the proposal and supporting our review.

On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 06:27, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi @I JethroBT (WMF), please find the responses below. In general, when it comes to UCoC and Friendly Space Policy, there might need to be some guidance in the future for international projects that run on Wikimedia projects as to what is expected? We're not an affiliate with staff and a board that could find the time to develop these rules from the ground up.

• I've asked User:TRistovski-CEEhub to answer that one, since the inclusion of Aromani was facilitated by the CEE Hub
• Concerning question 12: Since CEE Spring is a project hosted on Wikimedia projects, the UCoC apply to the whole contest. Where there is dissonance within a community we now have more tools available in terms of the UCoC but also the networking done by the CEE Hub. Through the CEE Hub we can communicate with those communities and resolve issues over time. Because of language barriers and the elusiveness of online users it is difficult to find swift solutions to these problems, but they are very much a long-term focus of the CEE Hub.
• Concerning the term "police", the Fluxx form is not well suited for projects or even recurring projects that run on Wikimedia projects. It does seem that if the WMF wants to go down the route of a project team "monitoring" 35 different communities, that these kind of projects can't be done in a separate grant anymore. We would be open to learn from other international article writing contests as to how this could be faciliated without communities effectively feeling controlled from the outside, if the UCoC isn't enough to cover these concerns.

Philip Kopetzky (talk) 09:44, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi, apologies for my late answer.

Wikimedia CEE Spring tries to include the whole CEE Region, including established communities with or without proper legal entity, communities that are serving just one region, and/or minority communities across CEE Region.

Therefore, we have communities that actively participate in the Wikimedia CEE Spring with a separate local contest on their home wiki and with a curated article list for their community. On top of that, we have a communities that we have them in the past as an active community, but they are present in this year's edition only through their article list, and/or new communities who will be participating in the contest for the first time (such as Aromanian and Western Armenian communities).

This year, CEE Hub staff support the International team, consisted of volunteers, in contacting previous organisers of the CEE Spring. That was done personally mostly via email. About small communities, we even try to find active users on their language version of Wikipedia and contact them to offer them to be part of the regional contest.

Thanks to the effort already done by Shared Knowledge in making a first connection with the Aromanian community from N. Macedonia, we only proposed to them to continue working on their home wiki and helping them to organise their first own editing contest and making their first article list. As I live in Skopje, I made personal contact with the Aromanian community and explained to them the process in person.

About Western Armenian, we get them in touch through email, after noticing that they have a successful grant proposal on Meta where they make editing activities on their Wikipedia, so we offer them to be part of this editing contest in a way where they can promote their culture to others and they can make a separate contest on their Wikipedia, so they can get a lot of new articles about different topics and cultures from the CEE Region. --TRistovski-CEEhub (talk) 12:36, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 9800 EUR

@Philip Kopetzky and Kiril Simeonovski: Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 9800 EUR with a grant term starting 22 May 2023 and ending 31 January 2024.

The committee supported full funding supporting prizes and administration needs for CEE Spring 2023. The committee noted a number of areas of strength in your proposal that supported the decisions:

• Supporting local communities to develop relevant article lists for the campaign, which can then be shared in other languages
• Continuing to encourage communities to focus on certain thematic topics through the CEE Women and CEE for Human Rights that will help reduce the gender gap across projects, as well as support better coverage of information about climate change and environmental sustainability
• Working closely with the CEE Hub to support certain tasks in the campaign, such as documentation for organizers, general outreach and promotion, as well as some coordination and planning work that benefits the international team. In particular, that the CEE Hub can support the inclusion of new communities in the campaign (and already has) is a good sign for the sustainability of the CEE Spring campaign.

While not discussed explicitly in the proposal, it will be important to understand later this year whether the campaign will be integrated into the annual planning and budget of the CEE Hub, or if General Support Funding will be needed to continue support these needs for the campaign. Let’s be sure to meet to discuss your thinking and planning on this possible transition at the end of the calendar year. I (Chris) will contact you to set up a time for an informal discussion on this transition.

One important change in the General Support Fund is that a written midpoint report is no longer required for the General Support Fund. We will continue to have a midpoint conversation to meet and generally reflect on your progress, needs, and updates on your ongoing and future movement work.

In terms of next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
2. If you want to discuss the funding decision or have questions during the funding period, you are welcome to contact your regional program officer.

Thanks again for your hard work preparing the proposal and supporting our review process for the General Support Fund. We look forward to your work this year!

On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 05:49, 29 May 2023 (UTC)