Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/WoALUG 2022 Annual Plan of Activities

Questions from Красный

Hi! Thank you for your proposal. It's great to see such level of support for Albanian language projects. Anyway, I have a few questions.

1. Your board includes members from Kosovo and North Makedonia, that are most likely there to support contacts with Albanian diaspora in these places. Do you have any plans to collaborate with local affiliates in Serbia and North Makedonia in your projects? Both of affiliations in NM have Albanian minority in mind but it's lacking of support for Albanian language, so it would be great for you to merge some activities, provide support for Albanians included in NM activities or at least draw some borders between your organizations to be sure that resources will be spent in a most efficient way.
2. Speaking of that, do you have any policy regarding conflicts of interests according to a disputed situations around national conflicts in former Yugoslavia? Looking at your plans I see few zones of potential conflict between different groups of people.
3. I see Wikivoyage included in your activity. As a ru-Wikivoyage activist I appreciate it, but it's not listed which WV are you planning to contribute: English, Albanian (in incubator) or other. It'd be better to specify it to have better understanding of a planned impact.

Красный^{wanna talk?} 13:00, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello @Красный. Thank you for your questions.

1. Kosovo's population is more than 90% of the Albanian speaking native population while North Macedonia official figures say 25% of the population. As a User Group we do try to work with our diasporas in Western Europe. We have good relations with North Macedonia affiliates and a few contacts with the Serbia Chapter.
2. We have been working around the Albanian language since 2014, and so far we haven’t had any conflict of this type.
3. As with our previous Wikivoyage activities throughout the years, contributions will be to the English version though we encourage contributions to all language versions.--Vyolltsa (talk) 11:03, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Questions from W

Hi, Vyolltsa! How are you? Thanks a lot you for your proposal. As a member of Grants:Regions/CEE and Central Asia#Regional Committee, I have 2 questions, that I hope will be helpful in amending the proposal:

1. Is it possible for you to fill out the answer to the question: "How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?", that is posed in the proposal form (may be after checking the answers from comparable successful proposals from other user groups)?
2. Could you solve the contradiction between the answers to the questions: 1) "Where will this proposal be implemented? Albania", 2) "Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries? International" by either adding another country besides Albania, or changing the answer to the 2nd question from "International" to local?

Best wishes,--W (talk) 08:55, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello @W. I hope you are doing well. Here are the answers to your questions regarding our proposal:

1. We hope to expand the work by collaborating with educational institutions, museums, galleries, libraries, and numerous organizations aligning with our mission. To achieve this we are using social media to promote our work with all the institutions we closely work with. Also, two staff members are attending different training courses to be professional and have a major input in the events and projects we will carry out in the future. We didn’t answer that question because we will not stop after this year, we will continue our work supported by the WMF annual budget.
2. This proposal will be implemented internationally. It wasn’t technically possible to state this in the online form. Most of the activities will be implemented physically in Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia while we have several online activities planned internationally.

Have a nice day! --Vyolltsa (talk) 10:57, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 32,460 USD

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 32,460 USD for your first year with a grant term starting 1 January 2022 and ending 31 December 2022

The committee supports the user group’s continued movement work in 2022. In the coming year, the WIkimedians of Albanian Language User Group will continue some of its programming in training, workshops, and broadening its outreach on social media. It is also facing some important challenges in its community including sustaining organizational engagement and motivating educators to participate in the Wikimedia movement. These challenges are complex, and the user group is well-positioned to explore how to address these challenges. The committee also is supportive of practices that create leadership opportunities and increase the sustainability of your organization such as putting editors in charge of workshops for new contributors.

The full amount of funding could not be supported because the Foundation is currently not supporting international travel as a part of its funding activities due to COVID-19-related risks globally, so these expenses were deducted from the total. Any other international travel needs can be reallocated to other activities at your discretion. Should this policy change, your program officer is happy to discuss supporting you with international travel needs. Importantly, there are no specific restrictions on local travel, as long as these activities do not conflict with your local laws and restrictions.

Some requests and areas that the committee felt the user group can improve upon include:

• providing more clarity in how the user group intends to address knowledge gaps and support marginalized communities in its programmatic work and how it will evaluate whether that work was successful,
• Demonstrating more clearly how the organization is working consistently with the Foundation’s Youth Safety Policy as a matter of eligibility for funding.
• A recommendation to consider revising the metrics-based goals, as the committee felt a greater number of expected volunteers may be needed to support these outcomes in content development

We appreciate your work and look forward to working together with you in the next year to support the Wikimedia movement. On behalf of the committee, MikyM (talk) 17:59, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

That is a great news. Thank you so much for your nice words and trusting us another budget. We will discuss your requests with the group and will improve them and be more clear in the future.

Thanks again, On behalf of WoALUG Greta --Margott (talk) 18:53, 16 December 2021 (UTC)