Eva: Welcome to episode 17 of WIKIMOVE, I am Eva Martin and with me is Nikki Zeuner.
Nikki: Hello everybody!
Eva: We are recording this episode on January 26 2024.
Nikki: Eva and I are part of Wikimedia Deutschland’s Governance and Movement Relations team and in this podcast we imagine the future of the Wikimedia Movement. Eva, what are we talking about today?
Eva: Today we are talking about some of the great work done in the Movement to bring our strategy to life. After the Movement strategy was completed in 2020, the Wikimedia Foundation started a funding program to support people who work on specific aspects of the strategy in their contexts, or, for the whole movement. Nikki, can you introduce our first guest today?
Nikki: Yes! I’m happy to introduce Yop Rwang Pam, she is the Lead Movement Strategy Specialist at the Wikimedia Foundation. There she works to support individuals and communities focused on advancing the Recommendations and Initiatives of Movement Strategy, this includes financial support through the Movement Strategy Grants. Prior to joining the Foundation, she worked as a development practitioner supporting philanthropies to design and implement grant programs. Hi Yop, thank you for joining us, where are you calling us from today?
Yop: Hi Nikki, it is a pleasure to be here. I’m joining you from San Francisco in California today.
Eva: Happy to have you Yop! Our other guest is Barbara Klen. Barbara has been working since December 2022 as a Regional Coordinator of the Central and Eastern Europe Hub, an initiative funded by the Movement Strategy Grants. Barbara is from Croatia and before Wikimedia she was working as consultant for EU projects and as a manager in the NGO and private sector, mostly working on development and human rights projects in European countries. Welcome Barbara, where are you today?
Barbara: Hi! Nice to be with you! I'm joining you from Zagreb from Croatia.
Nikki: Great! So Barbara, let's just start with you and get your perspective first. You're relatively new to our Movement but you’ve had extensive experience working in the NGO sector. Maybe tell us your story, tell us more about your background and what motivated you to join Wikimedia?
Barbara: Yeah it's an interesting question and I will try to explain it concisely. One part of the answer is my previous career. I was always interested in development projects and the majority of my professional life I worked on EU projects as you already mentioned, as EU projects consultant, and then also in the NGO sector, mostly in the Netherlands where I studied, and later in Croatia. But these projects were always implemented most of them internationally, so I was dealing with diverse topics from, let's say, sustainable development, development of e-government systems, also human rights projects. The job that I had before joining the CEE Hub, I was working as a executive director in an NGO which was based in Croatia and focusing on mental health issues and although I love that job, I missed this international perspective and at the point that I really wanted to go back into international field, I saw this advertisement on LinkedIn, which was advertising CEE Hub-coordination project so two things came together at the same time, so my career path and the fact that the team of volunteers, which was working on the development of CEE, and that's Central and Eastern European Hub, they managed to get funding from Movement strategy grants and through that funding they were able to open this vacancy for new position. So that's how I applied for this job and I got this job offer but the thing that really made me join it was, I was invited to CEE meeting which was taking place in 2022 in North Macedonia and so I was offered a job but I still had a chance to meet these people, talk to them, see Communities and it was there that I then really decided ‘well I really want to join this crowd, I want to be part of this, it seems like something interesting, and big, and new’.
Eva: That's a very nice story Barara! You mentioned the Movement Strategy Grant that led to this job opening into you joining the Movement. Yop, this grant is part of the Movement Strategy implementation program, which is, I think, the reason why you joined the Movement. Can you maybe tell us a bit more about the path that led you to us?
Yop: Sure, I can do that Eva. My career journey evolved from being an investigative journalist to doing media for development, then media development itself, and then fully migrated into designing programs for social change. One of the key projects that I worked on in my introduction to designing for social change, was working on the initial thoughts and conversations around Movement Strategy. Since then I stayed in the loop of things and when the opportunity presented itself I jumped at it and I said yes. It was such amazing work to see a global Community being intentional about coming together and saying ‘here's how we want to advance, here are things that if we did this in a coordinated manner and with some cohesion, we can say to the world that indeed we are moving forward in our mission and our visions and our goals and our values’. So of course I jumped at the opportunity to join this Movement that I had helped design for and hopefully play a meaningful part in the execution of this strategy.
Eva: I really like hearing your enthusiasm for the Movement and our vision. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more about the Movement Strategy Grants program, what is this program?
Yop: Yes absolutely! The Movement Strategy Grants program is an all-in compassing program. You can think of it as that, as a gamut of resources for people who are interested and very focused on supporting the advancement of the recommendations and the initiatives within the Movement Strategy 2030 goals. The grants are designed to enable experimental work, to enable us as a Movement document foundationally the knowledge that we have, often that knowledge is scattered in different places, or it is not effectively documented so that anyone can pick that and kick things off and begin to implement. So the Movement Strategy Grants are designed to enable that. They're also designed, of course, to support Innovation - what are new ways that we might connect with others, what are new ways that we might think about collaborating across regions, collaborating across thematic areas, even? That is what the grants are supposed to do. They support the work of Affiliates, they support the work of individual contributors who are focused on specific recommendations, specific initiatives, and just doing the work to move the needle on those.
Eva: Can you maybe tell us why you think that it is so important to have this program apart from the other Grant programs that the foundation is offering?
Yop: Yes I get this question a lot Eva.
Eva: That's why I'm asking it here.
Yop: Personally, I will agree with anyone who says ‘but isn't everything Movement Strategy?’. Yes, because the Movement Strategy recommendations and initiatives came from all of us, they are a reflection of our dreams, our goals, and our desires as a Movement. But the strategy is also our collective framework for saying okay we have these dreams, but can we be deliberate about taking the steps to getting there? Okay we have all of these goals, we know to a large extent that we are the infrastructure for knowledge across the world today but are we the essential infrastructure for this? Are we doing this work with equity in mind? Are we doing this work in a way that makes our advocacy for free knowledge coherent for those who might join us? That's what Movement Strategy grants do, they help us deliberately track our advancement towards achieving those goals. There are some specific actions that we can take, specific projects that we could run, that help us move that needle and say very clearly ‘here's how we're moving those types of projects’ are usually very done in a coordinated or collaborative manner. So yes, everything ties to Movement Strategy in one way or another, but specific projects are really important to help us bubble up and bring up those learnings that can tell us ‘okay you're making progress as a Movement’, or ‘hold on people, maybe you need a strategy 3020 to get there’
Nikki: That makes a lot of sense and you've been in philanthropy before and you know how project funding is so unstrategic from a perspective of the grantee, you can string up a number of projects and and then completely forget about your strategy, because you're just leaning into what next shiny thing is funded by a funder. So to have foresight at the Wikimedia Foundation to see ‘okay this is actually a transformation that we're going through and we need to incentivize and support innovation around how we transform into what we want to be’. I think that it was very wise to have that and I think also we will need to continue to do that in addition to project funding, in addition to operational funding. With that in mind, what was funded in the last couple years, what are some cool projects you can talk about that move us closer to our strategic direction?
Yop: Oh, happy to share those! They have been very many, I will say, before I share a small list, that there have been some very inspiring projects, there have been projects that sometimes I think about and they just bring tears to my eyes because they're just a reflection of the passion, and the commitment, and the dedication that individual and affiliate volunteers have for our Movement. To take things forward, I have seen many across our Movement step up with a bit of fear, a bit of trepidation, a bit of ‘can I do this? Will I really be allowed to do this?’. And, you know, sometimes not being very certain or in some cases working with a Community of other volunteers who may not be quite happy with the work at first but then people then take the work forward end up getting consensus that they might not have had at the beginning of the work, or people who start off with one approach and based on feedback, based on what has been shared, take on an approach that effectively responds to the Communities that they're trying to serve. There are many.. the one project that I feel very strongly about, or not feel strongly about, more really proud of, is the work of the Kyrgyz Community. That's one that was really new and the person who's leading that project has done a lot of painstaking deliberate and intentional work to move the needle. One initiative that we can all agree is important, for a number of different reasons depending on where you are and what region, is skills and leadership development. We need to grow our skills as a Movement, we need to develop our leadership capacities and so projects like capacity exchange and calibra are critical projects. Calibra comes from some work that had previously been done for the lusophone community initially, it was about trying to understand how different parts and pieces of the different individuals, rather from across the lusophone community across the world, might come together and share skills, services and knowledge. That evolved into what calibra now is, where the community gave feedback and said ‘hold on a second, before we get into any big projects, we need to grow our leadership capacities so let's be intentional about taking the steps and phases to get there’. It's not a Sprint it's a marathon! Calibra is one project that's developed by Wikipedia Brazil, of course following that initial research to understand the needs of the lusophone community and what structures might best support the delivery of those service needs. Capacity exchange kicked off with some initial research as well, and a lot of coordinated work has gone into helping design, develop ,and implement this repository of skills and knowledge and capacities across our Movement. So many people hold so many different levels of skills and experience and it would just make sense to have a melting pot, a place where we come to and find people within our Movement who have the skills that we're looking for, or who we can share our skills and our knowledge with. The capacity exchange work is really critical and essential for the skills and leadership development work for our Movement at the moment. The oral culture toolkit project is also one that's really interesting and this is a really good example of a person saying ‘I see this, I'm taking this on, I got this’ and Amrit is doing some really great work there, helping us answer the question ‘How do you do language activism effectively? How do you help a language Community think about all the essential pieces that need to come together?, and for that language Community to build, to grow, and to document their culture?’ Because it's not always written and we know that for minority language groups, oral culture is the way that knowledge is passed from generation to generation and it's time to start to preserve that. The initial research was done, and now you know they're going into piloting and testing where it had initially been work that was happening in the south Asia region but the next stages will connect to other regions across the world. So a lot of research work has been done within the scope of Movement Strategy Grants. Some key initiatives that have not been covered yet, interestingly, are some initiatives around underrepresented groups, some knowledge gaps-type of work, some of the innovation work, and some of the type of work connected to documenting our knowledge as a Movement. But one of the most exciting projects that's happening in Movement Strategy are projects around building, and setting up, or holding consultations, and the research, and the piloting, of coordination structures across our Movement, because in different regions, and sometimes different thematic areas, there's so much work that needs to be done and if we're cohesive about that, we could go a long way. So yeah, Hub projects, there are about 14 ongoing Hub projects, but this is not the time for sharing that.
Eva: Thanks a lot Yop for shedding some light on the amazing work that's going on in the Movement and there will definitely be links in the show notes, linking to the projects you mentioned. Maybe let's talk a little bit more about the Hubs. You just said that a lot of your grantees have been working on skills and leadership development projects, such as the Hubs and we have Barbara with us today, who is working on one of them, the CEE Hub. Barbara, can you maybe start with the basics? What is a Hub and where did the idea of Hubs generally come from?
Barbara: Yeah, this is really a good question because even though I have been working for more than a year for a Hub, I get a lot of this question ‘what actually is the Hub?’, so just a disclaimer before I start answering, I will be presenting this Central and Eastern European Hub perspective and explain how it developed because there isn't like a specific recipe that you can find on meta or Wikipedia, like ‘how to create a Hub’ so there is no recipe like ‘take two board members, add $30,000, then add one employee, and, you don't have to cook it but like wait for one year and you will have a Hub’. Well, there is no recipe like this and each initiative has to see what works for them. In our case, how it all started, was that during the Movement Strategy working group processes when discussions about decentralization were taking place, then also Regional level and networks became the focus of that discussion and that, somehow, organically also turned into discussion about Hubs and then going back to our Wikimedia context, Hubs would be, and are, networks of different communities that share a common interest, so this common interest can be a topic and if it's a topic then we are talking about thematic Hubs or this common focus can be specific region or area, and this is where I'm coming back to our Hub, it's Central and Eastern European Hub, so our common interest was the region Central and Eastern European region. Parallel to this Movement Strategy working group processes there was already common understanding in the CEE region how this way of advanced composition and formation of Hubs is a good idea and how we want to go in that direction and that's how it got started.
Eva: Can you maybe give us a short history of the CEE Hub? You talked about how it got started but maybe you can tell us a little bit more about how it has developed in the last years and maybe what was the role of the grants in its foundation because it has been funding for some time now, so, how did the funding help the development of the Hub?
Barbara: So before even starting about Hub and funding which was, I would say essential to get things going and and starting in a more intensive way, I still have to mention that there were already many years of close cooperation in the CEE, so this whole story of CEE cooperation didn't start only with the story about the Hub. There were CEE spring contests and there were also Regional CEE meetings and conferences. There was a history of working together and cooperation in the region. But then when really specifically talking about Hubs, the first discussion among Affiliates started in 2019 and then people who were from the CEE and who were working in the strategy working groups, they started talking and working on Hub project concept and developing this. Somewhere at that time also by-weekly regular meetings started and that was in March 2021, it was before any funding but there was a group of enthusiastic volunteers, some of them are still part of either CEE Hub steering committee, or wider groups connected to the hub, but these volunteers and also employees of some Affiliates have been working together, coming together since March 2021 and the funny thing is that we still have this same document for taking notes, so still now we have this Wednesday bi-weekly meetings uh 6:00 CEE time and, well, we can just follow all notes which they were taking since 2021. Coming back to money because well it's also an important component. The first time that we got any Grant was in June 2021 so that was also Movement Strategy Grant and it was the name of the project was ‘CEE needs research’ and Wikimedia Poland was implementing this project which was very important as the focus of the project was implementing a survey and 21 Community interviews. Basically people who were part of it, Natalia Szafran and other volunteers and members of Wikimedia Poland. They were trying to find out what are the needs of the region? What kind of vision do communities have for the Hub? What do they want to do? Or, how to support them? And when they had the outcome of this research, this is how the first real, yearly project developed, because the results of the research became project application for the first real one-year Grant, which was then granted in the summary of 2022 and the name of that project was very creative ‘building CEE Hub’. At that time, I was mentioning before, that they were able to secure funds to even employ people, so to staff members and to implement activities and have funds to go further, now we are already a year and a half after that, and we finished with implementation of this first year and now in the end of 2023 we got positive response or approved Grant application for the year too, so we are continuing with building the CEE Hub and, again, with very creative name ‘stronger CEE Hub’ it's also one year Grant
Eva: So maybe creativity is in the strength of the Hub..but apart from this, that's quite a success story that you're talking about right now and as you mentioned, there isn't any recipe for the whole Movement on how to create a Hub and what's really striking in this story and what is great is like how much time you put into research and making sure you understand the needs of the Community and it definitely worked out very well for the CEE communities and that's great. Maybe now we can get a little bit deeper into the practice and the learnings and maybe look at what worked well and what could be improved in the future. You mentioned, Barbara, that obviously the regional collaboration is an important aspect of the Hub and I know that the bottom-up approach is also something essential to the way you function as a network. Can you tell us a little bit more about how the Communities are involved in the Hub, and what a typical day coordinating the activities in the region looks like?
Barbara: Without Communities, cooperation with Communities, Affiliates and active individuals, there is no CEE Hub because the whole concept is based on this coordination and if we don't have strong relationships and communication with Communities, there is no one who can take part in our activities that we are implementing and then basically there are no results or outcomes. So how we engage with Communities, it's with, well, we have diverse methods, we have many one-on-one meetings with Communities or members, we also have meetings with Affiliates, we are implementing surveys and then based on what we hear from them, we are organizing learning sessions that they take part in. In this case it is quite easy to see if something that you are implementing is working, like, you either have participants who are joining, or you don't. We are trying to be very open and easily accessible so we also have regular open office hours. It's once per month, it's usually first Monday of the month, and it's something that you don't have to schedule, we announce it on our communication channels and people can just drop in and ask anything or ask for advice or comment. Also what we try to do, we have a big steering committee, it's composed of 11 members and then also two advisors and they are coming from different CEE Communities and countries and that's also the way how to keep Communities and people involved because they can also then go to their Communities and share things more easily than if we had smaller steering committee. That would be about communication and the typical day I couldn't say that there is something as a typical day, but as CEE Hub is also a project, we are following our project implementation which has a timeline and then, depending on the month, we have certain things that we are implementing, it can be either learning sessions or supporting campaigns or if we just take this January 2024 as example, there was a deadline for rapid grants and then as this administrative support and granting support is one part of our work, we were busy with commenting and helping small communities to submit their rapid grants, in some cases their first rapid Grant, so that was part of our work. We were also busy with setting up other project activities that will be happening in the second year, like employment of the third person and organizing some communication sessions that will take part. So it really depends on the time of the year, but definitely a lot of communication, meetings, and organization, it’s the core of our work and it's two stop members, as I mentioned, my colleague Tony from Scopia and me, and then it's not only us doing the whole work because we have the steering committee and advisers who also take part in working groups, advising, and helping us to to pull this all together and to make it work.
Nikki: All right, so there were some interesting experiences from actually starting up a Hub based on a lot of work that was also, like you said Barbara, had already been done over the last few years. Folks in that region have worked well together and had a good idea of where they wanted to go next. But Yop, you have funded more than just this Hub. Some of the Hubs are not quite as far along in their development. Talk a little bit about what your observations are in terms of developing regional athematic Hubs.
Yop: Sure, Nikki, I'll tell you more about Hubs and what we're seeing. I find that there's a, what might seem or what I'd like to call a natural progression, and a process, that makes sense for our Movement currently, and that is first that you document what the need is for this group, whether it's regional or thematic, that you're building a solution for, and then you design that solution or those gamut of services resources that are to be delivered to this whether regional or thematic group. Usually this is done in a collaboration structure and then when you determine what that is, you begin to test it out. Especially if some initial coordination did not already exist, especially if you know that you're creating and designing something that is essentially brand new and people are still learning to work together. Because for a long time we worked as individuals, and separately across our Movement, and so working together is something we're learning to do now. Some of us are learning to do it and it comes naturally like for the CEE and for some other places it doesn't, so some of the Hubs initiatives, I mentioned earlier there are about 14 thematic and Regional Hub initiatives that are currently ongoing. Some initial research, has been funded for the Arabic language Community, the language diversity group, content Partnerships, East Africa Regional and thematic Hubs, the West Africa regions also in that initial stage, WikiFranca is going into a research stage at this point, the education group is coming out of their research stage, the North America group as well is at that research stage and we've been discussing the initial steps for the ESEAP region and a few other thematic areas so this is some of the work that has been happening. People are moving at different stages, at different paces, I find that more than anything else, sometimes what, because it is a lot of work, so sometimes the challenge is just finding and ensuring that as volunteers we are able to sort of dedicate and commit the time that is needed to take things forward or in some cases, knowing for sure what services what resources might be available to help us take the next step in the plan and in the process. All this just to say that the CEE is well ahead and in an ideal world all of the regional Hubs that I've talked about and all of the Thematic Hub discussions that are ongoing are moving at just the same pace at the CEE Hub so we can all learn at the same time how we come together as a Movement in different spaces.
Nikki: Which nicely leads into my next question about, sort of learning from each other. If we look at hubs as a group or as a phenomenon in the Movement that moves towards growing our Movement in a decentralized way, and it feels like currently it's sort of a playground of innovation, you know, people are testing different things, different purposes, different ways of working, and I think it's really cool that we have this and that we have the Movement strategy funding to allow for this playground and letting people fail and try things out. What are some of the things that you do as the strategy person at the foundation? What are some of the connections that you make and the support that emerge from the grants? I mean, do you create opportunities for people to learn from each other? Talk a little bit about that!
Yop: Sure Nikki, so in keeping with the principle of Movement strategy, knowledge equity, and knowledge as a service. One of the things that we try to do with the Movement strategy grants is to enable more connections, more collaboration, and highlight surface or build enable the setting up of, you know, sort of knowledge networks, because often you find that something's happening in Brazil that might actually be very relevant to a group of folks who are starting out maybe in some parts in maybe Code Voi or in Burkina Faso, or you find that there's work that's happening in in Germany that is actually very relevant for people in Argentina and some of their initial ideas. Capacity exchange isn't up yet and fully running where we could throw in a few questions and find out what's happening and so for now, we need to find those connections and be proactive about looking at where people are, what's going on, and how others might benefit, and that's what we try to do within Movement strategy grants - help build those connections. I really like the collaboration that happened with the Unlock project and the folks from Argentina and Wikimedia Serbia. The work that Lucas is doing with WikiMovimento Brasil as well, that leadership development work is becoming very relevant for a lot of folks in lusophone speaking communities outside of Brazil like those in Burkina Faso. We also find some of the work that's also happening in language, for instance Amrits work on the oral culture toolkit. She's now building connections across other parts of Asia and some parts of Brazil, of Africa as well, and you know we try to make those connections, try to help people see ‘oh they you're doing this, it's fun, it's exciting have you had a conversation with these guys?’ Sometimes that is really all that it takes to enable some of these peer-to-peer exchanges to happen and build something from that.
Eva: Yeah that's great, this makes a lot of sense. Now I think I would like to quickly move towards imagining the future and looking ahead, looking at the future of the program and the implementation work in the movement globally. So Barbara, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about your plans and the plans of the CEE Hub for 2024, for this year, and the years to come. How do you foresee funding for the Hub in the mid to long term?
Barbara: Thank you Eva. Well, before really jumping in 2024 I have to say that our plans for 2024 are built upon this base that we created in 2023, so, learning on some successes but also something which was more challenging, we kind of made our plan for 2024. Here I would like to mention just several things, for example, when you think about CEE, or when we are talking about CEE, we are talking about more than 35 communities, so just if you think of a normal working week containing, let's say 40 hours, just this connection building and communication, if you would just spend one hour on community that would be like your whole working week, just to explain how challenging this is in a regional Hub covering many communities but although this is a challenging part, it's also the exciting part. For us this establishing good communication and connections really consumed a lot of our time during 2023, so during the first year of implementation and now with this strong basis we are moving towards future and we are basically continuing with all activities that we have been implementing in the last year so that means supporting communities in administrative way and under this area you can think of Grant support or supporting them in implementing regional smaller events. Then we have programmatic support, and here I'm talking about learning sessions supporting them in implementing different campaigns or organizing, for example HR activities, and also we have communicational activities that we have so we are supporting CEE newsletter that is being published bi-monthly and we are also creating communication channels and helping communities get in touch when they work on similar topics. So that's our plan for 2024 in short. As I mentioned before, our funding is secured from Movement Strategy Grant and so the whole 2024 is covered, that's short-term, and in the current framework, Hub like ours would need to continue running, would need continuous support, either from Wikimedia Foundation or depending on developments of global Council, and when we are thinking about like mid and long-term plans, I think that it's really difficult to comment and to imagine this because Movement Charter and other conversations might change the way funds are distributed, but definitely Hubs as they are structured now we can't, or I at least personally I can't imagine, that they could be funded like their operational part without Wikimedia Foundation or Global Council, however we call it, but without this money which is being collected. Because although we can partially rely on third party project grants, like EU projects or for example in our case during the last year we also worked with Wikimedia Sweden and we were able to secure funding from Swedish Institute and that was really amazing success for us because few of our CEE Affiliates are project partners and they will be taking part in the project and also receiving some grants from that but that's always connected to programmatic work and it's it's not covering your operations so I don't expect that Hub could be self-sufficient in a way that we can get all the money from EU or some other funds and be able to cover staff members, even if when we are talking about two people, so we would need continous support and then in combination with some other grants that would be a good example of breaking I think.
Nikki: That makes a lot of sense and I think just like the work of s is still evolving the funding model is also still evolving and as it is for the whole Movement. But I think some other Hubs definitely have more of a focus on actually acting like fundraising machines and, you know, fundraising where maybe the chapters or user groups are too small to fund raise in those areas and then act as funding distribution mechanisms. So there's all these discussions going around I think we're going to be innovating and trying out over the next probably decade, at least till 2030, on this stuff but I like your vision of operating funds coming from Movement funds where whoever administers those and then doing project funds through third party makes a lot of sense. So Yop, It feels like we are just getting started and it's going to continue to be important to have this strategic funding the Movement strategy implementation grants for a while so we have the ability to try things out and build things before we look into more sustainable funding models. Do you want to talk a little bit about what you want to do with the program in 2024 in terms of both your funding but also other support that you give to the grantees?
Yop: Yeah, in the ideal World, Nikki, Movement Strategy Grant has a big portfolio of millions of dollars and we can spend a lot of time aggregating our research tracking all the work that's happening across every region where we are proactively pushing folks, or encouraging folks, and supporting folks in places that we in communities and in contexts where we don't hear much so that they feed and contribute to anything that's happening and that we get to a certain point and we say ‘okay everyone is piloting something we're done with all this, that research work and everything is moving forward and here are our 10 recommendations, and all our 10 recommendations have implementation frameworks, here are our 46 initiatives, and all of our 46 initiatives have theories of change’. Oh what a beautiful world that be! But we're not there and what we do need to do now is be honest about the fact that we're not there, but there are steps that we can take today that could potentially help us get there or there are things that we can focus on today, here and now, and say, okay, let's be strategic in our strategy implementation and move in a certain direction. We've focused on some initiatives and recommendations that are essentially fundamental pieces for our Movement, fundamental pieces that have to be in place, otherwise all of the other work may not happen or it would fall apart at some point, and those fundamental pieces Barbara alluded to earlier in those pieces around governance, the pieces around policy for our Movement, and the pieces course around ensuring that we have the skills and the capacities, and also a bit of innovation. So yes, it's it's going to be a really long journey to getting to where we're going, but in 2024 Movement strategy grants will try to be a little more deliberate about thinking about our focus surfacing more of that research and try to provide a little more proactive support beyond the funding for Hubs. This is proactive support, that's not just financial support, because often when we talk about resources we're thinking money, but resources aren't just funding, resources are being able to say you need to conduct some research, here's someone with the capacity, or by the way, this work that you want to do, this dated information that you could already leverage so that you're not starting from scratch and so cut out maybe a month's work by just putting forward what already exists so that people can build on that. So in this year in 2024 Movement strategy grants will be a little more intentional, more proactive about surfacing this existing work finding them, surfacing them to help people see what they can already build on, but also leaning in a little more places where support beyond funding is definitely needed
Eva: This makes a lot of sense Yop and I like that you specify that support doesn't just mean financial support but it can mean so much more and there are many things that we can already start working on and that we should be working on already now. So maybe then my last question we go to Barbara, talking about concrete implementation work. I'd like to hear your thoughts about the future of Hubs in the Movement. Barbara, what's your vision for regional Hubs, and do you think that we are heading for a Movement empowered by Regional Hubs?
Barbara: I have to believe in this, or I am believing in this, because otherwise I couldn't be motivated to work in this position and in the CEE Hub, so that's one short answer. But going back to what Yop said about support being not only financial and thinking about the role of the Hubs, especially related to bringing more equity, diversity to the whole Movement. The way I see this and based on the experience from previous years, we as a regional Hub, we really in some cases and that without regranting or some financial support, we really achieved or we managed to achieve that those who are normally or usually not heard, so not the strongest ones, but really less organized small communities are able to participate, we are the ones who can also be their voice, be their support and this doesn't require giving them funds, but just being there listening and then being able to share what their perspective is. So with this having regional funds, regional hubs, it would ensure more diverse Movement where other voices are heard and also Movement where decisions can be then also made based on not only one perspective, or several perspectives of stronger ones, but also many other perspectives which make decision making more complex, but then in the end also more corresponding to this diverse reality that we are part of. I'm hoping for stronger regional Hubs and then also more diverse Movement
Eva: Talking about decision making and a Movement empowered by regional collaborations, this makes me think about the Movement Charter that's being drafted right now, and you said Barbara, there isn't an official definition of a Hub right now, but there is this committee that's drafting the Charter and that's putting a lot of thoughts into it and hopefully by the end of this year we may have this document that gives us a bit more clarity around Hubs and maybe what their roles and responsibilities could look like if we want to structure our Movement in a way that really enables us to embrace the diversity we have and to reach our strategic vision for 2030.
Barbara: Yeah I completely agree with this one, and I'm also happy that CEE Hub and also our, I mean, volunteers, but also that we are part of this process because we are also commenting and taking part in the discussions and hopefully enabling better quality of this formulation and document in the end.
Nikki: So that's a wrap of the 17th episode of WIKIMOVE. Thanks to our guests, Yop and Barbara, for sharing their insights, thanks for listening.
Eva: Wikimove is a production of Wikimedia Deutschland and its Governance and Movement Relations team and is available on podcast apps and youtube. Our music was composed and produced by Rory Gregory, and is available under CC BY-SA on Wikimedia Commons - and so are all of our episodes.
Nikki: You can visit our WIKIMOVE meta page to listen to previous episodes and suggest topics and guests for our next episodes, you can suggest yourself as a guest. You can also use our meta page to react to podcasts, to connect with other listeners and subscribe to always be notified of our new episode releases.
Eva: If you want to reach out to us, you can do so via the WIKIMOVE meta page or you can send us an email. All the relevant links are available in the show notes.