Wikimedia CEE Hub/Background

WIKIMEDIA CEE HUB

Regional hub covering Central and Eastern Europe

The CEE Hub is mostly the formalisation of a process that started in 2011, when communities from Central and Eastern Europe agreed to work closer together, because we face similar challenges. The informal network we have built since then now needs a new step – formalising these efforts in a way that creates a stable and sustainable structure and guarantees fair access to knowledge and resources for everyone in the region. It is also partly an effort to address aspirations and opportunities around Wikimedia Movement 2030 Strategy, that among many includes Subsidiarity and Self-Management.

The CEE region has seen its share of conflicts, exemplified by the naming of the joint article writing contest CEE Spring, which highlights the many tumultuous events in the region over the past three decades. The CEE Hub should be a place that connects everyone interested in the Wikimedia communities, providing services that everyone can access and where everyone contributing to free knowledge can participate.

The process of designing a CEE Hub was started at the Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2020, in close alignment with the 2030 strategy recommendations. The initial group of volunteers and staff members of Wikimedia affiliates from Poland, Czechia, Austria, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, North Macedonia, Armenia and later also Russia, have worked since 2020 on a concept that will provide services to support especially the less well organised parts of the region. This concept and research phase was also done partly with the support of the initial rapid funds strategy grant CEE Needs Research, which through Wikimedia Poland (WMPL) conducted interviews with 21 different communities and affiliates in the region. At the CEE Meeting 2022 the first Steering Committee was agreed upon by the participants of the conference.

This page is initially dedicated to the network foundations of this network of affiliates, initiatives, communities and individuals, but will probably change over time according to better describe the current status of the hub.

Documentation and review of the process listing participation model, context and concept development is still to be made as Wikimedia_CEE_Hub/History_and_process.