CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2018 - June 2019/Partnerships

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Executive Summary


A2K is currently working with Universities, Educational institutions, and like-minded organizations. This year, A2K is going to continue our work with existing partnerships who sustain interest to work with Open knowledge movement. During last plan period, A2K approached and could identify areas to collaborate and synergy, this is resulting building collaborations with Educational Organizations, Government Departments, Universities, and other like-minded organizations. Program is also exploring to reach-out several other organizations. A2K is trying build or scale up collaborations with these organizations to result sustained growth of Movement.

A2K identified that collaborating with colleges and educational organizations which specified subjects (language, science, journalism and communication) and majority of students are from rural background who studied their first language medium till high school will result in better impact as students are naturally better candidates to write in Indian language Wikipedias. Continue working more with such institutes and exploring new partners considering these aspects will be strategy, regarding educational organizations.


Educational Institutions


As a step towards enabling students editing and contributing skills on Wikipedia in vernacular languages, CIS-A2K would initiate, certificate courses on using and editing of Wikipedia. These courses will not only teach students editing skills but will also engage in questions regarding research practices, curation of content, peer review mechanisms. CIS-A2K team would be offering internships to students of educational institutions and researchers interested in areas of Digital nature of Indian languages. This internship aims to bring in the spirit of a collaboration and builds a larger dedicated team to engage and discuss possible activities in the host educational institutions.

A2K team is currently co-ordinating both the internship and certificate courses at Christ University, Bangalore and has received positive feedback both from the management and students.

Goal (Plan)
  • To engage students in activities that increase exposure to Wikimedia projects
Objectives
  • Create opportunities of student Wikimedians being mentored by active and experienced Wikimedians
  • Collaborate with management of the educational institutions to increase reach of Wikimedia projects by taking them out of the classroom
Partner institutions

We'll work with the following institutions and organisations:

Target
  • Conduct certificate course in one partner institution
  • Develop an internship program that contributes to quality improvement of Indic Wikimedia projects.

Development organisations

In its effort to increase participation and reach on Indic Wikimedia projects CIS-A2K has plans of partnering with organisations working in the not for profit sector. These organisations will have vast repository of recorded data and lived experiences about the area of their specialisation. A2K team would be working with organisations which are active in the areas of environment conservation, education, women empowerment, archiving endangered languages and other important themes in this proposal period. Our engagement with them is an attempt to create contextual and relevant content that will be useful for the discussion and understanding of these themes.

Goal (Plan)
  • To build partnerships with grass-root level organisations and produce locally relevant content
Objectives
  • To assist in the process of social integration of underprivileged communities
  • To play the role of a catalyst towards increased use of internet tools for purpose of knowledge and information
Potential institutions for collaboration
Target
  • Conduct training and orientation programs about the Wikimedia projects. 6 during the proposal period.
  • Distribute KIWIX resources amongst local communities. 6 during proposal period.


Archives and libraries

It has been misconstrued that Wiki projects are potential threats to the future and well being of GLAM organisations. While global communities have proved this to be a myth, in the Indian context this myth not only exists but is gaining strength. It is imperative that A2K team collaborates with GLAM institutions to dispel this myth and build a healthy relation among Wikimedians and custodians of GLAM institutions. A2K has not been historically successful in its efforts of engaging with Galleries and Museums and hence would like to focus its energies with Archives and Libraries with whom we have worked well in the past.

Goal (Plan)
  • To improve access for Wikimedians regarding references material, resources and other scholarly material
Objectives
  • Develop policies and strategies to make available both born digital material and non digitised material under open licenses
  • Connect archives and libraries to efforts of digitisation and modern methods of archiving followed by GLAM communities across the world
Partner institutions
Target
  • Conduct edit-a-thons which will make use of the expertise of libraries and archives for referencing and material collation 2 events during proposal period
  • Organise digitisation sprints to produce content for Wikisource in archives - 4 events during proposal period.

Active Wikipedia in Education Partners

A2K team has a long association with educational institutions across India. While the educational institutions have always engaged with Wikimedia projects. It is often passive engagement which does not benefit Wikimedia projects. Wikipedia and Wikisource can be used as a pedagogic tool to develop quality content regarding the academic subjects and other interesting themes Indian languages. These programs will yield in growing content and contributors of the Wikimedia projects.

Goal (Plan)
  • To create long term and stable partnerships with educational institutions to support Wikimedia projects in India
Partner institutions
Objectives
  • Integrating pedagogic practices with practices of open knowledge creation in Indic languages
  • Creating awareness among students and faculty members towards Wikimedia projects and their utility in classroom learning
Target
  • Establish one stable project specific partners across active Indic Wiki projects.
  • Organise a review meeting to discuss and strategise performance of the partnerships.

Global Engagements

Content donation by Odisha Government in the last one year, with analytics
Idea

Indian Wikimedia communities are diverse in nature communities and have a lot of potential. The Global Engagements plan aims to localise more Global projects for the benefit of the community and help Wikimedians to take part in it.

Projection
  • Localise more global projects such as 100Wikidays, Women in Red, Wikipedia Asian Month, CEE Spring,
  • Help community members to write grants and reports.
  • Help community members to write applications and proposals for participation.
  • Encourage community members to take part in global projects.
  • Invite international volunteers to do Skype or hangout sessions to train local Wikipedians.
Targets
  • Supporting or co-organizing at least 4 Global events such as Wikipedia Asian Month and providing support to Indian Wikimedia communities
  • At least 25 Wikimedians participating in these initiatives