Capacity development for underrepresented communities/Implementation

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Research

Implementation

Evaluation

The implementation phase aimed to engage members of the targeted communities in contributing to the Wikimedia projects and was conducted in the period from 1 September 2022 to 21 January 2023.

Aromanian language

Summary

The main activities for introducing the Aromanian-speaking community to the Wikimedia movement included workshops and an editing contest.

Workshops

• Workshops were organised as hybrid events with both in-person and online attendance to introduce the Aromanian-speaking community to the Wikimedia projects. A total of three such events were held on a weekly recurrent basis in the period 8–22 November 2022. Given that the survey results showed that the majority of fluent speakers of the Aromanian language are in the working-age group, all workshops took place in the evening, after the end of the work day, with a start time at 17:00 local time and had a duration of three hours. All three workshops had its in-person part in Skopje.
• The events were primarily advertised through the social media where announcements were posted in selected Aromanian groups. Additionally, the project was aired in the Aromanian programme on the Macedonian national radio. Interested participants had to sign up by fulfilling a submitting a registration form in which they had to indicate the way of participation (in-person or online) and whether they need a laptop.
• All workshops had a standardised structure. Each began with a brief introduction to the capacity development project, followed by a hands-on training on contributing to Wikipedia with a focus on the Aromanian edition and continued through most of the remaining time with an edit-a-thon in which participants were mentored by experienced editors. In order to address the concerns regarding the coverage of topics related to the Aromanian culture raised in the survey, a list of articles on Aromanian-related topics sorted out in five categories—Culture, History, Politics, Geography and Biographies—was compiled and shared with participants.
• A total of about 15 people were trained to contribute to Wikipedia either in-person or online. Since the workshops were organised as hybrid events and the trainings were broadcast on a virtual conferencing platform, all presentations were recorded and the produced videos were shared with other members of the Aromanian-speaking community in the groups on the social media.

Scenes from the workshop on 8 November 2022

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Scenes from the workshop on 15 November 2022

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Scenes from the workshop on 22 November 2022

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Editing contest

• The editing contest run from 15 December 2022 to 13 January 2023 and its primary goal was to get the trained participants in the workshops involved in writing articles on the Aromanian Wikipedia. There was no pre-determined theme and participants could write articles on any topic. (See the page of the contest on the Aromanian Wikipedia for further details.)
• A total of 5 editors actively participated in the contest, including participants who did not attend any of the workshops. They collectively created a total of 27 new and improved 33 existing articles. The majority of articles were written on Aromanian-related topics, with some of them being non-existent on any other Wikipedia. After the contributions in the contest were evaluated, the most prolific editors were awarded with symbolic prizes. (See the page of the contest on Outreach Dashboard for further details.)

Romani language

Summary

The main activities for introducing the Romani-speaking community to the Wikimedia movement included workshops and an editing contest.

Workshops

• Workshops were planned as hybrid events with both in-person and online attendance to introduce the Romani-speaking community to the Wikimedia projects. A total of three such events had to take place on a weekly recurrent basis in the period 10–24 November 2022 with a start time at 17:00 local time and an expected duration of three hours. The in-person part of all three workshops was supposed to take place in Skopje.
• The events were primarily advertised through the partnering Romani organisation, whose members made significant efforts to present the project and announce the events. Interested participants had to sign up by fulfilling a submitting a registration form in which they had to indicate the way of participation (in-person or online) and whether they need a laptop.
• All workshops were planned to have a standardised structure. Each had to begin with a brief introduction to the capacity development project, followed by a hands-on training on contributing to Wikipedia with a focus on the Balkan Romani edition in the Incubator and had to continue through most of the remaining time with an edit-a-thon in which participants were mentored by experienced editors. In order to address the concerns regarding the coverage of topics related to the Romani culture raised in the survey, a list of articles on Romani-related topics sorted out in six categories—Culture, Geography, Romani language, Film, Institutions and Biographies—was compiled.
• Despite the fact that there were registered participants for all three workshops, none showed up at the first and third event, whereas only one Romani speaker took part online in the second event. The only trained participant was a Romani-language teacher in a primary school, who successfully created a few articles on the Balkan Romani Wikipedia in the Incubator. She made some efforts to engage her pupils in the last workshop, but those attempts appeared to be unsuccessful.

Scenes from the workshop on 17 November 2022

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Editing contest

• The editing contest run from 22 December 2022 to 21 January 2023. There was no pre-determined theme and participants could write articles on any topic. (See the page of the contest on the Balkan Romani Wikipedia in the Incubator for further details.)
• No editors took part in the contest and none articles were written, so the planned prizes for the most prolific editors were not awarded.

Macedonian Sign Language

Summary

The main activities for introducing the Macedonian Sign Language community to the Wikimedia movement included a couple of sessions for recording videos and a seminar.

Recording sessions

• Considering that the majority of surveyed users of the Macedonian Sign Language indicated that they are not fluent in the Macedonian language and raised concerns regarding the limited use of the sign language, the primary goal of the recording sessions was to produce free high-quality videos documenting encyclopedic content abstracted from Wikipedia articles that were subsequently uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The recording sessions took place in November 2022.
• The recording process was arranged in collaboration with a sign language interpreter who featured in the recordings. Another important detail is that a user of the Macedonian Sign Language was hired as a video producer in an attempt to guarantee the quality of the videos. (See the category with the recordings on Wikimedia Commons.)

Sample recordings

Seminar

• The seminar took place on 11 December 2022 in a school for deaf and hard of hearing people in Skopje. It was an eight-hour event consisting of hands-on trainings on editing Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, as well as a recording session in which participants featured as interpreters in the recordings.
• A total of about 25 users of the Macedonian Sign Language from different parts of Macedonia participated in the seminar and produced about 15 high-quality videos documenting encyclopedic topics from Wikipedia. They were guided by two language interpreters.

Scenes from the seminar

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