Global Resource Distribution Committee/Creation of the interim GRDC/Candidates/Sky Harbor

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

Preferred name	Josh Lim
Language capabilities (native or professional / advanced / basic)	en-N, tl-N, es-4, zh-2, pl-2, fr-1, he-1, ja-1
Region and country you identify with	North America (United States) / East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific (Philippines) / Northern and Western Europe (Spain)
Interim GRDC seats you are running for and why (regional volunteer/thematic volunteer)	Regional volunteer, either for the North America or ESEAP seats. I have extensive experience with the movement as it relates to both regions, leading and growing affiliates in both the U.S. and the Philippines, playing a key role in movement-critical discussions in both regions, and also expanding our reach and network with allied and adjacent organizations.
Do you have any topic or area of specialization within the Wikimedia movement? (max 1000 characters)	My time in the movement has been defined by building community, strengthening governance and ensuring adequate representation for the regions I claim to represent. With community, I specialize in building up groups of Wikipedians to find ways of ensuring self-sustainability, primarily in the Philippines but also elsewhere, all with the intention of empowering communities to chart their own way forward. For governance, I am deeply rooted in the world of Wikimedia affiliates at multiple levels. In my time with the movement I have founded (or refounded) two affiliates, helped build a regional hub, and served in Wikimedia governance bodies. I also ran previously for the Board of Trustees in 2015. My time in the movement is also defined by ensuring adequate representation, especially for the peripheral regions of the movement. Having also spent time in our "core" regions I am invested in building critical links to facilitate understanding between core and peripheral regions of the movement.
Have you ever held any role or position, either current or past, in the Wikimedia movement? (max 1000 characters)	I am a co-founder of the the Wiki Society of the Philippines (formerly Wikimedia Philippines), I am one of the co-leaders of the Wikimedians of Los Angeles User Group (WikiLA), which I helped re-establish in 2018, and I am a member of Wikimedia España. I also served on the Affiliations Committee from 2013 to 2016, was part of the group of Asian Wikipedians who helped lay down the groundwork for the ESEAP Hub, including initial collaborative projects like the Wikipedia Asian Month, and played an active role in establishing what would become WikiCred. Programmatically, I am currently one of the leads for the upcoming ESEAP Strategy Summit 2025 in Manila, have previously served on the organizing team of the 2023 Queering Wikipedia conference organized by Wikimedia LGBT+, and was also on the core organizing team of WikiConference North America 2019. On-wiki, I am a bureaucrat on the Tagalog Wikipedia and an administrator on the English Wikipedia, both since 2008.
Why are you interested in the interim GRDC and what can you contribute? (max 1000 characters)	As someone who has followed developments in Wikimedia movement governance over the last 15 years, and especially with the Movement Strategy process, I strongly believe in the GRDC becoming an effective tool in not just ensuring the equitable and just distribution of movement resources in favor of the various communities that anchor the Wikimedia movement, but also propel the continued devolution of movement power towards communities which have the best experience with advocating for their regions and ensuring that they have adequate resources and representation to advance and grow their communities. If we are looking to more seriously look at ways to devolve movement power in a manner that is both responsible and responsive to the needs and intricacies of the movement, the GRDC can and should play that critical role.
Please share any volunteering or professional experience relevant for the interim GRDC (role, organization, years) (max 1000 characters)	Much of my career has been anchored in non-profit management, so I have experience with grantmaking and grant management both within and outside the movement which is critical for this role. In my role with The Clubhouse Network, my current employer, I have both led and facilitated distribution of over $100,000 in funds for everything from stipends for our annual conference to securing $45,000 for our sites in Europe and the Middle East to organize a regional Teen Summit. Within the movement I have managed over $150,000 worth of projects granted by the WMF on impactful projects like WMPH's Cultural Heritage Mapping Project, which have been key to developing the strong program and project management skills that underpin the work our movement does. More recently, after running a series of edit-a-thons in the LA area WikiLA is finally working to get its first rapid grant, to which we hope it will serve as a catalyst for building a more sustainable, professional user group in the future.
Describe your skills and experience relevant to the interim GRDC (max 1500 characters)	I bring several skills to the table, including a comprehensive understanding of non-profit management as elaborated above, but I also possess a very strong background in movement governance, multilingual communications (I speak English and Spanish — two major movement languages — fluently) and conflict resolution and both project- and program-based management skills. These skills have been honed over a decade of professional experience in both the private sector, where I have worked for companies ranging from small startups to large tech companies, and in the non-profit world both with the Wikimedia movement and my current employer. I strongly believe that it is important that we have GRDC members who are well-rounded and can understand how these things work both in the for-profit and non-profit spaces, and I trust that I can deliver on those skills that I bring to the GRDC.
Describe your understanding of the Wikimedia Movement's current resource distribution process. (max 1500 characters)	Much of the movement's resource distribution is done internally, with the Foundation facilitating a series of grantmaking programs which have evolved (and, I will say, mostly for the better) over the last ten years or so. From having only a couple of grant programs when community grantmaking began early in the last decade, we now have everything from rapid grants to APGs, conference grants to now even the Knowledge Equity Fund process, which paired with the formation of the various regional funding committees has really served to facilitate a more grounded approach to funding the work our volunteers do. Beyond WMF-sponsored grantmaking, various affiliates in Europe (most notably WMDE, but also WMPL, WMES and WMFR among others) run their own grantmaking operations and even have access to direct fundraising through the projects themselves, and there is also movement-adjacent funding from partners like CIS-A2K, WikiEd, and allied groups like Hacks/Hackers (which funds WikiCred). While there has been significant improvement in how resource distribution has been facilitated in the movement over the last decade, there is always still room for improvement and refinement.
How do you think the GRDC could improve the current situation and which priorities do you think it should have? (max 1500 characters)	As I said earlier, there is a lot that we can improve on with the current resource distribution process, especially as we move towards a permanent structure. These revolve around: First, we must ensure that resources are distributed in a way that maximizes accessibility to our volunteers, both in terms of funds and in skills. It is in our interest not only to support our volunteers with the resources our movement has, but also to build the capacity of affiliates and other groups to find ways toward sustaining themselves in the long run. Second, we should be able to look at ways that we can support our volunteers beyond current pathways. For example, there were conference participation grants but were discontinued a few years later, with no straight replacement. A major criticism of the Movement Charter was that it was too tilted in favor of affiliates, which isn't off-base, so we need to ensure that resource distribution is not similarly tilted in such a manner. Third, the GRDC should be empowered to facilitate further collaboration between the various corners of our movement. We submit reports, for example, but the lessons we glean from them are often inaccessible to people from other parts of the movement. The GRDC is in a good position to build on whatever structures we have to help facilitate that information-sharing, and perhaps to also use that data to optimize funding opportunities and maximize the benefit of our movement's resources towards our volunteers.
By the end of the pilot in two years, what should the GRDC have accomplished and how should we measure its success? (max 1500 characters)	Ideally, by the end of its term the GRDC should be able to set the tone for grantmaking within the movement. We are in a good position to not only cement the progress we have made now with our current resource distribution proceeses, but also to effect further changes that help empower our volunteers and other critical pieces of the movement to tap into the support that we can provide them to grow their communities, affiliates and projects. Ensuring transparency, accessibility, sustainability and accountability in all aspects of how our resources are allocated, and forming structures and building lines of communication that help facilitate all of that, will be key to ensuring that the GRDC's mandate is and will be a success. I would evaluate the success of the GRDC as well based on the permanence of the initiatives that it leads, and my hope is that we are able to build structures that not only outlive the interim mandate of the committee, but evolve to become critical pillars of the movement.