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Grants:APG/Proposals/2016-2017 round 1/Wikimedia CH/Impact report form

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Purpose of the report

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This form is for organizations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their results to date. For progress reports, the time period for this report will the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). For impact reports, the time period for this report will be the full 12 months of this grant, including the period already reported on in the progress report (e.g. 1 January - 31 December of the current year). This form includes four sections, addressing global metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. Please contact APG/FDC staff if you have questions about this form, or concerns submitting it by the deadline. After submitting the form, organizations will also meet with APG staff to discuss their progress.

Global metrics overview - all programs

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We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Global Metrics. We understand not all Global Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and

  1. Next to each required metric, list the outcome achieved for all of your programs included in your proposal.
  2. Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
  3. In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs success

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Overall

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Table 3

Shared metrics

  1. Participants: The number of people who attend your events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually. This definition does not include people organizing activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.
  2. Newly registered: The number of participants that create new accounts on a Wikimedia project. These include users who register up to two weeks before the start of the event.
  3. Content pages: A content page is an article on Wikipedia, an item on Wikidata, a content page on Wikisource, an entry on Wiktionary, and a media file on Commons, etc. This metric captures the total number of content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects.

Grantee-defined metrics

  1. Number of new partnerships: A partnership is an arrangement where Wikimedia CH and other institutions/organizations, known as partners, agree to cooperate to advance free knowledge.
  2. Number of people reached in Switzerland: This metric is derived from the enabler "communication“ and demonstrates the reach/outreach Wikimedia CH has with its activities in Switzerland. It includes donors, readers of newspaper-articles etc.
Program Participants Newly registered Content pages Number of new partnerships Number of people reached in Switzerland
1 GLAM 509 of 300 (170%) 40 of 50 (86%) 44'318 of 50'000 (89%) 26 of 9 (289%) 301'332 of 150'000 (201%)
2 Education 758 of 500 (152%) 110 of 100 (110%) 102 of 300 (34%) 8 of 7 (114%) 476'776 of 285'000 (230%)
3 Community 320 of 500 (66%) 143 of 150 (87%) 25'891 of 8'500 (304%) 6 of 6 (100%) 75'115 of 150'000 (50%)
4 Partnerships and Public Relations 120 of 150 0 of 25 0 of 25 5 of 10 300'000 of 200'000
TOTAL FOR ALL PROGRAMS 1'720 of 1'450 280 of 325 70'311 of 58'825 45 of 32 1'149'223 of 885'000


Telling your program stories - all programs

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Executive Summary

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For Wikimedia CH it continues to be truly of utmost importance to collaborate, learn and share knowledge with other countries and Chapters, not only with the ones speaking the same languages, but also related to projects and programs. We believe that only together we can make a difference and achieve our common vision and goals, becoming a mindful organization.


Humanly speaking
2017 has been a very lively year, full of learning, new opportunities and challenges. From the human side of things, we were first able to welcome Lantus, a long-time Wikipedian, as the new German-speaking Community Manager at the beginning of the year. After that, our French-speaking colleague Gabrielle went on maternity leave and Flor took over her role, first on a temporary basis, then as full staff member. Saying that, we don't want to forget to express our sincere thanks to Gabrielle; her hard work and effort over the last years have definitely brought us a step further!

During summer, we were also able to welcome Marie-Louise as a part-time finance/HR officer, which since then collaborates effectively with Sabine, our part-time Manger since many years. Finally, as foreseen in our strategy, we decided to progress in terms of professionalization and quality of programs by sourcing and hiring a GLAM Project Manager on a 60% basis who started in December, as well as an Outreach/Communication Manager at 80% who started in January 2018. Both are multilingual and responsible for the whole of Switzerland.

Although all of this was absolutely necessary to be able to live up to expectations from our stakeholders and become a viable, sustainable organization, it nevertheless cost our small organization a huge time effort to source and hire the right candidates. Therefore, less time was left for other priorities, such as for example building even more partnerships or organizing outreach events.


Organizational-wise
After a quite turbulent GA in 2017 with new Board members taken onboard, the decision has rapidly been taken to enforce WMCH's "respectful space policy" and to issue an open letter explaining steps that had and were going to be undertaken. WMCH also offered to pay for a mediation between concerned parties, without playing an active role as it believed that these questions could better be dealt with between the concerned parties with a professional mediator. Looking back, it can be said that this has been the right decision and can definitely serve as a learning going forward.

Apart from that, the Board has worked alongside the WMCH staff in a very constructive manner in 2017; without their precious input and support, many things would not have been possible! It also worked on the improvement of Wikimedia CH's bylaws, which currently are under review by the members of the association.


Program-wise
Firstly, GLAM and Education, two of the three impact directions outlined in Wikimedia CH's 2017-2020 strategy, finally received their own strategic frameworks defining the way to go as well as actions to take during 2018 and beyond. Having these frameworks ready, i.e. setting priorities and goals for the years to come not only allows us to evaluate our actions and spending but also enables us to approach relevant partners, donors and other stakeholders with a clear view in terms of needs, outputs and vision.


Some programmatic highlights:

  • 2017 saw the successful continuation of the GLAM on Tour project with two multi-day events: The first one united the German and French-speaking communities in Fribourg and dealt with the topics of Gutenberg and the Counter Reformation. The second one was held in the Italian speaking Switzerland, where participants discovered the history and mysteries surrounding "Monte Verità".
  • In terms of educational projects, Wikimedia CH strengthened its partnerships with WikiToLearn and Devoxx4Kids (Ticino and ZH) and was again part of Media in Piazza, an event that gathered 700 students in Locarno and raised awareness about the use of new media among young people.
  • The celebration of the Swiss and International Archives Day on June 9 united archives all over the country which opened their doors to the public. Wikimedia CH partnered with the Association of Swiss Archivists (VSA-AAS) to promote free knowledge under the theme of "Archives connect" and a focus on Linked & Open Data. For the first time, events took place all over Switzerland and the mediatic repercussions were amazing
  • The GLAM Statistical Tool is a project of Wikimedia CH developed in cooperation with the Laboratory of visual culture at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUSPI) and Synapta, a spin-off of Centro Nexa of the Polytechnic University of Turin. It was born out of the concrete need of GLAM to have a statistical overview concerning their Wikimedia contributions and to also give them the possibility to calculate their views/clicks. In 2017, the first public release of the tool happened providing statistics about the number of people accessing the GLAM contributions and highlighting most viewed content.
  • We actively reached out to important stakeholders and participated at the DINACon in Bern as well as the official opening of the Cultural Heritage Year 2018 in Switzerland (#Kulturerbe2018, #Patrimoine2018, #Patrimonio2018)

Furthermore, Wikimedia CH supported several international Community events, such as the WikiCon DE in Leipzig, the WikiCon FR in Strasbourg and the first WikiCon IT in Trento. It also handed in a proposal to host the German speaking WikiCon in Switzerland in 2018, which has been accepted. On a national level the association continued to foster diversity and equality programmes related to gender and language matters. It also supported projects such as the "Swiss Foundation Public Domain" or the "WikiAlpenforum," to name a few.


Technically speaking
WMCH moves along a path of automatization, ensuring that its various databases and programs are linked in order to become more professional and effective not only in budgetary matters but also in terms of servicing its members, donors and other interested parties by delivering timely information, updates, donation receipts etc. It has been quite a tedious journey at times and there is definitely a lot of learning for the organization, but we are confident that we are moving along the right path. An IT strategy with complete documentation is still to come and sits very high on our priority list.

Finally, it has to be noted that WMCH operates on a complete virtual basis with no full-time staff member; in 2017 we started sharing platforms and tools in order to truly build up a virtual office.

Program GLAM

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A1.Metrics

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Write here the table of the metrics.

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Explanation Comments
1. # Total participants NA 147 of 300 (49%) 509 of 300 (170%) 112 + 7 + 38 + 52 + 1 + 300
2. # of new editors NA 40 of 50 (80%) 40 of 50 (86%) 32 + 10 + 1
3. # of Number of content pages created or improved NA 31'506 of 50'000 (63%) 44'318 of 50'000 (89%) 601 + 36'331 + 547 + 6'324 + 333 + 182
4. Number of partnerships NA 23 of 9 (256%) 26 of 9 (289%) 7 + 13 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 2
5. Number of people reached in Switzerland NA 301'332 of 150'000 (201%) 301'332 of 150'000 (201%) 227'532 + 71'975 + 1'825

Color coding

Achieved Target has been achieved or exceeded
Space for improvement Good progress but the target has not been reached
Attention required Null or little progress has been made to achieve the target

A2.Background and Context

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The Frame

GLAM partnerships and activities form one of the three impact directions of Wikimedia CH for the coming years. The rationale behind fostering and further developing this area is for one, the increased demand from the community in GLAM projects and events, but also the interest expressed by cultural memory institutions themselves to collaborate with us. Furthermore, the global trend of digitalization of cultural heritage across other countries has reached Switzerland and brings far reaching consequences and change in the way Swiss GLAM institutions will operate in the future. We consider this development to be a great opportunity for the Wikimedia Movement, and for WMCH. It will allow to access collections and artifacts in a digital manner and share them across the nation and across borders. The cultural sector in Switzerland is a rich and diverse one, composed of a variety of GLAM preserving not only Swiss cultural knowledge and heritage.

Overarching goal: Organizing and participating in national as well as international GLAM gatherings of the Wikimedia movement and actively reaching out to Swiss GLAM memory institutions to support them in sharing their curatorial knowledge, collections and resources in a digital manner, and enrich Wikipedia and its sister projects, thus making Swiss cultural heritage and its diversity discoverable to the world.

To better understand the GLAM environment in Switzerland and the impact of global trends for Swiss-based memory institutions, WMCH decided to elaborate a concrete GLAM strategy, in alignment with our general 2017 - 2020 outlook. This was indeed an important step for us: drafting a mid-term GLAM program thus supporting our overarching goal in a streamlined manner. The strategy sets the right framework to support us in evaluating our efforts and allowing for a continuous and critical review of actions to take, in order to reach our planned results.


The Process

Elaborating a GLAM Strategy: As GLAM is considered an important topic among the Wikimedia Movement and our Community, it was chosen as an impact direction of WMCH’s 2017-2020 strategy. Given the diversity and size of the Swiss cultural landscape we felt the need to move towards a structured approach, making sure that our future actions will be aligned with our overall objectives. Therefore, with the help of an external consultant, a draft GLAM strategy was developed during the months of July / August 2017. The final document is now based on thorough research in the international and national GLAM sector and incorporates various reflections and comments from the community. It provides not only a condensed view on the status quo, but also an outlook on the development of the cultural sector in a future, in which Wikimedia CH aims to play a major role. Facilitating the process of digitization of Swiss cultural heritage, providing solutions and tools, helping protect and disseminate Swiss culture and history through the Wikimedia Projects remains center-stage for WMCH.


Objectives

  • GLAM Organization: Focus on consolidation and start building a sustainable environment for GLAM projects in all three language regions
  • GLAM Partnerships: Reach out to Museums and approach GLAM Associations to establish a HUB organization and to facilitate future larger scale projects
  • GLAM Digital Competence: Build-up knowledge related to cutting-edge global technology and solution development, providing added value on all levels of digital change in Swiss memory institutions, in order to move towards becoming a digital mentor & enabler


The Challenges

  • GLAM Organization: Based on the internal and external reflection of the actual situation described in the GLAM strategy, we discovered that it is firstly of utmost importance from an organizational perspective for WMCH to create a sustainable and stable project environment and establish a HUB approach, before actually engaging in additional GLAM projects and initiatives. Having distinct regions, characterized by different cultures and above all languages, sometimes makes the collaboration on a national level as well as the scalability of projects difficult. Therefore, to operate more efficiently, some basic processes have to be established and instruments need to be available in all languages, according to the respective cultural characteristics of the single region.
  • GLAM Partnerships: WMCH today holds unilateral partnerships focusing on libraries and archives. The Swiss Museum landscape has a great potential, as we have over 1'100 museums holding over 71 million of archived objects. So far, there is no study about the level of digitalization in GLAM institutions in Switzerland to identify the accessibility of these collections. A key success factor for creating higher impact, will be to approach GLAM associations for common synergies and projects. Besides the digital accessibility of collections, one of the major challenges in collaborating with museums and GLAM associations is the topic of copyright and open licenses. An active contribution to shaping the future policy landscape will thus be key.
  • GLAM Digital Competence: As already mentioned, one of the major trends affecting GLAM institutions worldwide is the ongoing digitalization of cultural heritage. Digitalization, which in narrow terms may be defined as the “conversion of information from an analogue to a digital format”, has had a far-reaching impact on practical activities of museums, libraries and other memory institutions. Since the digitalization expands to cover the management and representation of cultural heritage in the digital environment as well as gaining insights on visitor’s preferences and behavior for exhibitions and event planning, analytics and statistics will become a key success factor for GLAM. The development of a statistical and administrational tool based on the institutions’ needs can be - and should be - further leveraged for other cultural institutions. The challenge WMCH is facing, is to keep up with cutting-edge technological knowledge and developments and their related implication for GLAM. Already now, a move towards artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality solutions can be observed globally. Summarized, choosing the right technology for selected projects will be key. Additionally, WMCH needs to continuously build up knowledge and be involved in the process of shaping emerging policies and privacy issues in this digital change, of course collaborating with other organizations engaging in this topic. A strong link to WMCH’s “Public and International Outreach” Pillar has to be established and is already worked on.


References
GLAM Strategy one pager as in community survey: WMCH GLAM Strategy Overview

GLAM Strategy Articulation Map one pager: GLAM Strategy Articulation Map

GLAM Strategy full version: WMCH GLAM Strategy

Logical Model for GLAM.

A3.Program activity

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Project 1: Develop major GLAM
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Swiss Archives Days

On June 9, in celebration of the Swiss Archives Day, archives all over the country opened their doors to the public. Wikimedia CH partnered with the Association of Swiss Archivists (VSA-AAS) to promote free knowledge under the theme of “Archives ∞ connect” and a focus on Linked & Open Data. Archives aimed to provide insights into the work of archivists and their knowledge about archive portals, online access, digital long-term archiving, digitalization, data protection, copyright and challenges, as well as changes to the archivist’s job description.
Schweizer Archivtag 2017-Schaffhausen Eisenbibliothek 1K4A0177


Wikimedia CH focused on sensitizing archives, archivists and the general public about free knowledge and demonstrated how to contribute to Wikimedia projects. The event is relevant for Wikimedia Switzerland because WMCH helped the Association of Swiss Archivists to have a Swiss event not only limited to a linguistic region.


Wikimedia CH therefore collaborated with the ETH-Library Archives (ZH), the GF AG Archive (SH), the Swiss Economic Archive and SBB Historic (BS), the Doku-Zug (ZG) and the PTT Historical Archive and Library (BE) to organize Wikipedia-Ateliers in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland. At the ETH-Zurich, a panel discussion on the ambivalent relationship between Wikipedia & Academia preceded the well-visited Wikipedia writing workshop.


In the Italian-speaking region the Swiss National Sound Archives and the Radio Museum Monte Ceneri opened their doors to the public and offered guided tours especially for the occasion.


In the French-speaking part of Switzerland different events took place. For example, a two-day “pedagogical action” in collaboration with the inter-communal archives of Prilly, Ecublens and Jouxtens-Mézery, which led to writing workshops for students and created Wikipedia-articles about the different villages. Furthermore, the Archives of the State and the Castle of Neuchâtel opened their doors to provide insights into different archival holdings as well as ongoing projects. The Cantonal Archives of Swiss Romandie and the Cantonal Archives of Vaud collaborated to organize a day of workshops and exchange on different points of view around Wikipedia. The program addressed audiences interested in the use of Wikimedia projects to add value to their collections and competences.


Finally, the Cantonal Archives of Jura presented the results of their AGORA project with the upload to Wikimedia Commons several historical audio recordings from the Constitutional Assembly of Jura and the Parliament of Jura. The collaboration and diverse events across the country led to several press reviews in newspapers and on TV.

Wikimedia CH is looking forward to the next Swiss Archives Day and aims for an annual repetition given the success of this initiative.


References

Specific metrics

  • Swiss Archive Day 2017: 1 partnership with Swiss Association of Archivists
  • Schweizer Archivtag - Metrics for German Switzerland: 124 articles edited or uploads and 35 editors (21 new editors) and 3 partnerships (excluding those of the GLAM network).
  • Schweizer Archivtag Podiumdiskussion: 40 attendees (as reported by the organizers).
  • Journée des Archives - Metrics for Romandie (French-speaking Switzerland): 477 articles edited or uploads and 25 editors (12 new editors) and 1 partnership (Archives cantonales jurassiennes).
  • Italian community: 6 + 6 participants to the visits of Fonoteca and of the Museum of the radio (2 partnerships) (as reported by the organizers)
  • Media coverage: 29'538 people reached (24h régions), 27'798 (24h éditions Lausanne), 31'750 (La Gazette), 71'171 (Luzerner Zeitung), 10'540 (Obwaldner Zeitung), 43'215 (Zuger Presse), 13'520 (Netzwoche). Total 227'532 people reached (distributed and WEMF/REMP certified circulation).

Total: 601 articles edited or uploads and 112 participants and 33 new editors and 7 partnerships and 227'532 people reached.

Press

GLAM Cooperation and knowledge sharing

The GLAM network is an ever growing group of GLAM institutions, which was originally created in 2015 in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Archives, the Swiss National Library and Wikimedia CH. The aim is to coordinate the Wikimedia-related activities of GLAM institutions in Switzerland. The group meets quarterly for a continuous exchange among GLAM institutions who contribute to Wikimedia projects. In 2017 the network continued its meetings and projects. It consisted of the following members:

  1. Swiss National Library
  2. Swiss Federal Archives
  3. Cantonal Library of Thurgau
  4. Central Library of Solothurn
  5. Cantonal Library of Vaud (BCUL)
  6. University Library of Basel and Swiss Economic Archives
  7. Swiss Social Archives
  8. ETH Library Zurich
  9. Historic Museum Basel
  10. SBB Historic
  11. Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland (DODIS)
  12. Archives Cantonal Jurassiennes
  13. Fonoteca nazionale svizzera

Furthermore, a GLAM Wiki was established and serves the purpose of sharing best practices and learning.

As briefly outlined our partner GLAM “The Cantonal Archives of Jura” uploaded to Wikimedia Commons 718 hours of historical sound recordings such as the digital files of the Constituent Assembly and of the sessions of the local Parliament up until 1990. These are sounds that have been digitized by the National Sound Archive of Lugano from the original Revox tapes. The written transcriptions have been available for public consultation already, but thanks to the upload to Wikimedia Commons, the general public now has access to the actual sound recordings. We believe that having access to the sounds can help to understand better those events related to the birth of the last Swiss canton.


References

Specific metrics

Total: 36'331 articles edited or uploads, 7 editors and 13 partnerships.

Learning Pattern

GLAM on Tour

Glam on Tour Fribourg Musée Gutemberg 13

The first Swiss GLAM on Tour event in Davos, 2016 was very well received by our community and led to the enrichment of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons with high quality pictures and content. Thus, WMCH decided to organize two GLAM on Tour events in 2017 all in paying special attention to language and gender diversity. Therefore, GLAM on Tour 2017 not only covered all three major language regions of Switzerland but also assured equality among participants and content thanks to the participation of the “les sans pagEs” movement in e.g. the 1st GLAM on Tour in Fribourg.


From April 28 to May 1, WMCH teamed up with the Cantonal and University Library of Fribourg (BCUF) to organize a GLAM on Tour event covering the topics of Gutenberg and the Counter Reformation. A total of 20 people gathered in Fribourg to try the craftsmanship of books such as bookbinding in the Gutenberg Museum. They were also able to assist the digitalization of a “Froschauer Bible” from 1538 AD. The event led to the revision and creation of articles out of the Gutenberg environment and covered topics related to printing, its technology and history. Fribourg is a bilingual city and the event united both German- and French-speaking community members. And with nearly half of the participants being women, equality among contributors and content was assured. The event also was mentioned in the press, for instance in the “Freiburger Nachrichten” and “La Liberté”.


Ascona Monte Verità Casa Anatta 1K4A3706

The second GLAM on Tour event covered the phenomena of “Monte Verità” (Hill of Truth) in Ascona and thus brought the event to the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. From November 16 to November 19, a total of 20 participants discovered the hill, which at the turn of the 20th century became the heart of a movement dedicated to the search for spirituality and life renewal, involving intellectuals, academics and artists. The current heritage is the result of the anachronistic cultural vision of Harald Szeemann, who collected the manifold relicts and built an important archive. With access to this material and the visits of Museum Castello San Materno, the Cultural Center and Museum Elisarion, the Falconeria of Locarno and the cemetery of Ascona with the graves of some artists, inspiration for new articles was abundant. The event led to a total of 5 extensive revisions and 28 new articles in German and Italian.


For the future WMCH aims to continue organizing two GLAM on Tour per year, not only to better connect to our community, but also to continue working on a better representation of local GLAM on the global Wikimedia platforms, all in further bridging language and gender related content gaps.


References


Specific metrics

Total: 547 articles edited or uploads, 38 participants, 10 new editors and 2 partnerships. Total of 71'975 WEMF/REMP certified circulation.

Press

Learning pattern

Technical innovation

This is the overview of visualizations available in v1.2 of the GLAM Stat Tool (example WMCH supported)

Wikimedia Switzerland is providing also technical support to GLAM to help them to reach their own goal. An example is the support for mass uploading, because GLAM themselves did not always have sufficient infrastructure to realize these uploads. In such cases Wikimedia Switzerland provides storage and technical assistance.


Last but not least the GLAM Statistical Tool project that supports GLAM in monitoring and evaluating their cooperation with Wikimedia projects was finalized and the first public release of the tool happened in 2017.


The GLAM Stat Tool is an outcome of the cooperation between Wikimedia CH, the Laboratory of visual culture at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUSPI) and Synapta, a spin-off of Centro Nexa of the Polytechnic University of Turin. It was born out of the concrete need of GLAM to have a statistical overview concerning their Wikimedia contributions and to also give them the possibility to calculate their views/clicks. In using the statistical tool, GLAM have access to their numbers over an innovative and visual interface that allows for easy interpretation of the data received. The visualizations also allow for an overview of topics contributed to Wikimedia projects and give an idea of how content is organized within categories.


It also provides statistics about the number of people accessing the GLAM contributions and highlights most viewed content. GLAM are therefore now better supported in their strategic decision-making process: the tool suggests new images to upload and highlights metadata that could be improved or new categories that can be created. As an end goal, a more balanced and wide-spread presence of the GLAM institution on Wikipedia and/or its sister projects will be achieved.


The tool has been presented several times to Swiss GLAM network during its development and finally has been released in version 1.2. The current version is stable and reliable. For the next releases, Wikimedia CH is preparing a communication plan to open the project to a larger community.


Reference

Project 2: Small GLAM
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Small but important

In 2017, Wikimedia CH also continued to work with smaller GLAM. With these institutions that are smaller in size, it is possible to obtain interesting material and to organize events involving community members in areas outside of the bigger towns like Zürich or Bern, where most events occur.


On April 22nd, for instance, a workshop took place at the Frank-Buchser-Museum of Bettlach, a private museum held by one of the main experts and collectors of the artist's work. Frank Buchser (Frank Buchser (de)) was a 19th-century-adventurer and painter, who was born and died in the Canton of Solothurn. During his lifetime he traveled extensively and captured his adventures in high quality paintings. The possibility to have a space like this museum and to organize an event in a small town, as well as the availability of an expert, all helped create a successful event.


Bibliothèque de Genève
In July, in the course of a Züri-Stammtisch meeting, participants had the chance to visit the SBB Central Operations Center in Olten, which manages the entire train traffic between Basel, Bern, Brugg and Lucerne. People got exclusive insights in the work of train traffic controllers and an understanding of the impact that delays in train traffic can have. The visit was succeeded by an exchange between Wikimedia an SBB focussing on Wikidata. Wikimedia CH learned that the SBB employee in charge of open data, already ingested basic data for all train stations in Wikidata (Example Oberwangen train station: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q31451038). WMCH further developed a wish list about data that still could or should be integrated. Wikimedia CH remains curious to see future uploads. Also, with only 70 out of 750 Swiss train stations referenced in Wikipedia, there's still some work to do.


In December another "small GLAM", the Knäpfach mine, attracted some 20 community members and exceptionally opened its doors for this occasion. After having seen some finds in the display cases and a film footage from the 1940s, when coal was mined for the last time in Horgen, people took the small mining train for a 500m long drive through the tunnels, where they also got to see carbon layers and got an idea of how work in this coaling mine must have been.


In the French-speaking area meetings, called WikiPermanences, were organized on January 19 and on February 16, at the Library of the University of Lausanne. Both events had an attendance of about 10 people.


Yann, an active Wikimedian for many years, submitted a project called “Wikisource” that consisted of scanning books, manuals, pamphlets, old examination papers, auction catalogues and other text resources, which were not yet available to Wikisource. Wikimedia CH supported the project financially. By the time of completion at the end of November, a total of 59 books were uploaded to Commons by the Library of Geneva.


With the objectives at hand it seems obvious to us that small GLAM, which are sometimes somewhere between a normal GLAM project and a community program, may be atypical, bur are also valuable thus worth exploring and engaging with.


References

Specific metrics

Total: 8 articles edited or uploads, 51 participants and 1 new editor.

Learning patterns

Building the biggest digital library of Rhaeto-Romance

Ladin inscription

Diversity & Equality are not only related to gender questions, but do comprise many topics such as languages. Being in Switzerland, a country with 4 official languages, Wikimedia CH always has been very attentive to language related questions, above all alpine languages and culture.


Wikimedia CH laid focus on Rhaeto-Romance languages, which are worth mentioning ​​especially for their historical-philological value. These languages developed from Latin and are a living historical testimony of how they might be speaking in vernacular Latin with local influences, for example, possible influences of the Celtic substratum. Rhaeto-Romance languages ​​are endangered because of the limited use and the pressure of languages ​​such as German and Italian. Nevertheless they do comprise more than 10 dialects, which are split basically in two big groups: Ladin languages and Romansh languages. They also have extensive literature which, in some cases like in the Ladin valleys, include themes and arguments also present in medieval chivalric literature.


A member of Wikimedia CH, Mizardellorsa, passionate about this subject, has proposed collaborating on the theme for the past 3 years and has consistently and devotedly built one of the largest digital libraries on this language family.


We have chosen to host this digital library on the Italian Wikisource and not to open a specific Wikisource project to have the support of the community in the Italian language that, although they do not speak Rhaeto-Romance languages, they do understand it and can help to reuse tools and gadgets.


Over the time, the project gained interest from the Free University of Bozen and the Schools Administration of the Ladin valleys, who expressed their interest in contributing to the project. The University of Bolzano signed an agreement (July 2017) with Wikimedia CH to proceed with the donation of approximately 800 texts (already digitized and transcribed) and to supervise the project while the Schools Administration expressed its interest to reuse this material at the school because they don't have a digitalized library in Ladin language.


Wikimedia CH presented this results also at the Celtic Knot Conference, where we not only outlined the project as a whole, but also informed about new initiatives to map archeological sites connected with Celtic culture in the Alps.


References

Specific metrics

Total: 333 Wikisource texts and articles, 1 editor and 1 partnership. 1'825 people reached through Wikimedia CH Facebook account (for the Celtic Knot Conference).

Learning Pattern

Project 3: Participate to an international GLAM network
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Europeana 1914-1918

Offiziere beim Rapport - CH-BAR - 3236654

On the occasion of the centenary of World War I, Wikimedia affiliates were invited to create a portfolio of their activities related to 1914-1918 and Wikimedia CH was one of the 13 participating affiliates in the so-called “Wikimedia 1914-18 Europeana Challenge.”

As an association WMCH submitted a project portfolio that was progressively updated with media from the Swiss Federal Archives, the National Library, the Jura Cantonal Archives, the ETH Zurich Library, and the Monte Ceneri Radio Museum. Besides a brief outline of Switzerland’s roles during WWI, a special section was dedicated to the means and ways of communication at this particular time. Even though the contribution was not rewarded with a prize, it received a special mention for its “detailed and beautifully produced portfolio.”


References

[edit]

Cultural Hackathon in Lausanne

Lausanne Swiss Open Cultural Data Hackathon 20170916 - 181828
From September 14 to 16, the 3rd edition of the Swiss Open Cultural Hackathon gathered librarians and archivists from several institutions, as well as Wikimedians and people interested in the Hackathon at the University of Lausanne. Quite a few exciting projects took place during these two days. For instance, lots of new data from the performances of the “Schauspielhaus Theater” in Zurich held between 1938 and 1968 were ingested into Wikidata.

The collection of historical medical objects from the “University Institute for the History of Medicine and Public Health” at the CHUV in Lausanne was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and now offers a glimpse into this kind of collections to a broader audience.

During the two-day event, several Wikidata-related gatherings took place. In the Wikidata and GLAM presentation, participants were introduced to Wikidata, learned about ongoing projects, received an outlook to the future and had the chance to be part of a common brainstorming session around new project ideas. Last but not least, a Wikidata tutorial formed part of the agenda and got people up to speed with editing Wikidata and basic querying with Wikidata’s SPARQL engine.


Reference:




#CulturalHeritage2018
On December 18, Switzerland started its campaign #CulturalHeritage2018 within the framework of the European Year of Cultural Heritage and under the patronage of Mr. Alain Berset. Wikimedia CH is an official partner of #CulturalHeritage2018 and took part in the kick-off event in Bern.

After the opening ceremony, the #CulturalHeritage2018 exhibition took place and sponsors as well as partners had the opportunity to present themselves and get to know each other. Wikimedia CH had its own little booth at the event and used it to inform about its role in preserving Swiss cultural heritage by partnering with GLAM and like-minded organizations. The aim of the Year of Cultural Heritage is to underline the significance of cultural heritage for individuals and society alike, shedding light on its potential to shape the future in a sustainable and democratic way.

In 2018 we will use the #CulturalHeritage2018 platform to also promote Wikimedia CH's activities which are closely tied to the theme of Cultural Heritage. Currently we do promote our first GLAM on Tour event 2018, which will take place in collaboration with Migros in Zurich from April 14-18. (*more information here)

Reference:




Swiss Foundation Public Domain

Pdproject-phonograph-cylinders
Wikimedia CH is for years already an official sponsor of the Swiss Foundation Public Domain that holds an important collection of about 85’000 gramophone records and 2’000 phonograph cylinders and is specialized in the conservation as well as utilization of public domain music and film material.

Its mission is to rescue recordings from past decades by digitizing content from sensitive and easily damageable materials – such as gramophone records and motion pictures – and transforming those artifacts into long-term readable and usable files. The Foundation also investigates on copyright status, catalogues the descriptions of the works in its database and uploads the files to Wikimedia Commons. In 2017 Wikimedia CH supported the Public Domain Project which collaborates with the “Foundation autismuslink” in Bern.


Reference:

Specific metrics

  • 445 Gramophone records (single and double-sided 10-inch/12-inch 78 rpm shellac discs of the 1890s to the 1940s) washed with two record cleaning machines
  • 324 Shellac disc sides (audio tracks) digitized and meta data cleared with the matrix lists inside books, the database of the “AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music” and other musicology research projects around the world
  • 421 Shellac disc sides (audio tracks) cataloged inside the MediaWiki of the “Public Domain Project” (uncorrected data input of two autists). Mainly data of the uncatalogued “595 audio files” digitized in 2016
  • 182 Articles corrected and copyrights cleared. Musical works, music authors, performers and works connected with Wikipedia articles, IMSLP music sheets and the MusicBrainz database (with the help of books and references inside the internet) The upload of the “public domain audio files” starting in the end of August 2017 after the relocation of their office from Bern to Zurich
  • around 200 people attending to the open ceremony of the #CulturalHeritage2018
  • around 100 people attending to the Cultural Hackathon in Lausanne

Total: 951 articles, 300 people involved.

A4.Results towards the plan

[edit]


Looking back at the proposal Wikimedia CH did further strengthen existing partnerships, for instance through continued meetings in the GLAM network or different events. New partnerships within the GLAM sector were tied, as an example the Swiss Archives Day led to a continued collaboration with the "Eisenbibliothek". In releasing the first public version of the GLAM Statistical Tool we also responded to the demand for technical innovation. Focus also lay on a more balanced presence in all three major language regions across Switzerland and on further supporting efforts targeted towards diversity & equality.


We are particularly happy about the GLAM on Tour events that re-united members from all over Switzerland and were very well received and commented upon by participants. Highlights and activities related to GLAM led to the enrichment and improvement of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in order to preserve and disseminate knowledge around Switzerland’s rich and diverse cultural heritage.


But WMCH is aware of the fact that there lays still a long path ahead of us for being a well recognized GLAM partner and above all accepted and renown as such by the Swiss people. 2017 nevertheless brought first steps in the right direction. Especially the development of the GLAM strategy serves to review GLAM activities in a more critical manner and to evaluate where and why to allocate time and budget. Of course, this is tied to the Swiss context and WMCH's view of the Swiss GLAM sector. Here like in many topics, we are about to discover the Swiss market, but grew aware that we also need to open ourselves more to the world for better understanding, learning and sharing.


It is also clear that WMCH needs to gain momentum in all things IT. Of course, being a state-of-the-art technological chapter is neither a goal as such nor part of our programs, but many things depend on this new, safer and more efficient IT-environment that is about to be implemented. For instance the GLAM micro-site, which should serve cultural institutions in many ways, was left behind because of an important time lag in that regard. Major problems, such as issues connected to the update of systems finally were addressed by the end of 2017 and results should be visible by mid 2018. Summing it up, WMCH needs better project management to not let secondary and underlying processes get in the way of primary projects and goals.


Last but not least, some other projects like the Natural Language Processing in Wikisource (or Argo project) are awaiting the completion of administrative tasks, which then will allow to access public funds.

A5.Learning and Sharing

[edit]

Forging new and sustainable partnerships within the GLAM sector takes time. Wikimedia CH learned that GLAM are seeking for partners who are able to accompany and guide them in their digital transformation processes. That's why the GLAM Strategy also focusses on the introduction of potential new technologies aiming to actively engage GLAM visitors while using Wikimedia projects. And, while developing the GLAM strategy it became clear that one can't work on the Swiss GLAM landscape without taking into account global movements and trends.


WMCH also learned that in the first plan, having access to specific metrics is essential for GLAM and thus led to the development of the GLAM Statistical Tool, which gives GLAM the possibility to better evaluate their performance and presence on Wikimedia projects. The 1st public version was very well received, but it is to be seen as a living project that will be further developed and above all constantly adapted to GLAM needs.


Another important learning is that IT processes of a certain scope, are not only time consuming, but do need dedicated staff and a clearer underlying project management. Even though Wikimedia CH has the competences within the team to manage this kind of projects, time available to do so, was the greatest issue. For the future, we certainly would plan things differently.

A6.Case Study

[edit]

GLAM institutions have been in a way navigating in the dark when it comes to their contributions to Wikipedia and its sister projects. This led to the request of GLAM to gain access to statistics depicting their contributions and efforts on Wikipedia, which led to the development of the GLAM stat tool. Through the use of the tool, GLAM now have access to their numbers over a visual interface that allows for easy interpretation of the data received and provides an overview over topics contributed to Wikimedia projects. GLAM also get an idea of how their content is organized within categories. With statistics concerning the number of people accessing their contributions and information about most viewed content, GLAM are now better able to serve the public and receive support for their strategic-decision making. Wikipedians on the other hand gain insights into the collaboration with GLAM and content that has been provided already or is still missing.


With the end goal of a more balanced presence of the GLAM institution on Wikimedia projects, the GLAM statistical tool suggests new images to upload and highlights metadata to improve, as well as new categories to create. This is a first step to help and better connect GLAM to the information and data they provide. The GLAM stat tool also has a motivational character, as GLAM can measure their impact and follow up on changes due to their contributions. Thus, it also aims at inciting new GLAM to start contributing to Wikimedia projects.


While developing such an application, constant feedback and exchange with GLAM institutions and other involved parties is crucial. Herefore the GLAM Wiki collaboration network meetings offered the perfect space for a tight collaboration. For the future it is clear to Wikimedia CH that such a project needs constant adaption and input from GLAM as well as community members. We therefore are looking forward to new versions as well as further and more detailed insights.

GLAM Statistical Tool

Program Education

[edit]

B1.Metrics

[edit]
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Explanations Comments
1. # Total participants NA 225 of 500 (45%) 758 of 500 (152%) 316 + 322 + 30
2. # of new editors NA 43 of 100 (43%) 110 of 100 (110%) 88 + 22
3. # of Number of content pages created or improved NA 35 of 300 (12%) 102 of 300 (34%) 28 + 74 This measure is lower than expected because the strategy focused more on creating new users and training them than to produce content.
4. Number of partnerships NA 5 of 7 (71%) 8 of 7 (114%) 2 + 3 + 2
5. Number of people reached in Switzerland NA 73'776 of 285'000 (26%) 476'776 of 285'000 (230%) 15'000 + 150'000 + 3'776 + 308'000

Color coding

Achieved Target has been achieved or exceeded
Space for improvement Good progress but the target has not been reached
Attention required Null or little progress has been made to achieve the target

B2.Background and Context

[edit]

The strategic framework: Implement Wikimedia projects as important technological tools to acquire skills in demand.

The frame

Education is considered an important topic among the Wikimedia Foundation, Chapters and community alike, and thus was chosen as one of Wikimedia CH’s three impact directions for the 2017-2020 period. Classrooms need to incorporate new technology to keep up with the web, as well as to integrate Wikimedia projects into their curricula to encourage better, and more ethical use of online information. What is more, schools need to teach students essential hard skills to build a technically literate Swiss workforce and also soft skills to build up important social and psychological competencies.

Overarching goal: Accompany students throughout their entire schooling career and beyond, not only to further anchor Wikipedia and its sister projects as broadly accepted go-to resources for education, but also to highlight the technical aspects and benefits that come along in exploring, using and contributing to the Wikiverse.

After an increasing number of bottom-up requests and an analysis of the educational field in 2016, WMCH used 2017 to learn more about concrete initiatives and ongoing projects in order to be able to translate emerging needs into possible solutions and define a strategic framework, allowing it to better concentrate its efforts and maximize its impact.

Wikimedia CH’s strategic educational framework comprises universities, a certification path for trainers and schools with a focus on inclusivity. It covers the entire cycle from primary to secondary and tertiary education. Furthermore it seeks to accompany students beyond their schooling career and thus places education within the process of life-long learning.

The framework also gives an idea of how schools might convey essential digital skills in order to prepare young people for the challenges of the future. Its goal therefore reads as follows: “Wikimedia CH’s goal is to raise visibility and engagement in educational institutions so that Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects become go-to resources for objective information and learning. We also aim to help students build skills such as using digital tools, managing information and critical analysis by encouraging them to write their own history using or contributing to Wikimedia projects.”


Reference
Education Strategy one pager as in community survey:

WMCH Education Strategy Overview



Logic Model Education WMCH 2018


Objectives

  • Establish a train the trainers model for teaching about Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects
  • Connect different stakeholders out of the technical sphere to create synergies and better penetrate the educational field
  • Accompany students as a go-to resource throughout their schooling career, kindling interest for contribution
  • Becoming a renown entity for digital education and building a tech-literate Swiss workforce


The context
Switzerland is an heterogeneous country when it comes to schools' programs. Every canton defines its very own programs for schools and also manages strategies and projects. To act centrally is therefore difficult; because of the principle of subsidiarity the Confederation centrally only makes very limited decisions. On the other hand though, Swiss schools have well trained teachers, provide a high level of education and good infrastructures. Recently the schools in Switzerland were rethinking their programs to open themselves more to new technologies and the web.


Innovation
Being up-to-date with and a driving force in the field of technical innovation is crucial to generate interest at school. Schools require a high-qualitative offer and this is the reason why Wikimedia CH has introduced an innovation pot to the education program and decided to work closely with initiatives that cover coding lessons, such as hackathons. The main goal of Wikimedia Switzerland is not the development of tools, but the tools are required to satisfy the expectations of schools and to anchor Wikimedia CH as the partner of choice to accompany schools in their technical transformation.


The challenge
The FDC pointed out that the programs of Wikimedia CH seem overly reliant on specific staff or contributors and that there is not a relevant impact at scale. We accept this feedback as such and are paying attention to the scale of projects, nevertheless and as outlined in the paragraph of the context, operating in Switzerland sometimes is like operating in 3 well distinct countries. For instance, the educational system of Switzerland is not centrally managed but follows the principle of the confederation (which in Switzerland's case is heavily decentralized and locally managed). This makes it difficult to scale or/and measure impact. But, of course this is nothing we can't overcome and to guarantee a scalable solution and to better manage heterogeneity we need more dedicated staff and volunteer expert time pouring into educational projects. A way to address the issue is our project to train volunteers willing to be more involved in education and to train them under a well established certification path. In this regard, things are planned to move in the right direction in 2018.

B3.Program activity

[edit]
Project 1: Education in secondary schools
[edit]

Wikimedia CH continued to run Wikipedia in Classroom courses for secondary schools within bigger frameworks like Media in Piazza or Devoxx4kids. The combination of Wikimedia projects with STEM or with other associations helped us to be in touch with a huge number of students.


In 2017 we combined the traditional training for single (or few) classrooms, mainly run by volunteers, with bigger events, requiring a more structured organization and more preparatory work. Through these last events we also got in touch with universities, like the Faculty of Pedagogy of the University of Applied Science of Southern Switzerland and the University of Zürich, which then hosted the events. In parallel we also have experimented the creation of a trilateral event supported by a GLAM, a school and Wikimedia CH. An example is the pedagogical exercise during the Swiss Archives Day, which has been successful and will be replicated in 2018.


Media in piazza 2017 1

Experiences collected were used to define a clearer strategy and action plan for the future, guaranteeing WMCH's presence in Media in Piazza and in Devoxx4kids also for 2018. Thanks to this kind of events, we are able to build up experience through the sharing of knowledge with other associations in the educational field during organizational meet-ups and while defining future plans and activities. The last event of Media in Piazza, for instance, received an average rating of 6 out of 7 by the teachers.


In addition we learned from these associations how to gamify the training for young students with the implementation of specific formats like the "virtual treasure hunt", or the extraction of data from Wikidata using SPARQL. Thus, for the first time, Wikimedia CH tried to train students on the technical aspects of Wikimedia projects to match more the STEM goals of some specific format like Devoxx4kids.


Media in piazza 2017 1

Wikimedia CH will continue to strengthen this partnership by supporting and co-organizing similar events in other parts of Switzerland, if possible. Wikipedia workshops will be organized alongside initiatives with a focus on technology to kindle interest not only for editing Wikimedia projects, but also for programming and technical topics as a whole.


References

Specific metrics

Total: 4 articles or uploads and 88 new editors. 316 participants as reported by the organizer. 2 new partnerships and 15'000 people reached in Switzerland.

Press

Project 2: Education in Universities and Professional Schools
[edit]

In 2017, Wikimedia CH started to build stronger relationships with universities in following the strategy defined for this sector. The main aim is to build within these universities a local link and group of enthusiasts of Wikimedia projects. The first connection has been established with the University of Zürich supporting them for the organization of a datathon in the course of HackZurich. The support has been successful and as a consequence we established a common action plan for 2018.


In this specific case Wikimedia CH will further focus on Wikidata to build a local community together with Opendata and Opendata Zürich in order to satisfy the great appetite for building up knowledge around Wikidata. At the moment the meetup group has already 31 subscribers.


The aim of Wikimedia CH, defined also in the education strategy, is to support and to build talents. This approach is valid for universities and tied events. This is the reason why Wikimedia CH supported and sponsored the Hack the City event, which basically is a multi-day contest to build an application that uses open source software and content and has great potential of resulting in a "real-life" project. In this case Wikimedia CH was present in the jury and promoted the API of Wikipedia and Wikidata as a solution to integrate in the tools that then were presented to the jury. As the event was a success we are going to repeat our support and presence in 2018. It will then take place at the University of Southern Switzerland.


References

Specific metrics

Total: 74 articles or uploads and 322 participants, 22 new editors, 3 partnership, 150'000 people reached.

Press

Learning Pattern

Project 2a: Continuous learning
[edit]
Wikidata Birthday Talk Magnus Manske

Throughout the entire year of 2017, Wikimedia CH was present through different presentations done in universities by and for members. The idea behind was to test the interest of members to attend specific training sessions and to verify if a certification path would make sense.


We experimented the first approach with a presentation/discussion done by Magnus Manske on the 4th of February 2017 about "The history of Mediawiki and the prospective for the future". Magnus presented the evolution of Mediawiki since its creation and his vision about the future developments of it and its integration into Wikidata. The event was held in Bern at the Impact Hub and had 18 subscriptions.


A similar type of presentations/discussions "Wikipedia und Wissenschaftlichkeit – Hochschule und Gesellschaft", was replicated in the course of our General Assembly on April 8 in Lucerne. Organized in collaboration with the Hochschule Luzern, a podium discussions and workshops were carried out, one by Wikimedia CH and a second one by Wiki-to-Learn.


References

Specific metrics

  • Metrics of Magnus Manske's presentation: 18 participants (as reported by the organizers);
  • Metrics of Wikipedia und Wissenschaftlichkeit's presentation: 12 participants (as reported by the organizers) and 2 partnership (HochSchule Luzern and Wiki-to-Learn).
  • For Magnus Manske's presentation we have reached 3'776 people through our Facebook account.

Total: 30 participants (as reported by the organizers) and 2 partnership (HochSchule Luzern and Wiki-to-Learn).

Press

Project 3: Partnerships & tools
[edit]
Kiwix
The bestest bird around

2017 was an exciting year for Kiwix, the software that brings Wikipedia content to people without direct access to the Internet. It is available in 100 languages, offering an offline copy of all 280 Wikipedias, plus of course its sister projects and a slew of other freely licensed contents (TED talks, Gutenberg and so on), making it a platform for the dissemination of free knowledge as much as an offline browser.


After having hit the 1 million direct downloads mark in 2016, direct access grew another 30% or so in 2017 – with the vast majority of its users, as always, in the Global South. We saw downloads coming from a little under 200 countries - with Germany, Mexico and Yemen making the top 3, and Turkmenistan, Cook and Åland islands closing the march. Deployments through partner organisations continued, be it through Rachel, Libraries without Borders or the Orange Foundation (several hundred thousand users each). In Switzerland itself, the SAH expanded its own deployments in prison settings - an interesting use case that also happens in Germany, Austria and the US (at least for those we are aware of).


The app portfolio continued its expansion and improvement, with WikiMed being deployed to iOS and a mini version being released, thanks to a separate Foundation Grant. All others (Wikimed in 10 languages, WikiSpecies, WikiVoyage, WikiVoyage Europe and of course Kiwix itself) were maintained and their contents updated. Of note, Wikimed has overtaken Kiwix in terms of downloads, which vindicates Kiwix' strategy of breaking down the encyclopedia into smaller, more focused parts. Among the particularly significant events of the year was the Turkish Wikipedia ban. For the first time, Kiwix launched a small media and Facebook campaign targeted at the Turkish population. Downloads from the country increased 20-fold, pushing it from the 29th to the 8th rank worldwide.


In spring, we also found out that the Cuban government had officially begun distributing Kiwix, mostly as a way to compensate for the high connectivity costs (1 dollar for 1 hour of internet, which is almost a day’s salary). Kiwix is now available in all State cybercafés in the country (at least one in every town) and is used to distribute Wikipedia and its own local version, called EcuRed.


Last but not least, Kiwix became an independent entity in January 2017 (still with strong links to WMCH as a member sits on both boards), which allows it to pursue more aggressively other funding opportunity to sustain its growth. Wikimedia CH is also glad to have established a first contact between Kiwix, WikiToLearn and OpenBadges for possible joint projects in the future.


Wikifundi & Wikipack Africa

Ecoles d'Afrique Madagascar 2
Finally, the first version of WikiFundi was also released for the WikiAfrica program. WikiFundi allows students in remote villages to edit Wikipedia without an internet connection. New articles are then exported and uploaded as soon as possible by the teacher.

Back in 2014, while reaching out to people in Uganda and the Ivory Coast to start building Wikimedia Communities in these countries, Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood saw people regularly confronted with two problems. The first one was to find a suitable space for in-person meetings and workshops and the second one was broken, missing or high-priced connection to the internet. As an answer to the latter, the idea of WikiFundi was born. 2015 was then used to walk the entire way from the idea to the concrete project and to submit a request for funding to “Fondation Orange.” With the approval of the funds in May 2016, the development of WikiFundi and the execution of the project as a whole started. By January 2017, the first public version of the software was launched.


To stimulate the use of WikiFundi, the WikiChallenge writing contest for African schools was created in close collaboration with “Fondation Orange” and launched in October. Having an existing network of 300 schools in 8 different African countries, dedicated teams on site and the “Orange Digital Kits for schools” extended by WikiFundi, the “Fondation Orange” was the driving force behind the writing contest. Whereas Wikimedia CH is acting as fiscal sponsor for the project and has accompanied it since its beginning, the Wikimedia Foundation endorsed and communicated about it in 2017.


2017 in retrospective was a decisive year as the first successful steps were undertaken to inspire the Wikimedia Movement in Africa. We are looking forward to seeing WikiFundi and WikiChallenge grow in the years to come and to supporting it whenever possible.


WikitoLearn
Wikimedia Switzerland is supporting also following the development of WikitoLearn like a tool for schools and universities.

WikitoLearn is a solution allowing WMCH to approach schools more easily, as Wikimedia projects require a certain degree of expertise from students to communicate with the community and to build and convey knowledge around topics written. In addition, some teachers are reluctant to use Wikimedia projects, because their role in the process is limited. That is why Wikimedia CH, in collaboration with WikitoLearn, is trying to build a "protected" space for classrooms, controlled by the teachers, closer to a workflow of writing a book and providing a better system of monitoring. Once the expertise of students was recognized and accepted as such, and the quality of the content was approved, they can proceed with the transfer of their content to the targeted Wikimedia projects. Some teachers are used to work with Vikidia in that regard, but Vikidia is currently not mature enough when it comes to different Swiss languages where content then is poor or ungrammatically done. That is why we are rather suggesting WikitoLearn instead of Vikidia as starting point for students.


Visually impaired students
In the past, Wikimedia CH started a project to test some pages of Wikimedia projects in order to learn more about the accessibility of some categories for students with disabiliteis, especially visually impaired students. The test is prerequisite to introducing Wikimedia projects at school as an alternative solution to students who experience learning problems. Unfortunately, the main leader of this project had to quit when he started a new job, but in 2017 we were able to find a new potential partner in the international association of Albinit. In 2018 we are discussiong an action plan and launching a new batch of tests.


References

Specific metrics

  • Metrics for the Kiwix: Desktop downloads are 469,000 from 176 countries and territories, 140'000 visits to the website.
  • Metrics for the WikitoLearn: ~14'000 visits per month to the website.

Total: Desktop downloads are 469,000 from 176 countries and territories, 308'000 visits to the websites (Kiwix and WikitoLearn).

B4.Results towards the plan

[edit]


Looking back at the Proposal and plan for 2017, it quickly gets clear that setting up a strategic framework for Education with a the related action plan, was a first important and necessary step to better plan and align further efforts within the educational field. Thus, WMCH was able to start defining the ways of how it sees the train the trainer model and how to install "wikispaces" (hives) within educational institutions. Nevertheless, we are running behind our proposal for some points, as they were closely tied to the website, which is still about to be migrated. In being late with the migration of the overall website, projects like the creation of the educational micro-site or the upload of didactical units have not been tackled yet.


On the other hand, through ongoing partnerships and project-collaboration, teachers and students were accompanied in the introduction of Wikiprojects, especially through big events like e.g. "Media in Piazza" and "Devoxx4kids". WMCH also started - selectively - to introduce Wikipedia in higher education. The big challenge though was to propose Wikimedia projects not only as a digital humanity but also within the STEM section to satisfy the needs of teachers of science and mathematics (i.e. proposing Wikidata).


Concerning universities WMCH is moving more to the creation of internal groups of Wikimedia fans, rather than supporting single members. The first action consisted in increasing the tech and wikidata community. WMCH also further strengthened its collaboration with WikitoLearn and is still experimenting solutions of support to blind/visual impaired people, a group that we pay special attention to, besides the focus on gender and language equality. Even though Kiwix became an independent entity at the beginning of 2017, Wikimedia CH maintained very close ties and is proud to be present in the board of Kiwix. As a fiscal sponsor WMCH also supported Wikipack Africa and we is happy to see WikiFundi and WikiChallenge gaining traction.


2017 has been above all a transitional year for Wikimedia CH in all terms education, as past activities have been very often carried out without questioning. This was above all due to the absence of a clear strategy, as education was not yet defined as an strategic impact direction. That is also why 2017 was used to draft and review the educational strategy, allowing for the creation of a more structured program with a longtime plan and perspective. According to justified feedback received, WMCH tried to focus on projects with higher impact and in alignment to its overall goal and strategy, this also implies cutting smaller, less important and irrelevant projects.


Summing it all up and in accordance with the proposal, WMCH actively engaged in concrete educational related projects and continued building up its capacity and learning from pilots and new initiatives in order to find out where it can have its biggest impact. But, there is still room for improvement when it comes to project management and we are aware that WMCH also needs to continue its outreach to close chapters to further strengthen collaboration and exchange about educational projects. This way synergies can be built and we can all share and mutually learn from experiences.

B5.Learning and Sharing

[edit]

The more Wikimedia CH progressed with the educational strategic framework and gained experiences with introducing Wikimedia projects in schools, the more it grew aware of the fact that it might be challenging to implement a train the trainers model the way it was initially thought. Conveying pedagogical skills to Wikimedians and creating a network of volunteers close to educational institutions, ready to teach and accompany schools/universities in their digital transformation appeared more and more complicated. Therefore, the focus shifted to training school teachers and professors in the use of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. As teachers are already on spot in schools, connected to their students and do have the pedagogical skills needed to teach, this is very likely the way to go and - with the implementation of hives - it finally may lead to a continuous and sustainable integration of Wikimedia projects in the curricula.


It also became clear that WMCH needs a secure and state-of-the-art webpage, allowing to integrate a dedicated Micro-Site and above all building the solid basis for attractive repositories and further adaptions to the needs of trainers and educational institutions.


Another important learning was that there is more to education than than merely introducing Wikipedia and its sister projects in schools. Above all WMCH should be committed to accompanying students in their entire schooling career and beyond, giving them the chance to develop technical (hard) as well as soft skills needed for the future and enabling them to be part of a tech-literate Swiss workforce.


Last but not least and through the support of initiatives like Kiwix, Wikipack Africa, Devoxx4kids and Media in Piazza, WMCH grew aware that technical education or involvement in building "schools2.0" does not begin and end within Switzerland's borders, but is an international topic. We absolutely have to take this into account as an association that is part of a global movement and wishes to strengthen its ties within this same movement.

B6.Case Study

[edit]

Wikipedia like a game

Even though WMCH already collaborated with Devoxx4kids and Media in Piazza the years before, the format of the "Virtual Treasure Hunt" was introduced for the first time in 2017, in reusing a similar format experimented in Esino Lario 2016. The aim of it was to introduce gamification that leads to a more fun character of the lessons without diluting learnings or messages conveyed.


For the treasure hunt, a classroom with laptops and Kiwix running Wikipedia and related projects was prepared. Pupils were given different objectives, like finding information about specific topics or clarifying the value, quality and truth of information provided and/or found. In a time of "fake-news" and young people constantly connected to a multitude of social networks, finding themselves flooded by information, the exercise was quite topical and well received.


Besides the educational character, the treasure hunt also aimed at promoting collaboration and the development of related skills. Ultimately, teachers were invited to join their students in resolving the puzzles.


At the end of the lessons a small survey was conducted, using rating scales and smileys to find out more about the impressions of the participants. Overall feedback was very positive and underlined the fun character of the lesson, all in learning and acquiring valuable skills. The teachers too received a survey and the average rating was 6 out of 7 with several comments expressing support and inciting WMCH to repeat the event.

Media in Piazza 2017

Program Community

[edit]

C1.Metrics

[edit]
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Explanation Comments
1. # Total participants 946 out of 1700 333 of 500 (64%) 320 of 500 (66%) 82 + 143 + + 6 + 111
2. # of new editors 55 of of 1330 130 of 150 (87%) 130 of 150 (87%) 38 + 91
3. # of Number of content pages created or improved 191 out of 2300 12'774 of 8'500 (150%) 25'891 of 8'500 (304%) 38 + 48 + 25'661 + 144
4. Number of partnerships NA 6 of 6 (100%) 6 of 6 (100%) 2 + 4
5. Number of people reached in Switzerland NA 29'726 of 150'000 (20%) 75'115 of 150'000 (50%) 27'798 + 38'386 + 8'931

Color coding

Achieved Target has been achieved or exceeded
Space for improvement Good progress but the target has not been reached
Attention required Null or little progress has been made to achieve the target

C2.Background and Context

[edit]

The frame
As most (if not all) Wikimedia communities, WMCH's is born out of Wikipedia contributors and grew over time with the popularity of the encyclopedia and related Wikimedia projects. Hence, there would be no Wikimedia CH without its community of contributors, volunteers and supporters. Consequently, nurturing as well as empowering the community is essential and a main priority for Wikimedia CH. We thus support the different language communities, listening and responding to their needs as well as fostering diversity at our best.

Overarching goal: Increase the engagement, diversity, retention and satisfaction of WMCH's community. Represent the interest of the communities in Switzerland to open doors and bring people together with the aim of disseminating free knowledge. Also enable the community to share knowledge and connect it to the various stakeholders of the Wikimedia universe.

In 2017, in alignment with its goal, WMCH further engaged its community not only in writing workshops, but also in active collaboration to shape the future of Wikimedia Switzerland as an association. The year started with a friendly gathering for the annual New Year's Brunch and thanks to the community and through close contact to WMCH's Community Liaisons, a multitude of events and projects took shape, many of them in-person events with a focus on gender diversity and equality.

The annual Community Survey was launched again, to find out more about how WMCH is perceived by the community and to learn about concerns and wishes of its members. Another important point was the Idea Workshop that is used to discuss WMCH’s new strategy and action plans, issues to be solved and ideas to consider for the year to come.

Logic Model Impact Direction Community 2017


Objectives

  • Reaching out and listening to our community, to learn more about needs and wishes, to ultimately increase community satisfaction, retention and engagement
  • Serving and supporting the community at our best (events, technological needs, scholarships, micro-grants…)
  • Diversify Wikimedia CH’s community
  • Connecting our community to stakeholders of the Wikiverse for future collaboration and projects


The context
Seen from the outside it is hard to believe, but clear differences between the communities of German-speaking, French-speaking and Italian-speaking Switzerland do exist. But, of course boundaries are sometimes blurred and WMCH doesn't want to dwell on the differences, but rather highlight the advantages of living in such an environment and underline efforts made to unite different communities. For instance, Switzerland's different language communities are quite close to neighboring same-language chapters, which facilitates exchange and collaboration with these. For the future WMCH seeks to work even closer with same language chapters, drawing on synergies and possibly running joint programs.


Innovation
Innovation is insofar important, as a huge part of the community outreach is happening over the Internet, like sending mailings and newsletters, which - as per request of community members (and WMCH totally agrees with it) - need an overhaul. People are contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects online and sometimes approach WMCH with ideas on how to improve their experience as contributors, thus we are here to create the link between community needs and developers work. Members do need an easy way to connect to the association, renew and cancel their affiliation etc. All these reasons and more, led WMCH to start an IT project aiming at enabling us to better connect and serve our community through state-of-the-art CRM and underlying technology. We are working hard to make this happen!


The challenge
The challenge in Switzerland is probably one that is globally known. Wikimedia CH does attract new contributors and members, but most of them seem to be “one-time” contributors, thus retention and further engagement of newly recruited authors remains challenging. What is more, it is never easy to bring all the needs of this diverse community to a common denominator; our various language communities often have quite different views and ideas. Although Swiss-wide events are good to foster the community spirit, these are always held in English - as the only "common" language - which does not help communication-wise as many non-English speakers often feel reluctant to join. Continuously enforcing the “Friendly Space Policy” remains of outmost importance as well as introducing new people to Wikimedia projects in relation with specific topics. What is still not optimal though and needs to be discussed, is the follow-up and accompaniment of new contributors on their Wikimedia journey.

C3.Program activity

[edit]
Project 1: Diversify communities in CH (F, D, I)
[edit]

Wikimedia CH stands up for diversity and equality among contributors and content. We work to ensure that all our programs and projects benefit a maximum of people across the country, giving priority to initiatives that address diverse target audiences (i.e. gender, ethnicity, other minorities etc.)

Language Diversity

Celtic Knot 2017 collage

Languages spoken and officially recognized in Switzerland include German (Swiss-German), French, Italian and Romansh. Surprisingly enough there is no lingua-franca, as English is not spoken or understood by everybody. Most of the people speak one of the 4 languages and do have a limited understanding of a second official language. In addition to its linguistically diverse background, Switzerland is in the lucky position of attracting people from all over the world and can be seen as a cultural melting-pot.

The commune of Rennens, close to Lausanne in the French-speaking part, can be seen as a textbook example of Swiss-towns and villages. With a little more then 21'000 inhabitants (2017), more than 50% of them are of foreign nationality. Altogether, Rennens regroups a total of 100 different nationalities coming from 5 continents.

In this setting Wikimedia CH is paying close attention to serve its different language communities at its best and to regroup them as often as possible with the aim of exchange and mutual learning and understanding. But, not only the current situation is of great interest. Switzerland has a long and moved history and seeks to preserve its traditions that are essential to the Swiss cultural identity. In this context the Rhaeto-Romance languages are of importance and Wikimedia CH was more than happy that it has been given the possibility to present this very special set of languages at the Celtic Knot Conference.


Gender gap
It is very well known, that Wikipedia and its sister projects are affected by a gender gap that results in an underrepresentation of women within content and among contributors. Therefore, Wikimedia CH, in collaboration with volunteers and partners, such as the Emilie Gourd Foundation and the office of equality at the University of Geneva, launched the “Let’s fill the gender gap” initiative two years ago.

Given the fact that Wikipedia contains 6 times more biographies for men than for women, the initiative seeks to incite women to become Wikipedia authors and to increase the visibility of women innovators, celebrities and influencers to obtain a more objective and equal vision of history and the world on the free online encyclopedia.

In 2017, Wikimedia Switzerland continued to work towards improving this situation by supporting, for example, interest groups such as “les sans pagEs” or initiatives such as “Art + Feminism” with the collective “Love Machine”.

Throughout the entire year, several workshops open to the public were organized. Especially in March, the International Francophone Contribution Month, when Wikimedia CH collaborated with "les sans pagEs" to organize five edit-a-thons in Geneva. The activities generated a wide impact and involved several partners who helped organize the edit-a-thons in quite different settings: the library of the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève (completing our training mandate: librarians can now hold their own Wikipedia workshops); Lestime, a feminist lesbian association; Geneva's Centre de la Photographie; and Le Pavillon Bleu, a cultural center.

The workshops at the library of the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève were the result of a partnership that started in 2016. This partnership has led to collaboration with the librarians to train the library staff to be able to teach interested people to contribute to both Wikipedia and to Commons, where they are now adding good quality reproductions of their collections.


References

Specific metrics

Total: 82 participants, 38 new editors and 873 articles edited and uploads and 4 partnerships. 27.798 people reached

Press

Learning Pattern

Project 2: Engage with and support our communities
[edit]

National community activities

Community Survey

Wikimedia CH's annual survey is designed to find out more about the community, its concerns and wishes. It’s also there to actively collect feedback concerning the strategic direction and gives space to freely share ideas. 2017’s survey was available in 4 languages (EN, FR, DE, IT) and related to the whole of Switzerland.
Awareness of WMCH's Strategy
  • A total number of 123 people participated, whereas, many of them were contributors to Wikipedia or its sister projects. In this regard it is worth mentioning that WMCH promoted the survey over a banner ad and also sent it via email to members;
  • Compared to the 2015 and 2016 survey, more respondents were long-term contributors, and a majority (79%) contributes either to Wikipedia, Commons or Wikidata;
  • Reasons for joining Wikimedia CH remain pretty much unchanged with the “conviction that free access to free knowledge is crucial” and “supporting Wikipedia or Wikimedia projects” as leading answers;
  • The overall satisfaction is good, but there is still room for improvement when it comes to a more balanced presence in all regions of Switzerland;
  • Over two thirds of respondents would recommend WMCH to a friend or colleague;
  • With a decrease in “the feeling of belonging to WMCH", more attention has to paid to keeping members onboard in these times of change; Many respondents though state as well that the "feeling of belonging" is not a priority to them;
  • People's knowledge about WMCH's strategy significantly increased in 2017 (19%->36% / of course there's still room for improvement) and overall satisfaction with the strategy is very good; People also approve the Impact Directions Strategies;
  • When it comes to finances, most people though don’t know how WMCH spends its money and a huge part in consequence doesn’t care about it;
  • Budget transparency on the other hand is perceived as good;
  • WMCH's services that are of greatest importance to members are “providing information” and “organizational support”;
  • Compared to the years before, more people are following the activities of WMCH over e.g. newsletters, and most of the people do feel adequately informed;
  • Last but not least, Education is the topic that many members want to learn more about;



Community Events in Switzerland

While working in a virtual environment, personal contacts and networking remain important, which is one of the main reasons Wikimedia CH encourages and supports in-person events all over Switzerland.


In 2017 the New Year’s Brunch was repeated in all three major language regions across Switzerland. The aim was not only to thank members and volunteers for their efforts during the past year, but also to reach out and connect again to the community. Listening to wishes and concerns for the year to come, discussing possible solutions and actively starting into the new year is indeed very important. The small gatherings of like-minded people very often lead to interesting discussions and productive workshops in a nice and friendly atmosphere. The positive feedback from participants encouraged WMCH to establish the New Year’s Brunch as a “fixed star” at the beginning of each year.


Another gathering that is deemed to be essential for community involvement is the Idea Workshop, which is held annually. In May, Wikimedia CH’s staff and community members from all over Switzerland met to discuss the newly designed strategy and relevant action plans, as well as issues to be solved and ideas to consider for the upcoming year. Feedback and ideas received from the community directly influence programs and projects for the year to come and are also considered for long-term plans. Whether in this format or in another, meeting with the community is essential to WMCH's work.


Meet-ups of the community are often connected to specific writing workshops or edit-a-thons in collaboration with museums or libraries, this way participants automatically have access to abundant literature to support them in their writing. While these events enrich Wikimedia projects, they serve above all as in-person events that connect Wikipedians and Wikimedians in “real life” and help to better get to know each other. Other events such as the “Stammtisch” in German-speaking Switzerland or the “Pique-Nique” in Geneva are important to connect members of the community, who otherwise might not get many opportunities to meet.

The picnic in Geneva, the 19th August, had 17 participants, including a team from Lyon. Afterwards, 13 remaining participants came to visit the Museum of Ethnography of Geneva to visit the temporary exhibition, a display of Indigenous Australian arts.


References

Specific metrics

  • Idea Workshop: 18 registered users (as reported by the organizer), 1'386 people reached (Facebook page)
  • Picnic Geneva: 48 articles edited, 17 participants (as reported by the organizer)
  • German community new year's brunch: 23 participants
  • Italian community new year's brunch: 8 participants (defined by the community manager)
  • French community new year's brunch: 9 participants (defined by the community manager)
  • German community meet-ups: 9+11+7+14+10+17=68 participants

Total: 48 articles, 143 participants, 38'386 people reached

Press

  • "Se Wikipedia fosse di carta conterrebbe 7'400 volumi", Corriere del Ticino, 7 October 2017

Learning Pattern

International community activities

Thanks to languages spoken in Switzerland Wikimedia CH is in the lucky position of being part of the Wikiconventions from the neighboring chapters of Germany, France and Italy. We not only encourage community members to participate and support them through grants, but are also represented through the attendance of staff members, who then use the time to meet with their counterparts of these chapters to discuss possible joint projects, or simply exchange experiences and learn from each other.


WMCH was part of:
The 7th German Wikicon in Leipzig
From September 8 to 10, Wikimedia Deutschland welcomed over 280 Wikipedians, Wikimedians and people interested in free knowledge to Leipzig. Even though the vast majority of attendees came from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the Convention attracted people from outside the DACH region too, giving us the chance to learn from experiences outside of our usual 'field of vision'.


The 2nd French Wikicon in Strasbourg
ItWikiCon 2017 - Group photo 05

From October 19 to 21, Strasbourg welcomed volunteers from France, Tunisia, Cameroon, Canada, Belgium and Switzerland for the second edition of the French WikiCon. The conferences covered a variety of topics including technical, ethnical and educational subjects. Participants also learned more about current GLAM projects, the introduction and smart uses of Wikipedia in schools and ongoing Wikipedia projects on the African continent. This allowed WMCH participants to gain a better and broader view of the Movement as a whole.


The 1st Italian Wikicon in Trento
The Italian community organized its first Wikimedia Convention from November 16 to 19 in Trento. With about 50 participants, the agenda included some gems like the presentation of “Wikipedia 4 Refugees” or “Wikipedia at the mercy of the political climate” as well as a talk about “Copyright and public domain,” to name a few. Wikimedia CH supported the event as a sponsor and is already looking forward to being part of it again in 2018.




WikiAlpenforum
The WikiAlpenforum (WAF) is a group of German, Austrian, Swiss and Italian speaking Wikipedians out of the Alpine region. With their common geographical and cultural-spatial background, they are strongly interested in the fauna and flora of the alpine region and aim to improve Wikipedia articles around these topics textually as well as visually.

From September 1 to 3, members of the group met in Trento. The event itself was hosted by activists of the autonomous region Trentino-Alto Adige. With a visit to the “Library of Trento” and the “Museo Diocesano Tridentino,” as well as the “Viote Alpine Botanical Garden,” participants discovered pieces of alpine natural heritage and natural science. To depict and conserve their impressions, about 200 pictures have been uploaded onto Wikimedia Commons.


Reference

Project 3: Community Innovation
[edit]

Wikimedia CH also tries to better differentiate the community and is therefore trying to define groups of volunteers more interested in topics other than 'Wikipedia-contribution'. Examples are contributors to Wikidata or Mediawiki programmers. To follow-up on this aim, we supported some hackathons, as reported under our Education program section.

A short reminder of the highlight:
Hack the City is the 48-hour-long Hackathon and contest in Southern Switzerland where developers, designers, makers or simply people who are passionate about technology have the chance to intensively collaborate and compete to find and present innovative solutions to everyday problems. Some of the presented projects may ultimately result in “real-life” start-ups.

Project 4: Support to photography
[edit]

A specific community: photographers

Lac de Lovenex

Wikimedia Switzerland has a long tradition of supporting photography. Photos are a great opportunity for us to re-unite people with different cultural backgrounds and languages. Thus, Wikimedia CH’s program of support to photography already started in 2012 and has generated a total amount of 142'000 photos.


The strategy of the program consists in supporting photographers by making our shared photo equipment available to them, sponsoring participation to trainings, and financing excursions.


What changed in 2017 is, that due to the high cost of photographic equipment we decided to focus on:

  • Quality over quantity: This results in supporting fewer, but better, photographers and giving them more support. This approach ensures quality photos and reduces drop-out rates, while also ensuring more photos from each photographer. Additionally, the program supports various specializations, such as portraits, cultural heritage, drone-use, etc., in order to diversify the types of contributions.
  • Instead of using shared photo equipment, we now seek to enhance the equipment of each photographer in the program, often sharing the costs of such upgrades with them.


We are noticing that this solution works well and is leading to better results, including at a motivational level. The solution is also more efficient and sustainable for Wikimedia CH as it requires less oversight from our small staff.

To date, Wikimedia CH has supported 6 photographers in 2017 (Sailko, Rama, Softenpoche, Bobo11, Alexey_M., Cassinam).


References

Specific metrics

Total: 6 participants and 25'661 uploads.

Press

Learning Pattern

Wiki Loves Earth

Wikimedia CH has been organizing national Wiki Loves X contests since 2011 and was running at least one contest per year. We promoted the contest through georeferenced banner ads. The photographer community in Switzerland is quite heterogeneous as it comprises amateurs and professionals alike. This year, the staff also helped one less technology-aware participant to upload her photographs to the competition. (User:Roxaneweb).


Nevertheless, we were able to identify - over the years - suitable participants who live or work in Switzerland or simply love the country. This also led to better support for very active photographers.


Following a behavioral analysis, we know that the participants of Wiki Loves X are generally professional or amateur photographers with a great knowledge of photography, and their desire is to win a renowned contest like Wiki Loves X. To better stimulate the fantasy of participating photographers we shifted from monuments to nature, resulting in less but better photos uploaded.


Therefore, in 2017 the focus rested on Swiss natural parks, Swiss mountains and Swiss lakes. The winning photo that again adorns the cover page of WMCH's Annual Report 2017, as well as other images submitted, showcase the quality of the works received. With the ten most popular photos taking part in the international Wiki Loves Earth contest, additional motivation for participants is given. And as a nice "side-effect", Switzerland’s unique natural heritage also gets promoted to millions of readers across the globe.


Ultimately, the “Wiki Loves” concept substantially contributes to the high coverage (98%) of Swiss monuments and natural parks. In 2017 alone, a total of 1,449 images were uploaded to Commons during the course of the contest.


References

Specific metrics

Total: 111 participants, 91 new users and 1'448 uploads. 8'931 people reached through Facebook account.

Learning Pattern

C4.Results towards the plan

[edit]

In retrospective and relation to the proposal, the themes of Diversity and Equality remained center stage. Not only did WMCH further support campaigns such as Art & Feminism, but also followed up on “Let’s fill the gender gap”, progressed in its project that aims at giving a voice to visually impaired and blind users and continued to work towards a better representation of minority languages in Switzerland.


WMCH also focused on supporting its community online and reached out to collect feedback over the Community Survey as well as through in-person events and regular meetings. Whenever requested and as far as it was in alignment with planned achievements, WMCH supported people through scholarships and micro-grants like for the Wikisource project. As the association is based on good governance and lays focus on transparency, enabling the community through adequate and timely information about ongoing and upcoming projects remains important. This is done through a monthly newsletter, different social media channels and dedicated members wiki.


The participation to HacktheCity 2017 led to an interesting project using Wikimedia APIs, but we are not yet at a point where we would be able to say that we created a network of developers or startups interested in the use of Wikimedia APIs. First steps have been made certainly and the presence at HacktheCity will be repeated at 2018, but the creation of a network ultimately needs more time and dedicated staff.


2017 was a successful year when it comes to support of photography. The change in the way of supporting photographers and the focus on quality over quantity was a step in the right direction. Following the participation to 'Wiki Loves Earth 2017' we are also going to look into other 'Wiki Loves' contests, but it remains to be seen, if this is something that will be tackled in 2018.


And once again the serious delay in the IT project also had as a consequence that the planned revamp of WMCH's webpage didn't happen. This means that the objective of having a user-friendlier and more accessible website for community members has not been fulfilled, even though it is in the making.


It is important for WMCH to serve its local communities at its best, this also implies to further look across borders and to learn from international examples. Therefore, first steps were made to actively reach out to chapters serving the same language communities for a better exchange of information, ideas and best practices, as well as creating synergies through possible joint projects in the future. But, all this is still at an early stage and there's lots of space for improvement.

C5.Learning and Sharing

[edit]

Our community is an ever evolving group, rich in culture and rich in languages. Wikimedia CH should see this setting as a force and strengthen efforts to connect different groups within the community and the community to the world.


Wikimedia CH is about to being professionalized and many things are slowly but surely changing. Therefore, it is even more important to make sure to have the community onboard and keep it connected to the Wikiverse as a whole. This is only possible with continued efforts of sharing, communicating, being transparent and attentive to wishes and feedback and continuous outreach to like-minded chapters within the setting of the Foundation.


We also learned that conflicts in the community may arise, something that is quite normal when people are as passionately involved as many of WMCH's members. In that regard, enabling a mediation for the parties involved and under guidance of a professional mediator is something that was experienced as being very beneficial and thus to be re-used, whenever necessary.


Wikimedia CH's community survey, idea workshop, newsletter, social media channel and events are all part of a puzzle and for the parts to fit and allow to really reach the community and to address its needs, there is still a way to go. 2018 therefore will also be dedicated to communication and improve WMCH's way of connecting to its members and to the movement.

C6.Case Study

[edit]

As soon as we think about Diversity and Equality we tend to make allusion to the gender theme, which is most certainly one of great importance and this long before and very likely still decades after #metoo. Nevertheless, diversity and equality also are about cultural and religious minorities, impaired people as well as language minorities and touches people all around the globe.


Besides WMCH's efforts in gender equality and the preservation of Rhaeto-Romanic languages through the digital library presented during the Celtic Knot Conference, we want to highlight a project targeting visually impaired and blind people.


When developing programs or designing webpages the standard nowadays is to respect certain rules regarding fonts and colors chosen, to add alternative texts to images, to add captions to videos and to comply to the recommendations for contrast (readability) etc. Pages and apps also should be designed in a way that allows screen readers for visually impaired and blind people to access them. Accessibility thus means allowing people with disabilities to retrieve the same information as everyone else, and to gain the same benefits. But, most of the time focus lays on users and not on contributors. That's where WMCH's project jumps in.


Actively contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects can be challenging for several reasons and is even more so for visually impaired or blind people. That's why Wikimedia CH started a project that is testing Wikimedia projects in order to document their accessibility. The project at first will target students and is thus closely linked to Education, as an end means though it concerns of course all people affected by blindness or visual disability.


By suggesting a Wikimedia project to students with disabilities first, it is possible to introduce it in a closed and surveilled setting, to install a feedback circle and to adapt it to the very special needs that these people may have. With our new partner Albinit we are carrying out a first test by April 2018 and are looking forward to present first results within the next reports.

Partnerships & Public Relation

[edit]

D1.Metrics

[edit]
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Explanation Comments
1. # Total participants NA 120 of 150 (80%) 509 of 300 (170%)
2. # of new editors NA 0 of 25 0 of 25
3. # of Number of content pages created or improved NA 0 of 25 0 of 25
4. Number of partnerships NA 5 of 10 (50%) 5 of 10 (50%)
5. Number of people reached in Switzerland NA with all other activities approx. 200'000 of 300'000 of 200'000 with all other activities approx. 200'000 of 300'000 of 200'000

Color coding

Achieved Target has been achieved or exceeded
Space for improvement Good progress but the target has not been reached
Attention required Null or little progress has been made to achieve the target

D2.Background and Context

[edit]

The frame

In addition to the three Impact Directions, Wikimedia CH discovered potential to further strengthen its position as a renowned entity within the digital and free knowledge sector by teaming up with different stakeholders in the cultural, political and socio-economic spheres. The association also aims to connect Wikimedia projects to players in the socio-economic, cultural and educational sectors in order to create synergies.

We are aware that we can't do this without teaming up with other Chapters, like-minded organizations and of course the WMF. Therefore, on a wider scale, we also actively seek to collaborate more and more closely with other Chapters within the Wikimedia Movement to mutually learn from each other and to share knowledge as well as experiences.

On a European level, through partnership with other European chapters and through our representative in Brussels, our work should also be reinforced. Please see below the corresponding logic model to explain how we in Switzerland will also benefit from this important European work and collaboration.

This Logic Model illustrates the impact direction "Partnerships"

Please note that 'Partnerships & Public Relations' is not to be seen as an Impact Direction by itself, but is more to be located as an enabler and connector between our neighborhood (see WMCH strategy metaphor) and Impact Directions.


Context and Challenges
As you might know, Switzerland is home to many NGO's and associations from all over the world. WMCH is aware of its special situation in this particular environment and even though competition for funding and attention is fierce, WMCH is in the lucky position of possessing a well-renowned brand which is opening doors. Nevertheless, the association still has a lot to learn in order to be able to better collaborate and leverage resources in Switzerland. Building up relations takes a long time, and WMCH is pretty new in that field.

The challenge therefore remains to strike the right balance between running a Chapter as sustainable as possible in the Swiss context as well as responding to the needs of the community and, on the other hand finding our place in becoming an asset for the movement as a whole.The 2030 strategy and related partnership discussions will certainly open new ways of collaboration and moving into the future.

D3.Activity

[edit]
Project 1: EU Outreach through the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU (FKAGEU)
[edit]

During Q1 and Q2 2017, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov and colleagues put all their efforts in Brussels on working with the European Parliament as the EU Copyright Reform is being discussed and voted upon within its various committees.

As an addition, the ED of WMCH attended the "Big Fat Brussels" Meeting in Q2 in order to find out more about the activities, actively contribute and take action points back to Switzerland.

The indicators and the Progress report of the Brussels related activities can be found here!

Project 2: Outreach and Policy influencing in CH
[edit]

In line with WMCH's annual plan, the association has proactively reached out to other organizations or association involved in sustainable digital development and/or around the common theme "open" (open data, open government, open GLAM to name a few) in order to identify the best possible fields of action and partnership. In Q3 for example and in order to maximize our efforts, WMCH has begun discussions with Parldigi a non-political Swiss association working on digital sustainability with various groups as well as diverse parliamentarians in order to see how and if it would be wise for Wikimedia Switzerland to contribute in any form.


Indeed, the copyright topic is currently being looked at within the legislative consultation period here in Switzerland (https://www.digitale-nachhaltigkeit.ch/2016/04/vernehmlassungsantwort-urg/) and given its mission and vision, WMCH definitely should have a voice in this debate. Therefore, in Q4 a meeting between Dimi from Brussels, ParlDigi and WMCH took place in order to identify which priorities a potential collaborative approach should have and which topics could be leveraged here in Switzerland that are of wider importance to the Wikimedia movement as a whole. The meeting was very fruitful, and it has been decided to closely collaborate together in 2018. ParlDigi has close contacts to various influencers, becoming an active partner here means reaching many of our objectives.


With regard to organizing a conference in order to gain traction in Switzerland and to raise interest with potential donors, WMCH postponed this initiative to 2018, as it took longer than expected to knit the relevant ties. 2018 however, will see at least three of those events - however smaller and more targeted as originally thought about.


Finally, as explained in the next chapter, we have approached a variety of other like-minded stakeholders in order to build relationships and figure out the possibility of organizing thematic events including free knowledge elements in Switzerland to step up in terms of fundraising but also to raise awareness about selected topics. As we found out in 2017, most of the people we approached as well as the general public would know about Wikipedia but not about the organization behind as well as the other projects carried forward. WMCH therefore sees it as one of its strategic goals to raise awareness and to establish itself as a prominent partner regarding its impact directions: GLAM, Education and Community linked projects.

Project 3: Collaborate with like-minded associations
[edit]

International partners: WMF & chapters

Among other things, 2017 was used to establish close relationships with other Chapters, especially the ones sharing the same language with Switzerland. Obviously, there is an ongoing, close collaboration with the German speaking regions on a variety of topics and levels. Frequent exchanges take place and Switzerland's expertise is called upon in various forums and matters. Fruitful discussions led to proposing Switzerland as a host for the German speaking WikiCon in 2018 - proposal which we now know has been accepted.


Although the French Chapter navigated through rough waters in 2017, WMCH kept close ties with staff members as well other volunteers working in France. The Swiss Chapter also participated/contributed in the French WikiCon - financially and through attendance.
WikiConvention Francophone 2017, Strasbourg, day 3 1

The first Italian speaking WikiCon also saw the support of WMCH, although the Chapter can certainly do more in that regard in the years to come.


Finally, WMCH remains member of Iberocoop, attending their calls or else as much as it can. Further meetings/efforts worth being mentioned:

  • Close collaboration with Wikidata: invitation extended to Wikidata to attend important meeting with the IOC in May 2017; many other calls with Swiss Foundations and other important stakeholders followed:
    • The IOC could also be convinced to attend a Wikidata related conference with WMF's Dario Taraborelli at the EPFL in Lausanne in May, where excellent discussions happened between Dario, WMCH and the community. Wikidata has also participated in meetings with the SBB/CFF (wanting to feature all their train stations on Wikidata) as well as with the Larsson Rosenquist Foundation who potentially would like to establish a Glossary/Repository for mother milk related data. Very encouraging meetings!
    • No formal agreement with the IOC could be reached for legal reasons up to now but both organizations remain close and regularly meet.
  • Attendance and active participation at the European GLAM-Wiki coordinators meeting in Paris; continuous outreach and network with Education and GLAM experts from the WMF.
  • Attendance and active participation in the international Partnership Meeting involving many other countries which took place in Berlin Q4 to discuss and make plans how this topic could be approached in line with the 2030 movement strategy.

Local partner ATED

Our long-standing partnership with ATED has again be very successful in 2017. Wikimedia CH has been invited as speaker at two events connected with the cyber-security. The first one in Lugano, organized by ATED itself and the second one in Lausanne, co-organized by ATED, during the General Assembly of CLUSIS. In Lausanne, the number of attendees were around 100 (all members of the association) and in Lugano around 20. In addition Wikimedia CH had a prominent place in all of ATED's official communications.

Local partner Opendata.ch and DINAcon

DINAcon 2017 award

The first DINAcon conference on digital sustainability was organized by Parldigi in October 2017. With 20 sessions, five Lightning Talks, the first DINAcon Award and a HACKnight, the 200 participants were spoilt for choice. The topics covered ranged from Open Source and Open Data over Blockchain to TheThingsNetwork, 3D printing, Open Street Map and Fairphone, to name only a few.

Wikimedia CH was represented through a "Wikipedia" Crash Course kindly offered by (user: Hadi); a second workshop offered by another Wikipedian had to be cancelled unfortunately as not enough participants registered beforehand. On top of that, WMCH also had the chance to participate in the very informative workshop around the Swiss Copyright-Reform, establishing a variety of new contacts.

Further engagement to foster digital sustainability and actively discuss Copyright, as well as other related issues in Switzerland, is indeed closely tied to Wikimedia CH's vision of disseminating free knowledge for a smarter and better-informed society. 2018 will again see WMCH's participation in the DINAcon, whereby this time, Katerhine Maher - CEO of the WMF - will hold a keynote speech.

Unfortunately, time has been scarce in 2017; no further contacts with Opendata were made, although the organization and WMCH often informally meet at events.


Other partners and stakeholders

In 2017 we reached out to a number of new and potentially interesting partners and stakeholders, many of which will play an active role in 2018 (MAMCO in Geneva, Migros Kulturprozente, Neuchâtel Museum of Natural Science to only name a few). Furthermore, closer ties to the UN as well as the Olympic Movement have been knit, that will also be pursued in 2018.

The organization "foraus" has not been approached yet, as it seemed to be more pertinent to work with others for the moment. Wiki4Peace is one example, where the foundations of collaboration were laid in 2017 and led to a very effective event in 2018. The DigitaleAllemend remains on the radar and several meetings between its members and WMCH took place. Further collaboration needs to be explored.

D4.Results towards the plan

[edit]

All in all, 2017 has been a very successful year in seeking out new partners, networking and also making some pro-active moves forward (for example reaching out to the #Kulturerbe2018 organizers so that WMCH could be included in the 2017 launch event and beyond). One of WMCH's top priorities is ensuring that synergies are used and best practices shared, so that movement funds are spent efficiently for projects of importance. In a small country with diverse backgrounds and languages, the seeds sown in 2017 will allow WMCH to gain traction in 2018.


Under the motto "less is more" good decisions have been taken in 2017, with for example the partnership with ParlDigi, which will allow us to reach a maximum of audiences in the public sector at the moment (keeping in mind our current human resources). Institutionalizing information exchange on all levels remains high on our agenda and we look forward to even more WMF as well as Chapter collaboration in future.

Finally, looking at our logic model, we are underway on the right path, moving towards concrete outputs and further developing our relevant skills and competences.

D5.Learning and Sharing

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As an organization we are definitely learning how to play our role on the public scene, becoming a partner of choice for discussions, talks and other issues related to digital sustainability. We are growing up and equipping ourselves with the relevant skills and knowledge. Becoming more visible also means being able to approach more stakeholders in terms of fundraising and other related initiatives.


As a small organization (speaking from the human resource side of things) this naturally means professionalizing our data management, and related marketing efforts. We are learning fast but still have a long way to go to become really professional in this regard. We are also learning that an organisation like ours with such a major brand recognition comes along with many expectations in terms of quality and delivery from our diverse partners which sometimes are difficult to respond to in our current structure. Flexible management and openness to others around us is a must and we will definitely do more of that!

D6.Case study

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'Partnerships & Public Relation' as such does not reflect an Impact Direction, but emerged when working on our programs. An example that can give a first idea about what kind of impact to expect, is #CulturalHeritage2018.


Becoming an official partner of the #CulturalHeritage2018 campaign is something that we actively were asking for. Wikimedia CH reached out to the organizers, because it felt that becoming a partner of the campaign might be beneficial to the association and serve its goal of becoming an renown entity in the cultural field.


As a result, WMCH...

  • ...was invited to and present at the Opening Ceremony and Exhibition in December 2017. This gave us the chance to get to know other players and potential future partners out of the cultural field
  • ...figures on the dedicated webpage as an official partner and is allowed to use the official label whenever communicating about actions connected to the Cultural Heritage theme
  • ...uses the Cultural Heritage platform to actively promote projects and events tied to the topic of Cultural Heritage (right now the GLAM on Tour event in April)
  • ...is strengthening its visibility, position and name recognition as a partner for cultural institutions


The points listed above are only serving as first examples and it remains clear that things don't fall in place just because Wikimedia CH is a partner of the campaign. Continuous outreach and further work to raise awareness about WMCH and it's vision needs to be done. But, as the Year of Cultural Heritage is still young and we are about to collect first experiences we are looking forward to a more detailed report and/or case study with the upcoming reports.

Revenues received during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report)

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Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.


Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
Membership fees CHF 15'000 5'540 2'760 100 4'678 13'078 15'252 13'298 Small drop in member registration; membership strategy to be developed
APG (Annual Plan Grant) CHF 294'000 0 294'000 0 0 294'000 298'933 298'933
WMF Fundraising Costs CHF 60'000 0 23'049 0 49'300 72'349 61'007 73'563 Fundraising costs depend on collected donations (up to 10%); fundraising goals exceeded therefore little increase in fees
Donations WMCH CHF 340'000 254'357 18'462 9'563 118'455 400'837 345'705 407'563 due to increased development of outreach and partnerships WMCH gets more traction and becomes more well-known therefore little increase in income during peak in fundraising periods; Q1 still shows the effects of the 2016 end-of-year fundraising campaign
Pro Bono / In-kind donations CHF 45'000 0 1'050 223 10'460 11'733 45'755 11'930 WMCH still has to become better at registrating pro-bono income, our prognostic was a little bit too optimistic. A system has to be found to effectively identify and account for items such as free room rental, rebates with certain providers etc.

In 2017 we have registered the following:

  • Location meetings: Universities and Specialized Schools in Bern (4 x CHF 150.- = CHF 600.-)
  • Locations with WiFi ,workshops in Romandie (3 edit-a-thons: archives, Love Machine; CHF 450.-)
  • In-kind donation from board members (CHF 179.-)
  • Pro-bono staff time (CHF 9'800.-)
  • Unclaimed expenses from WMCH members (CHF 82.-)
  • Pro-bono legal advice (CHF 570.-)
  • Pro-bono translations (CHF 52.-)
External fundraising CHF 50'000 8'030 211'444 17'208 165'445 402'127 50'839 408'875 May 2017: extraordinary donation of 150k allocated over 3 years (2017-2018-2019); fundraising strategy in place
Income of courses (Conferences, Trainings) CHF 1'000 0 0 0 683 683 1'017 694 We have only had one training opportunity in 2017 therefore less income on trainings and conferences
Fiscal Sponsorship WikiPack Africa CHF 12'200 51'823 -39'390 0 0 12'433 12'405 12'642 Slight increase due to conversion rate difference between 2016 (grant year) and 2017.
Fiscal Sponsorship WLM CHF 2'200 -6'271 7'275 7'712 2'473 11'189 2'237 11'377 2nd part of grant only in 2018; Payment of prizes only in 2018; CHF 1004.50 for WMCH for WLM 2016 handling
TOTAL CHF 820'400 313'480 518'650 34'807 351'493 1'218'429 834'166 1'238'874 N/A

Spending during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report)

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Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.


Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
Program 1: GLAM CHF 97'842 18'153 12'210 18'817 28'277 77'457 99'484 78'757 79% We have originally foreseen that the Community Manager would be directly operate in the GLAM sector. Unfortunately, due to time-consuming recruitment and due to the fact that only a small percentage of staff resources was dedicated to GLAM not all projects could be rolled out as planned. It was f. e. foreseen to further develop the Wiki Collaboration group which could not be done in 2017. Some other smaller projects also had to be postponed as priority was given to develop a full GLAM strategy justifying the underspent.
Program 2: EDUCATION CHF 65'500 15'062 771 3'640 20'412 39'886 66'599 40'555 61% The only staff person to be able to dedicate time to Education projects works part-time and was busy accompanying our complex data management and finance automatization project. Therefore priority into 2017 has been given to developing an education strategy indicating the way forward. A major amount of money had been foreseen in 2017 to potentially support the fellowship program established with universities running very successfully in WMDE. After thorough evaluation WMCH concluded that it neither had the staff nor the necessary financial resources to accompany such a big project in a qualitative and effective way, the foreseen money has not been spent. For a number of smaller projects, WMCH had originally foreseen a bigger amount of money but during the course of the year more partners could be taken on board and those participated in the financing of the projects (consequence: less money spent by WMCH).
Program 3: COMMUNITY CHF 102'000 5'478 5'814 8'117 29'454 48'862 103'712 49'682 48% WMCH decided not to send anybody to Wikimania in Montreal but to dedicate more money scholarships and events happening in its neighboring countries. Less people than expected these events and/or asked for reimbursement. What is more, micro-grants have seen a significant decrease and it has to be seen if this should be re-conducted in future or not. Finally, offline reunions and meet-ups where historically many expenses occurred saw a decrease in spent as many volunteers found other sources of funding or created their own associations. The blind peoples project has been postponed to 2018 as the holders were not ready to implement the project in 2017. Eventually other ways have to be found to support the community as needs are shifting.
Program 4: PARTNERSHIPS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS CHF 60'000 16'060 17'112 2'595 2'232 37'998 61'007 38'636 63% 2017 has essentially been used to foster new partnerships and reach out to diverse stakeholders. The foreseen money to join efforts with other organizations has been postponed to 2018. Mainly 2017 was used to sow the seeds for the years to come and therefore did not necessitate as much money as foreseen.
Tools - Wikimini.org (2016) CHF 15'000 0 14'764 0 0 14'764 15'252 15'011 98% budget 2016 postponed to 2017
Staff expenses CHF 454'525 102'569 105'454 116'639 129'722 454'384 462'152 462'009 100%
Operations (excludes staff and programs) CHF 99'800 31'679 33'710 8'845 73'083 147'317 101'475 149'789 148% WMCH has underestimated the time necessary to setting up professional databases and automated financial systems; additionally, a switch in Swiss banking to a new ISO standard which required a huge change in our original project plan. On the other hand overspent can be justified as WMCH undertook a major effort to professionalize its fundraising which generated expenses that were not foreseen in the original annual plan. It has to be taken into account, however,that these expenses are matched with much higher income as can be seen above.
TOTAL CHF 894'667 189'002 189'834 158'652 283'180 820'668 909'680 834'439 85% Now that the strategies are mostly in place for the years to come, WMCH is confident that it is on track to becoming a serving the community and wider movement in an sustainable manner.

Compliance

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Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement?

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As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

  • No deviations

Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • YES

Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • YES

Signature

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Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.

Resources

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Resources to plan for measurement

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Resources for storytelling

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