Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/2022-2024 GLAM Macedonia's Three-year General Support Grant /Midpoint Report

Midterm Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2022-07-15T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Midterm

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General information[edit]

This form is for organizations receiving Wikimedia Community Funds (General Support) or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their mid-term learning and results. See the Wikimedia Community Fund application if you want to review the initial proposal.

Name of Organization: GLAM Makedonija Skopje
Title of Proposal: 2022-2024 GLAM Macedonia's Three-year General Support Grant
Amount awarded: 26121.38 USD, 23104 EUR
Amount spent: 961401 MKD

Part 1 Understanding your work[edit]

1. Briefly describe how your strategies and activities proposed were implemented and if any changes to what was proposed are worth highlighting?

The first half of 2022 was marked by the first post-Covid face-to-face or in-live activities. As it was expected, the volunteers were pleased to edit, contribute and improve Wikipedia content together, during Wiki Club meetings, edit-a-thons or the Wiki Camp held in Mavrovo. By providing the participants with materials, supplied by the institutions that we have memorandum for collaboration with, increased the productivity and effectivity of the process. Moreover, in-person help and support by the experienced editors proved to be more helpful and gave the expected results. Additionally. since no regulations and restrictions were imposed by the Government related to Covid-19, the Conferences for teachers turned out to be more attractive this year, in comparison to the previous ones, where significant increase of participants (teachers) took part in. Overall, almost all activities exceeded the expectations in terms of results and content creation.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you feel are being effective in achieving your goals?

Two aspects can be selected for the purposes of answering this item. The first one is the strategy or the approach towards the students. Active involvement of the students in the activities, that is, active involvement in the process of creation and improvement of the articles, along with upgrading their knowledge of mastering Wikipedia and Commons tools and usage, motivated them for further contribution and deeper understanding Wikipedia. The use of Wikipedia and Commons in their educational projects increased and the spread of the idea of free knowledge creation and distribution spread among the peers. As a consequence to that, new interested volunteers appeared and got involved in GLAM Macedonia's activities (through Wiki Camp and Wiki Clubs).

The second aspect covers the teachers' involvement in the activities and their active involvement in the movement. As planned, the teachers were to be involved through several important activities, namely the Conferences and the Wiki Clubs with the Wiki Camp. The conferences held in several different schools in various different places in Macedonia covered significantly larger number of teachers that were taught and trained on how to use and implement Wikipedia in the education process. The advantages of using Wikipedia and its related projects was highly accepted by the teachers and therefore, we marked involvement of teachers, new and old members, in other activities as well. The teachers voluntarily took part in some of the edit-a-thons and editing challenges that were organized or supported by GLAM Macedonia.

3. What challenges or obstacles have you encountered so far?

So far, we have encountered with challenges of technological nature. In other words, the nature of the activities requires basic IT technology (laptops, PCs) and connection to Internet. Regarding the late one, no major obstacles were noted. However, during some activities lack of enough IT equipment was noted, which forces the participants of the activities to improvise and quickly get over the problems in order to focus on the activities themselves.

Additionally, due to budget limitations, the number of teacher conferences is limited, while the interest is greater. Therefore, the conferences cover larger number of teachers-participants, which makes the conference a but more challenging. Having more conferences with smaller number of participants (all divided into several different one, instead of one or two) may give the results faster.

4. Please describe how different communities are participating and being informed about your work.

GLAM Macedonia uses the social media channels, its webpages and e-mail lists as basic instruments for spreading the idea of the movement and promotion of the activities and their results. These tools of communication are also used for reaching the communities, their invitation for active participation in the activities and giving contributions in the movement. Moreover, through our coordinators, the idea of the movement, GLAM Macedonia's activities and projects are promoted, they are introduced to students/ teachers/ general public and open invitations are always sent to new members and volunteers. People and students with limited IT skills are also encouraged to participate, not only they improve the content, but also they improve their own skills and knowledge. The Wiki Club Senior pays special attention to senior members who want to get in touch with the movement, its activities and IT skills improvement. Wikipedia announcements are also regularly used for informing the community.

5. Please share reflections on how your efforts are helping to engage participants and/or build content, particularly for underrepresented groups.

Almost all activities prepared and executed during the first half of the year included students, education workers and volunteers interested in spreading and contributing free knowledge. The nature of the activities are such that they require from the participants active involvement, mostly in contributing, text organsation, referencing and looking for appropriate references, but also finding appropriate terminology for terms non-translated on Macedonian Wikipedia. The students were eager to provide good articles, finding good images and helping others with technical and linguistic necessesities. Additionally, on several occasion the participants provided different ways of impelementing activities, improving the flow of work and giving ideas for further improvement of the editing skills. This mostly applies to Wiki Camps and Wiki Clubs, where the students have higher freedom to organize the manner and way of contributing in order to achieve better results. Besides improving the content, the feedback tells us that these activties improve IT skills of the participants, as well as learning in depth the nature and the purpose of the Movement.

6. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What have you learned so far about these areas during this period?

Regarding the number of editors that contribute after activities, during the first half of the year is almost in half reached, that is in reference to the initially stated target. On the other hand, the number of the contributors is increasing and almost reaches the given target in the application. The activities involve participants of different background, ethnic, linguistic, social and it is better than we expected. No major problems or obstacles exist here. This year's media coverage is even better than the last year, the activities were promoted and presented to the general public much better, through domestic and foreign news portals. More students and people are contacting us regarding the activtes and the goal of the organization (through social media and physical presence).

7. What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your work?

During the second half of the year we'll focus on improving and creating content on Wikipedia of different topics. In order to achieve this, the organization's goal is to create new Wiki Club(s) in the second half , recruit new members of the Wiki Clubs that already exist (partially it's already is done) and enlarging WikiSenior project. Moreover, the organization's plan is two have at least two teachers' seminars and sign at least one Memorandum for collaboration with GLAM Instituiton.

Part 2: Metrics[edit]

8a. Open and additional metrics data.

Open Metrics
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
N/A	N/A	N/A	310	The number of participants who attend events, programs and activities online or in person, in GLAM, Education and Community all together, including new participants and returning participants.	One of the tools is Outreach Dashboard, and the other is counting participants on some events.
N/A	N/A	N/A	27	The number of new registered participants in GLAM, Education and Community programs, all together.	Outreach Dashboard
N/A	N/A	N/A	54	Organizers and other outreach liaisons for GLAM, Education and Community programs, all together. The number for half of the year is higher than we expect the number of involved organizers throughout the year. This means a huge success of involving people, members of GLAM Macedonia, into our activities.	Methodology used to count organizers is counting who was involved on events.
N/A	N/A	N/A	6110	Number of content pages improved or created in the first half of the year is higher than we expect for the whole year. Or by the program: 5,800 articles edited by Wiki Club members, 110 articles edited by Wiki Seniors, 200 articles edited as result of activities of 4 Wikipedian in residense so far.	Outreach Dashboard
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Additional Metrics
Additional Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities		120	190	Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities.	Outreach Dashboard
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities		30	54	Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities. Almost all organizers who were involved in activities in some point, continue to participate in other activities.	The tool we use is counting them.
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	The number of involved institutions or organizations we work with in all our programs:	45	20	The number of involved institutions or organizations we work with in all our programs. The number so far is 20, i.e. 8 of them are GLAM institutions.	The tool we use is counting them.
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	N/A	20	9	Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	The tool we use is asked and counted them.
Number of people reached through social media publications	N/A	25	4	So far only 4 persons involved themselves in our activities after hearing and reading about our programs in the social media. If we count only the number of people reached through social media, is more than ten thousand, of which through Facebook pages we reached more than 3,500 persons.	Facebook pages have an option named Insights, where we can see the number of people reached.
Number of activities developed	The number of events in all our programs:	45	19	The number of events in all our programs are 19 so far, including GLAM, education and community events.	The tool we use is counting them.
Number of volunteer hours	N/A	15000	9000	Number of volunteer hours.	We count the volunteer hours by using this method: we have 5 most active volunteers, who spent almost 720 hours in 6 months each = 3,600 hours. Plus at least 30 other persons who spent ~1 hour a day = 5,400 hours, or altogether = 9,000 volunteer hours in 6 months

8b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of participants	The number of participants who attend events, programs and activities online or in person, in GLAM, Education and Community all together, including new participants and returning participants:	590	310	The number of participants who attend events, programs and activities online or in person, in GLAM, Education and Community all together, including new participants and returning participants.	One of the tools is Outreach Dashboard, and the other is counting participants on some events.
Number of editors	The number of new registered participants in GLAM, Education and Community programs, all together:	150	217	Number of editors: Newly registered editors: 27 Returning editors: 190	Outreach dshboard
Number of organizers	Organizers and other outreach liaisons for GLAM, Education and Community programs, all together:	30	54	This is the number of organizers that participate in our programs. Almost all organizers who were involved in activities in some point, continue to participate in other activities.	Counting them

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Wikipedia	Number of content pages improved or created:	4100	6110	Wikipedia, number of content pages improved or created. Number of Wikipedia pages improved or created in the first half of the year is higher than we expect for the whole year. Or by the program: 5,800 articles edited by Wiki Club members, 110 articles edited by Wiki Seniors, 200 articles edited as result of activities of four Wikipedian in residense so far.	Outreach Dashboard
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

9. Are you having any difficulties collecting data to measure your results?

No.

10. Are you collaborating and sharing learning with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Yes

10a. Please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how?

Besides the core activities of the programme, GLAM Macedonia was involved in activities that include other affiliates' members and larger community. For example, this year's collaboration with Wikimedia Serbia's members was on higher level and our Wiki community took part in celebrating the World Roma Day and Refugee Day. It resulted with more than 180 new articles on Macedonian Wikipedia, and it was announced to the general Macedonian and Serbian population. Moreover, Meet Serbia with collaboration with the Serbian Embassy was announced through our social media channels and local portals, as well as Embassy's newsletter, and more than 1200 new articles were created. This activity, its participants' efforts and the idea was presented to the Serbian and Macedonian population.

11. Documentation of your work process, story, and impact.

Below there is a section to upload files, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g. communications materials, blog posts, compelling quotes, social media posts, etc.). This can be anything that would be useful to understand and show your learning and results to date (e.g., training material, dashboards, presentations, communications material, training material, etc).

Below is an additional field to type in link URLs.

https://www.kulart.mk/featured/успешно-одржан-семинар-за-наставници/

Part 3: Financial reporting and compliance[edit]

12. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

961401

13. Local currency type

MKD

14. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
Provide links to your financial reporting documents.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JJleLVqfMsYHuvnkO5vtt6b9zk_2WNN-3pXXObRKp6E/edit#gid=427537583

15. Based on your implementation and learning to date, do you have any plans to make changes to the budget spending?

No

15a. Please provide an explanation on how you hope to adjust this.

N/A

16. We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being a grantee has been so far.

So far, GLAM Macedonia's program is being executed in a well-planned and smooth way. Despite some above-mentioned minor obstacles, the activities are being carried away on time and the results that were achieved exceeded the initially expected ones, especially in terms of content creation.

Moreover, the new platform for applying for grants turns out to be more practical and so far the experience with the whole process is excellent, and our program leader is helpful when needed.