Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/EduWiki Conference 2025 in Colombia/Final Report
Report Status: Accepted
Due date: 30 November 2025
Funding program: Conference Fund
Report type: Final
This is an automatically generated Meta-Wiki page. The page was copied from Fluxx, the web service of Wikimedia Foundation Funds, where the user has submitted their midpoint report. Please do not make any changes to this page because all changes will be removed after the next update. Use the discussion page for your feedback. The page was created by CR-FluxxBot.General information
[edit]- Title of proposal: EduWiki Conference 2025 in Colombia
- Username of applicant: Monica Bonilla (WMCO)
- Name of organization: N/A
- Amount awarded: 162221
- Amount spent: 162221 USD, 162221 USD
Part 1: Understanding your work
[edit]1. Did your event have any impact that you did not expect, positive or negative?
The Wikipedia & Education User Group expected this event to be an opportunity to share learnings across program leaders worldwide, and it was. But we were not expecting our local hosts, Wikimedia Colombia, to be able to capitalize on it as much as they were. In offering local scholarships to educators and other relevant residents of Colombia who may not yet have been Wikimedians, they were able to grow their own community and catalyze interest in education by bringing these people to our global gathering. We are pleased with the engagement that happened at this event.
2. What do you think will be the long term impact of this conference?
This event served two purposes: as a venue for people doing education work to connect, share and learn; providing this place every two years seems to be great for addressing this particular thematic activity and “healing” programmatic loneliness, giving more power to representatives from various communities that feel that they’re the only ones doing education work. as a springboard for transforming the user group into a hub-like structure; we were able to gather much needed feedback about the services the new Education Hub will provide, which will have tremendous impact as the hub kicks off in September and starts providing said services.
3. Would you say that your work improved participants’ ability to apply new skills and knowledge?
Yes
3a. If yes, please describe how and why you think this was successful. Please describe why you think this is the case.
A balanced and well-curated program played a great role in making this event successful. By focusing on workshops and innovative formats, participants were still able to share their work within their locales during several Lightning talks sessions, whereas more time was provided to sessions related to strategy, panels, plenaries and workshops, which served the purpose of raising awareness about potential new skills to other participants.
4. Please use this space to upload media and other files that help tell your story and impact. You can also provide links to them.
Field to type in URLs.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:EduWiki_Conference_2025
5. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Strongly agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Agree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | Neither agree nor disagree |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Agree |
6. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
- N/A
7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?
We are particularly proud of our work with the scholarship process, to bring in a diverse group of participants to the conference. Unfortunately, the transit visa process flaws detailed above prevented some participants from attending, but we were still able to have a quite diverse group of people. In a verbal share-out at the end of the conference, one participant noted that they had more in common with education program leaders from other parts of the world than they did in their own region, and that this conference was helpful in enabling them to build relationships and share learnings with peer organizations. This cross-cultural exchange of ideas and knowledge is at the heart of our work, and we are pleased we were able to put on this conference again. Local scholarships played a crucial role in ensuring the participation of underrepresented groups in Colombia, helping make the event more inclusive and regionally representative. Some of the Colombian participants have since continued their involvement in Wikimedia Colombia’s activities, strengthening local engagement and continuity.
Part 2: Your main learning
[edit]8. Were there any major challenges or things you found difficult that you would like to share? What would you do differently next time?
Challenges, difficulties and/or “mistakes”, are as important for learning as any positive achievements. Share some of these challenges and any strategies you used to address them. Also use this space to reflect on any things that happened differently to how you expected or did not meet your expectations. What did you learn that will be helpful for future processes? While the Wikimedia Foundation provided travel booking support and Wikimedia Colombia provided support for visas into Colombia, the Wikipedia & Education User Group ended up having to help support participants with travel visas, which is something we were not expecting nor equipped to do. We ended up having several scholarship recipients unable to attend, even though they had received Colombian visas, because they were not able to acquire a transit visa for the country where they’d been booked in. We would strongly recommend that WMF considers including support for travel visas as part of the travel support, potentially by contracting with an external firm. We also received a substantial amount of feedback that participants would have appreciated live interpretation into Spanish. English fluency was a barrier for participation in this conference, and while we’d discussed offering interpretation, it had gotten cut in a budget crunch. We over-weight scholarship recipients to come from the region where the conference is hosted, and then rotate the region around each time, to make it more accessible to people; because we hosted it in Colombia, where many regional participants spoke the same language, it would have been nice to offer interpretation. We learned the importance of budgeting and planning for high-quality audio and video recording across all rooms. While all sessions were documented, one room’s recording did not meet quality standards, underscoring the need for stronger technical planning in future events. Recordings available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F1J663i5tE&list=PLLdHj92xlHw2rpKW2WB_VGzarW-jQggQk
9. Was there any non-financial support that the Wikimedia Foundation could have provided that would have better supported you in achieving your goals?
Helping out with travel visas, as mentioned above.
10. What would you recommend on a local and/or regional level as the best next step to leverage your success and momentum?
We need to keep the momentum gained at the conference going, and the Education hub is the perfect place for that. We are kicking off new working groups, and we expect many event participants to join and be active in one or more working groups. This will serve to build a sustainable global volunteer community around education. Wikimedia Colombia strengthened its relationships within the movement, particularly at the regional level. These connections can be leveraged to enhance staff training and capacity building through collaborations with other countries in the region.
11. Please add any 3 operational recommendations for future events organizers.
The connection between Wikimedia Colombia as the local host (who helped with meals, the hotel, a social outing, etc.) and the Wikipedia & Education User Group as the programmatic host (who ran the scholarship process, the program, etc.) worked extremely well.
Part 3: Metrics
[edit]12. Open Metrics reporting
In your application, you defined some open metrics and targets (goals). You will see a table like the one below with your metric in the title and the target you set in your proposal automatically filled in.
| Open Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content Gaps | Number of sessions, workshops, and discussions specifically addressing gender gap, language diversity, important topics, and other content gaps. | 20 | 10 | While we had fewer sessions focused directly on content gaps, many of our programs focused on showcasing common trends among education programs around the world. Content was in play for most of these, if not the focus of it. | https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2025/Program
Youtube Playlist - Testimonials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdI1pyMx6_4&list=PLLdHj92xlHw2gZnv6q6Z0EauoO8_jcZq5 EduWiki Conference 2025 Post-Conference Survey (Responses): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l8wZHJfV59ULAPtYVwbFtiv1OG0U4xpA_6fceKo9aww/edit?gid=668065936#gid=668065936 |
| Collaborations | Follow-up interviews or surveys with participants, capturing their reflections on sustained involvement, factors influencing their continued engagement, and the lasting impact of the conference on their collaborations | 5 | 1 | A collaboration between EduWikimedians in SSA and South America on promoting offline Wiki, specifically KIWIX in secondary schools. | Youtube Playlist - Testimonials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdI1pyMx6_4&list=PLLdHj92xlHw2gZnv6q6Z0EauoO8_jcZq5
EduWiki Conference 2025 Post-Conference Survey (Responses): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l8wZHJfV59ULAPtYVwbFtiv1OG0U4xpA_6fceKo9aww/edit?gid=668065936#gid=668065936 |
| Global Infrastructure | Number of participants who contributed to or expressed commitment to executing actionable plans related to the implementation of a W&E Global Infrastructure | 25 | 37 | 37 applications received ;
Summary by region (counts) Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): 23 South Asia (SA): 5 Middle East & North Africa (MENA): 2 Latin America & Caribbean (LAC): 2 Central & Eastern Europe & Central Asia (CEECA): 2 Northern & Western Europe: 2 East, Southeast Asia & Pacific (ESEAP): 1 |
Join the EduWiki Hub Working Groups (Responses): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vAtU54nDF8Bg9iAcB1vkCaGAJQdWo9-te5UVM8QOEmM/edit?resourcekey=&gid=236179513#gid=236179513 |
| Capacity Exchange | Feedback on the cross-community learning experience and insights gained from participants belonging to diverse communities | 30 | 61 | We had 65 people fill out our post-conference survey; 61 of them agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “I left with new or different ideas about how I may do my Wikimedia work in the future.” Many of our attendees came from diverse communities, so we are confident we achieved this goal. | Post-conference survey |
| Interest from partners | Representatives from different organizations coming to the event | 10 | 12 | Instituto Colombo-Alemán para la Paz - CAPAZ
Universidad Minuto de Dios Universidad Javeriana Universidad del Rosario Proyecto Relatos Libres One Young World Escuela101 - Fontibón Universidad Pedagógica Nacional Colegio Campo Alegre Wikimedistas Wayúu |
N/A |
13. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?
No
13a. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future. Also mention why you felt you had to change some metrics.
N/A
14. Please indicate if you applied any of the following survey and registration tools. Please select all that apply.
1. Standard Registration Form, 2. Post-event participant survey, 3. Follow-up (3-month) participants’ survey, 4. Follow-up (6-host/organizer survey)
14a. Please share the result(s) with us, provide the link(s) or summarize the main result(s) and insight(s) from them.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l8wZHJfV59ULAPtYVwbFtiv1OG0U4xpA_6fceKo9aww/edit?usp=sharing
14b. If you used other forms, please share them with us, as these forms might be useful for others to use.
Part 4: Financial reporting and compliance
[edit]15. & 16. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
162221 USD
17. Please state the total amount spent in USD.
162221 USD
18. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.
Upload a financial report file.
Please provide a link to your financial reporting document.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XxatDMRknEvw6RPj4QLsYhJerhQQQtiIC5IGb9LadLI/edit?usp=sharing
As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund 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.
19. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.
Total project budget: US$162,221.00 Portion of budget reserved for travel services: US$125,588.50 Amount to be disbursed (Grant): US$36,633.50
We considered it important to highlight the significant budget variation resulting from visa reimbursements and the costs associated with ensuring the recording of all sessions. Fortunately, the organizing team successfully reallocated funds to cover these two unanticipated expenses, as detailed in the accompanying budget report.
20. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
No
20a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
N/A
20b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
N/A
20c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
N/A
21. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
Yes
22. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
Yes
23. 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 Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
Yes
24. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.