Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/WoALUG 2024-2025 Biennial Plan of Activities/Yearly Report (2024)
|
|
Part 1: Understanding your work
[edit]Per the recent update on the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy process, Wikimedia Affiliates that are General Support Fund grantees will fulfill their affiliate reporting requirements through their final or yearly grantee report.
If you are a Wikimedia Affiliate, you will use this form for your affiliate reporting and to address the affiliate health criteria. You do not need to submit a separate report to AffCom. Follow the guidance in the green boxes to report on how you met the corresponding affiliate health criteria.
If you are not a Wikimedia Affiliate, aligning your responses with the affiliate criteria is optional and not required.
1. Please share to what extent your programs, approaches, and strategies contributed to addressing the challenges you shared in your proposal. If they did not contribute as you believed they would, please share what obstacles you faced and what, if anything, you learned from them? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 1.) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 1.1 (Goal delivery). Describe how you actively delivered on mission goals, e.g. content creation.
In the first year of the proposal, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group’ programs, approaches, and strategies mainly addressed recurring challenges and obstacles, including:
- Limited access to quality education
- Limited awareness and engagement about Wikimedia projects
- Resistance to change
- Lack of computers and internet access when collaborating with all our partners
- Bureaucracy remains an obstacle, causing delays in project developments especially when we work with public institutions.
Some of the lessons learned on how to approach challenges are:
- Focus on community building and engagement by allocating budgets for the community’s participation.
- Focus on volunteer retention by increasing participation options and motivating the community to participate in regional and international conferences. Also, we focused on acknowledging their hard work through increased competition prizes.
- Focus on building the community’s skills by developing follow-up events, training, and activities to encourage contributors, especially students to take leadership roles within the community. This approach helps engage students to contribute to the User Group’s sustainability and their personal growth, as well.
2. Is there a plan to build on the key successes you had? If yes, please describe the plan and if no, please share the limitations to do so. For instance, did the activities lead to any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future? (required)
Yes, there is a plan to build on the key successes from the first year of the proposal.
Based on our activities and their outcomes, we have identified key insights and developed ideas to set future goals. These include:
- Expanding youth engagement programs:
Building on the success of our school collaborations, we plan to introduce initiatives such as WikiClubs, Wikeys, and the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program in more educational institutions. This expansion aims to promote further awareness and engagement with Wikimedia projects among students and educators.
- Addressing bureaucratic challenges:
Lessons learned from bureaucratic obstacles have highlighted the importance of advocacy. We aim to strengthen relationships with institutional partners by signing memorandums of understanding to streamline collaborations and reduce delays.
- Enhancing skill development:
We plan to collaborate with more local and remote organizations to expand skill-building opportunities for students, teachers, and partners. These efforts will focus on increasing knowledge and use of free knowledge platforms.
- Community motivation and engagement:
To maintain and grow community engagement, we will continue to support community members in attending regional and international conferences. These opportunities provide motivation, foster a sense of belonging, and encourage active participation within the Wikimedia movement.
3. Please provide a link to reports that detail the activities that took place in the last year. This can include an annual report, Meta pages, and websites. If there are no links available, briefly describe the implemented activities and programs below or upload any files. (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 3.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.1 (Affiliate health & resilience), 4.1 (Internal engagement), 4.2 (Community connection), and 4.3 (Partnerships and collaboration):
- Describe your activities engaging new users, new members for your decision-making body(ies), and developing leaders and organizers (2.1).
- Describe your activities creating or hosting spaces to encourage greater collaboration and engagement among your members (4.1).
- Describe how you engage with the contributing community that you serve and/or support (4.2).
- Describe your partnerships with other affiliates or with non-Wikimedia entities (4.3).
The link below showcases all the activities in 2024.
Our leadership team reflects a commitment to diversity. The board consists of two male and one female member, while our staff includes two female Project Managers.
Beyond gender balance, we actively foster inclusivity through various initiatives. We collaborate with LGBT+ organizations and hold regular edit-a-thons focused on increasing the representation of marginalized voices. Additionally, we engage with underrepresented communities, such as during International Roma Day, where we include not only the Roma community but also Ashkali and Egyptian communities in our activities.
We also promote gender diversity through initiatives like WikiGap and other edit-a-thons, which encourage more women to participate in Wikimedia projects.
As far as gender balance is concerned, we don’t ask our members to declare, but based on what we know, about 56.25% are female.
4. Are you interested in sharing what you achieved or learned this year with the wider community through different peer learning programs (e.g. Let's Connect program, Diff)? (optional)
Yes, we are interested in sharing with the wider community that Albanian Wikipedia reached the milestone of 100,000 articles in 2024. To celebrate this achievement we dedicated an article on the Diff blog, providing a general understanding of our journey and the community’s efforts.
5. Did you collect feedback from your community or target groups on how the activities implemented impacted them? If yes, please attach/provide information on the results (e.g. community surveys, stories, impact booklets/reports, interviews with partner institutions, etc). Did you collect other impact-specific data? (required)
For affiliates, the response to Question 5. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criteria 4.1 (Internal Engagement), 4.2 (Community Connection), or 4.3 (Partnerships & collaboration), where applicable.
Yes, we have collected feedback from the community to see how the activities have impacted people. During 2024, we collected some data based on the response forms from participants who participated in different activities to see the effectiveness of our programs.
One form is about the participants’ feedback. This allowed us to understand more about their experience, impact, technical challenges, such as navigating the Wikimedia tools, and improvements in the future.
Also, we created an assessment feedback form dedicated to the Wikimedian in Residence program. It documented the collaboration process from GLAM institutions in Albania, challenges, and understanding of the needs of participants, and it helped us adapt future programs by aligning with participants’ expectations.
See below the feedback from 2 Wikimedians in Residences that participated this program in 2024.
Regarding the internal (membership) engagement, below is documentation of regular meetings or communications with members and participants.
The board and staff hold regular meetings on the first Monday of each month to discuss ongoing projects, decision-making processes, and other important matters concerning the group. We also hold a 3-day retreat for the Wikivoyage campaign with staff, board, and members.
For transparency, here are the links to the meeting minutes for the year 2024 [6] and 2025 [7]
WhatsApp community https://chat.whatsahttps://chat.whatsapp.com/EbpvbhlxIWN0VmGKiV14uwpp.com/EbpvbhlxIWN0VmGKiV14uw
Telegram group [8]
6. During the fund period, did your efforts do any of the following? (required):
For affiliates, the response to Question 6. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criterion 2.2 (Diversity balance).
- 6.1 Bring in participants from the following groups: women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ groups, people from lower socioeconomic status, young people
- 6.2 Develop content about the following underrepresented topics or groups of people: women, LGBTQ+ groups, speakers of minority languages
- 6.3 Support the retention of: Editors, Organizers, Partnerships, Wikimedians in Residence positions
7. What, if any, effective tactics or approaches can you share that worked well when dealing with the programs under points 6.1-6.3 that you selected? (optional)
We tried several approaches that worked well for the programs under points 6.1-6.3. We focused on encouraging young students to take leadership by organizing events in their schools, which increased their involvement in Wikimedia projects.
For example, for the Wikidata editathon, we created an inclusive environment by working with autistic students, adapting workshops to meet their needs, and showing how Wikimedia projects can support diverse abilities.
We also collaborated with Wikimedia Georgia at the WikiClub level in Albania and Georgia. Through this collaboration, we wanted to share ideas and learn from each other to strengthen our programs and bring fresh perspectives.
These approaches helped us to involve more students, teachers, and people with different disabilities, and build stronger regional partnerships.
8. If you developed partnerships, which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors (optional):
Staff hired through the fund, Volunteers from our communities, Partners proactive interest
Part 2: Metrics for Year 1
[edit]| Wikimedia Metrics | Target (Year 1) | Results (Year 1) | Comments and tools used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | 400 | ||
| Number of all editors | 200 | ||
| Number of new editors | 150 | ||
| Number of retained editors | 50 | ||
| Number of all organizers | 10 | ||
| Number of new organizers | 2 |
| Wikimedia project | Target - Number of created pages (Year 1) | Target - Number of improved pages (Year 1) | Result - Number of created pages (Year 1) | Result - Number of improved pages (Year 1) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 400 | 400 | 423 | 1786 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 1500 | 1498 | 0 | |
| Wikidata | 400 | 400 | 300 | 3797 |
| Wiktionary | ||||
| Wikisource | ||||
| Wikimedia Incubator | ||||
| Translatewiki | ||||
| MediaWiki | ||||
| Wikiquote | ||||
| Wikivoyage | 20 | 50 | 10 | 172 |
| Wikibooks | ||||
| Wikiversity | ||||
| Wikinews | ||||
| Wikispecies | ||||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
11. Did you set other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required): No
11.1. Other Metrics.
In your application, you outlined some other open metrics that you would like to measure. Please fill out the achieved results for each of the open metrics you defined.
| Other Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outreach dashboard | Based on various projects we develop within a year, we notice both quantitative and qualitative targets are influenced by factors such as community engagement on our social media such as Facebook, Instragram, and Twitter, public interest each time we publish an event/ activity on local newspapers.
Either on quantitative or qualitative targets we try to set standards for content quality, accuracy, relevance, level of involvement, and encourage the community to participate based also on their interest such as photography contests. |
N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Google forms | 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 |
Part 3: Skill Development / Capacity Building
[edit]12. Reflecting on your programmatic (external) and organizational (internal) work, did your grant support you to undergo any skill development that made a difference to your success? If yes, what skill was developed, and how did it lead to success? (e.g. received coaching on public speaking, attended training on nonviolent communication, hosted professional development conversations on leadership, learned and used a new tool for project management, etc.)? Can you share any materials? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 12.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.2 (Diversity balance) and 3.1 (Diverse, Skilled, and Accountable Leadership):
- Describe actions taken to prioritize gender balance in affiliate leadership, as well as any areas of diversity relevant to your affiliate's context (2.2).
- Describe the management, financial, or other leadership skills of your affiliate leaders. If you have a succession plan, please include it here (3.1).
- Describe any training or skill development (as outlined in the question above) (3.1).
- Incorporate into the annual report a disclosure of conflict of interests (if any) from the leadership (3.1).
Yes, the grant significantly supported skill development that contributed to our success in both programmatic and organizational areas.
On the programmatic work, It helped us plan and implement activities and projects to specifically engage our community through editathons, training sessions, and outreach programs.
On the organizational work, the grant helped us improve how we handle budgeting and reporting. Managing the grant funds taught us how to better keep track of expenses and create clear reports, making our work organized. These skills have prepared us to handle more complex projects in the future.
13. What is one capacity/skill area that you would like to focus on for the next year? And how do you plan to achieve this capacity? (required)
One skill to focus on the next year is strategic planning and impact evaluation/feedback. We think they are important for setting clear goals and aligning effective resources with the real impact of our work.
To achieve these skills, we would attend strategic planning-related topics and evaluation techniques, collaborate with partners and experts to learn the best practices, apply new tools and methods to make sure projects are successfully implemented, and share the lessons learned with the community.
14. If you have additional information or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. Use the space below to upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your report.
For affiliates, also use this section (Question 14) to fulfill the Affiliate Health Criteria requirements.
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for affiliate governance, including affiliate leadership and membership with a breakdown of the demographics; how elections are conducted; how conflicts of interest are declared; and how decisions are made and communicated (2.2, 2.3, 3.1).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for activities incorporating, promoting awareness about, or enforcing the Universal Code of Conduct in your affiliate's activities (3.3).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for internal membership engagement, such as notes from your regular meetings and how you communicate to or involve your membership (4.1).
The board and staff of our group hold regular open meetings on the first Monday of each month to discuss ongoing projects, strategic planning, and other relevant matters concerning the group. Minutes are held.
We maintain active communication with our community through a WhatsApp community, which includes a general group and multiple project/campaign-specific groups, as well as a Telegram channel (https://t.me/WoALUG). Additionally, we are accessible via email and social media messages for inquiries and engagement. We make sure that all our events are announced through banners and on sq.wikipedia village pump.
Beyond digital communication, we ensure broader outreach by making regular appearances on radio and television in Kosovo and Albania, promoting our initiatives and engaging with the wider public.
Membership criteria:
We don't have any strict criteria to be a member of our group, they just have to complete a form, we keep it as simple as we can. We have some rules for using our devices like laptops or cameras.
Conflicts of interest:
We are trained a couple of times in different Wikimedia CEE meetings about conflicts of interests. We didn't have any situation so far that could have been a potential conflict of interest but as a general rule we discuss it between us how to move on, and if we cannot decide, we would bring it up to Chris.
Elections:
We have tried a couple of times to find a replacement for one of the board members who would like to retire. Unfortunately, that was unsuccessful, as people are willing to help out if needed but not take the responsibility to be officially on the board. We also have discussed with Chris the possibility of having a paid board member, and hopefully we will have more people to be interested in the role.
The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) is actively promoted within our community. It is shared at every meeting/edit-a-thon/event to ensure participants are aware of its principles. Additionally, it is explicitly mentioned in our participation forms, email, and reinforcing our commitment to maintaining a respectful and inclusive environment. Especially at events that include diversity topics. For example, on our latest events the WikiGap event in Kosovo: [9] the WikiGap event in Albania:
[10] and International Roma Day:
We also translated it into Albanian ([12]) and have it shared on our UG’s meta page [13]
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]For affiliates, also use this section (Part 4: Financial reporting) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 3.2 (Financial & Legal Compliance).
| Description | Amount spent (EUR) |
|---|---|
| Personnel costs | 19632 |
| Operational costs | 4536 |
| Programmatic costs | 18005 |
| Total (Year 1) | 42174.09 |
| Other revenue | |
| Remaining funds (Year 1) | 908 |
15. Please state the total amount spent from this fund in your local currency. (required)
42174.09 EUR
16. Please provide an overview of the amount spent from this fund in the following budget categories in your local currency. (required)
- Operational costs: 4536 EUR
- Programmatic costs: 19632 EUR
- Staff and contractor costs: 18005 EUR
17. Did you have any other revenue sources (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): No
- 17.1. Provide the total amount received from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): EUR
- 17.2. Provide the total amount spent from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): EUR
18. Provide a financial report document which will provide the details of funds received and spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
18.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
N/A
19. Do you have any unspent funds from this funding?: Yes
- 19.1. Please list the amount of unspent funds in your local currency. (required)
- 908
- 19.2. Explain why you did not use the amount. (required)
- The unspent amount of 908.91 EUR remained due to some planned activities not taking place. These activities were either postponed, canceled, or adjusted due to unforeseen circumstances, leading to lower overall expenditures than initially projected.
- 19.3. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
- A. Propose to use the underspent funds within this Fund period with PO approval
- 19.4. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
- Our PO has already approved using unspent funds from 2024 for our planned activities in 2025.
20. Final confirmations (required)
- 20.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement? You must be in compliance 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 Wikimedia Foundation mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
- Yes
- 20.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
- Yes
- 20.3. 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
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 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.