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Final Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2023-01-30T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Final

Application Midpoint Learning Report

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General information

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This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results. See the midpoint report if you want to review the midpoint results.

  • Name of Organization: Wikmedia Belgium v.z.w.
  • Title of Proposal: Yearly grant 2022 (Previously called Simple APG).
  • Amount awarded: 17988.85 USD, 40000 EUR
  • Amount spent: 14901.75 EUR

Part 1 Understanding your work

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1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.

We contacted lots of GLAM and education institutions, and were proactively contacted by a lot of others, with a proposal or a request to organise activities together. The more institutions know about our strategy and successful activities, the more other institutions are willing to contact us proactively to organise e.g. a Wikipedia writing session or another cultural activity.

In addition to that we take care to present interesting aspects of Wikimedia platforms during conferences or at partner activities. Because we are a small chapter, and have few volunteers, project leaders, and board members, and not having employees, we have to frequently rely upon external partners and volunteers to assist us to set up and manage activities.

When we are having sessions at schools we get the assistance of teachers and professors. When we are at museums, the museum staff is providing us with help to organise the session. We are writing the project page together. And make plans on how to physically organise the session: plan for a room, Wi-Fi, have a beamer or a flat screen, food, drinks.

We bring documentation for each of the participants, in the language of the participant, and adapt the content to their learning capacity.

We build presentations adapted to the learning capacity, and the interest of the participants, the prerequisite knowledge and their target program.

We try to search for interesting subjects that the participants can write about, adapted to the interest and capacity of the participants. We try to adapt our program to the taret audience.

We support coaching and follow-up during and after the session. People can request our help to get a new article published. We explain how copyright and free content licenses can nicely work together. We assist uploaders to resolve any pending problem.

We are running more programs with universities and high schools about writing Wikipedia articles related to their curriculum.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?

Word of mouth amongst institutions and organisations really does work. We have received requests from museums and educational institutions to organise an edit-a-thon, because they heard from past successful activities from peer organisations. Our newsletter, which is also shared on Facebook, is a very effective channel to communicate about our activities.

Other cultural institutions request our support for them and their projects, to present us as a reference to support them getting approval for a cultural grant from the regional or federal government.

We provide them with technical experience to work with the Wikimedia platforms, or redirect their question to other organisations, or institutions that can help them resolving a technical or content question.

Recently I have given a lecture for the local women association about how Wikipedia gets written by the community.

3. Would you say that your project had any innovations? Are there things that you did very differently than you have seen them done by others?

We implemented and fine-tuned our Wikidata-driven project management method. We prepared a presentation that we shortly presented at the European GLAM conference, and presented the method at a Let’s connect session. Last year we already presented this technique at two other conferences.

Basically we have kind of automated the setup and management of activities based on Wikidata data structures around WikiProjects. That data is then linked and presented to Wikipedia project pages and sub-pages, and in Programs and Events sessions. This helps us to coach participants, and perform proper reporting of the results.

We are using OpenRefine to populate subjects and link them to our WikiProject. We use Pywikibot to make automated updates of those items, and to welcome new users to our writing sessions.

4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.

Museums, heritage organisations, universities, colleges, libraries: we organise concrete writing sessions about subjects closely related to those institutions.

Keep personal contacts via newsletter, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Discord.

Since 2019 we have a philanthropic fund "Friends of Wikimedia Belgium Fund", supported by the Koning Boudewijnstichting, that allows us to attract fundraising with tax reduction for the Belgian citizens and companies. This attracts both private and company donations. Subsequently we can make grants available to social, educational and cultural projects that implement knowledge sharing. In 2022 we started two Wikimedian in Residence projects that focus on sharing free knowledge: KOERS, and Amazone. See our activity reporting.

Partnerships with social enterprises, like Slowby, that is implementing a platform to facilitate easy travelling by bike. It makes use of Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikipedia to generate a single or multi-day parcours for bicycle travellers. Using the start point, end point, the distance per day, the number days, and the type of points of interest the platform generates a documented parcours.

5. Documentation of your impact. Please use the two spaces below to share files and links that help tell your story and impact. This can be documentation that shows your results through testimonies, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, etc.) social media posts, dashboards, etc.

  • Upload Documents and Files
  • Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
https://be.wikimedia.org/wiki/Activities/2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Belgium/Activity/2022

6. 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.

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups Agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community Agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors
F. Encourage the retention of organizers Strongly agree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement. Agree

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?

Organise activities for Universities, hogescholen, and secondary schools (colleges), heritage organisations, and archives.

We conduct several projects around Women in Red. We attract women to participate at those edit-a-thons.

Women in Red projects about architects, artists, scientists, economy, and society. We automate the gathering and the structuring of those data using Wikidata, OpenRefine, Wikidata Query, SPARQL, ListeriaBot, Pywikibot.

We have decent coaching and follow-up. We distribute documentation in their own language NL/FR/EN. We follow-up and coach participants using the Program and Events dashboard. This way we make sure that the articles are well written according to the quality requirements, and are not deleted by moderators.

We would be very happy to acquire more organisers. We would coach them via a “train the trainer” program.

We motivate partners and community volunteers to feel like part of the movement.

We are valued very much by partners as being mandatory for the successful implementation of activities.

We keep good contacts with the media (TV, radio, newspapers, periodicals). Media's are contacting us for an interview.

We support our volunteers providing them with the possibility to claim expenses when they contribute to Wikipedia.

https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20230106_97980707 “Deel uw kennis met Wikipedia”, interview and article in a major national newspaper about how Wikipedia articles are written, and how the community is organised.

Part 2: Your main learning

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8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?

Attracting institutions and organisations helped to organise open knowledge activities. Communicate about activities, share user guides, apply common techniques.

Financial reporting is well organised. We are able to drill down to any expense, activity, or cost centre. This way we can monitor expenses, so that we do not have unexpected budget overrun. We manage our chapter well. No major conflicts in the organisation have arrived. People are considering the current chair as a stable factor in the organisation, capable of resolving any weakness or organisational problem. We have a team of advisors available (previous board members) that augment the management of the organisation. We have attracted a lot of new GLAM, heritage, and education institutes. We know our strategy. We have a well-developed methodology to setup and monitor projects. We started implementing the Wikidata way of working during the pandemic. Now we continue to use it to support physical activities. Volunteers can learn from each other. We provide them with documentation. We document everything on our organisational website. This way we guarantee continuity and transition. We are relatively well developed, considering the small size of our chapter. We do not have paid staff yet, so we have to rely on volunteer capacity and willingness. Diverse, multiple platforms, automated and integrated. Systematically develop Pywikibot scripts. We are documenting on our be-wiki We give presentations at conferences.

9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?

Schools and universities started to contact us to organise edit-a-thons within their curriculum (often about science, history, or heritage). For schools typically language, history, science, and ICT teachers took the initiative. They enjoyed our methodology of conducting the project using Wikidata (Wikidata Query, SPARQL, ListeriaBot, building a Wikipedia project page, and a table overview presenting the list of subjects, and their attributes).

We should be able to spend more budget on Board training, and volunteer support. The problem is that this requires time, knowledge, and human resources to organise. We have the capacity to manage conflicts, like we have done in the past. We should be able to attract more volunteers, new board members, and new project leaders There are a lot of recurring institutions. We collaborate with national organisations and institutions. We have created a "Friends of Wikimedia Belgium Fund" to support small knowledge sharing organisations. Relatively small activities are perfectly manageable. Try out small adaptations to see what works. It helps to talk to people. But young people and families are occupied by their professional activities, studies, their carrier, and their family. We could provide more training on GLAM tools and techniques. More board members are required. Social media are fragmented. We do not have paid staff yet. More training on GLAM tools and techniques should be organised. We continuously listen to our community.

10. How do you hope to use this learning? For instance, do you have any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future?

We will continue to develop the Wikidata technique. We educate partners to use the tools like project pages, Wikidata, ListeriaBot, Programs and the events dashboard. More and more partners start using those platforms themselves. Museums are using OpenRefine to document their collections on the Wikimedia platforms.

We should be able to organise and manage freelance activities. Committee members should be motivated to allocate more of their time. We have too few active volunteers in the organisation. More local heritage institutions should be involved. They should be able to work independently, but they can count on our support. We should be able to establish a “train the trainer” program. More and more museums have learned how to use the Wikimedia platforms.It remains difficult, since we are still small, to collaborate with large museums (non-matching scales). More volunteers are required in the organisation. Learn others how to use those techniques. 4/5 of the volunteers are not a member of the organisation. We require a hierarchy of experienced volunteers. We can reuse project methodologies from meemoo. We require more women on the board. Our “communications team” is much too small. We need to organise freelance activities. We need to develop as an organisation with employees. We want to make a video about “Taking quality images for Wikipedia”. Techniques should be documented and developed. We would hope that volunteers are also contributing to the organisation.

11. If you were sitting with a friend to tell them one thing about your work during this fund, what would it be (think of inspiring or fascinating moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes, or anything that feels important to you)?

Show concrete examples of project pages, Wikipedia pages, Wikidata lists, and Wikimedia Commons categories. Show the nice pictures from Wiki Loves Heritage, and how they are used on the platforms. The way we are using Montage to select the winning images. How fun it is to select the winning images using this tool.

We collaborated with multiple institutions. Multiple universities organise with us repeated yearly writing sessions. They understand our way of working and are participating to write the project page.

How we perform activities about women, architects, cultural world, and heritage.

12. 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.
https://be.wikimedia.org/wiki/Manage_Wiki_projects_using_Wikidata

Managing Wikimedia Projects through Wikidata

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aide:Livret_Participer_à_Wikipédia (prepared by Wikimedia France).

Schrijven voor Wikipedia: https://be.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schrijven_voor_Wikipedia_(boek) We give the book to every participant of our edit-a-thons.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Belgium_presentations https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Belgium_publications https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Activities_and_projects_of_Wikimedia_Belgium https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Promotional_material_Wikimedia_Belgium

https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20230106_97980707 “Deel uw kennis met Wikipedia”, interview and article in a major national newspaper about how Wikipedia articles are written.

Part 3: Metrics

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13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
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
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 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
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 N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of activities developed N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of volunteer hours N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of participants See attached spreadheet
Number of editors See attached spreadheet
Number of organizers See attached spreadheet
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target Results Comments Methodology
N/A See attached spreadheet 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 N/A N/A N/A N/A

14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?

Yes

15. 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.

Much more statistics might be made available, but there is a general lack to do it in an automated way.

16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).

  • Upload Documents and Files
  • Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
N/A

Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships

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17. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension
A. Financial capacity and management This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
B. Conflict management or transformation This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values) This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
D. Partnership building This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
E. Strategic planning This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
F. Program design, implementation, and management This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer) This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers) This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
J. Governance This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
K. Communications, marketing, and social media This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it
M. On-wiki technical skills This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
N. Accessing and using data This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
O. Evaluating and learning from our work This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders
N/A
N/A

17a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Peer to peer learning with other community members in conferences/events, Other, Formal training provided by a Wikimedia Movement organizing group (i.e., Affiliates, Grantees, Regional or Thematic Hub, etc.)

17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Lack of staff time to participate in capacity building/training, Lack of volunteer time to participate in capacity building/training, Other

18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?

N/A

19. Partnerships over the funding period.

Over the fund period...
A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame) Strongly agree
B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups Agree
C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups Agree

19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Board members’ outreach, Partners proactive interest, Other

19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Lack of staff capacity to respond to partners interested in working with us, Lack of knowledge or capacities to reach out to strategic partners, Other

20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?

Active partners value the support they receive from Wikimedia Belgium. They value the integrated and interlinked way the platforms are working. We must continue to educate and inform existing and potential partners about the possibilities of those platforms.

We should continue to collaborate with other organisations like meemoo, FARO, heritage organisations and educational institutions.

We believe that the education sector needs more support. Teachers should have the possibility to collaboratively build educational content.

Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration

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21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?

We do feel part of the movement. It is very encouraging to learn that other countries and cultures share the same values.

22. How has your (for individual grantees) or your group/organization’s (for organizational grantees) sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Somewhat increased

23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

We have been very confused about the potential name change, and the subsequent drop of “Wikipedia” as the new potential organisation’s name.

Also the extremely long building time of the Strategy 2030 did not help the community.

We also believe that the UCoC takes too much attention, while for any social organisation this should be the standard way of working with each other as a respected person (as a volunteer, employee, board member, member, partner). We believe too much emphasis is put into complex rules and procedures, instead of building on respectful relationships.

Too much distraction and fragmentation of attention.

Too many objectives.

24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Somewhat increased

25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

We have lost a few “young” people that allocated their time and attention, for good reasons, to their studies, profession, family, children, partner, personal (material, financial) objectives, instead of to Wikimedia/Wikipedia.

We see that more 60+ people are joining as volunteers. This increase is caused general dynamics of human population. Those people have a rich experience. This is OK because those people have more time to spend, but it might partially lack diversity. At the other side, those people have lots of experience, be it that some might still have to learn some digital techniques.

26. Are there other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in your motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects? (for example, Black Lives Matter, Feminist movement, Climate Justice, or other activism spaces) If so, please describe it below.

Open Knowledge, OpenStreetmap, social platforms, communication, being part of the world.

Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration

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We are interested in better supporting peer learning and collaboration in the movement.

27. Have you shared these results with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Yes

27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?

Let’s Connect, GLAM EU meeting, WMNL, WMFR, WMCH, WikiFranca, Wikimedia Europe.

28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?

We do this regularly (at least once a month)

29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?

At any occasion. During international video conversations, monthly newsletter, in-person meetings, where applicable.

Let’s Connect, GLAM EU meeting, WMNL, WMFR, WMCH, WikiFranca, Wikimedia Europe

Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance

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

14901.75

31. Local currency type

EUR

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

  • Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
  • Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Belgium/Financial/2022

33. 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.

Apart from not using part of your budget, there have been no changes.

34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

25,098.25 € will be returned to the Foundation.

Board training. We would have liked to organise a board planning weekend. Due to unavailability of all board members to assemble at the same time, this could not take place, hence there were no expenses for this activity.

We could not spend our freelance budget, due to a lack of board member time to be able to work out senseful activities, and perform a follow-up for the freelancer.

We did not spend all of the volunteer budget, due to the low number of (international) conferences, and subsequent less requirements for travel and hotel accommodation.

34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

C. I am planning to send them back to the WMF

34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

N/A

35. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

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.

36. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

Yes

37. 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

38. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.