Grants:Simple/Applications/Amical Wikimedia/2021/Final report

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Application or grant stage: grant in progress
Applicant or grantee: Amical Wikimedia
Amount requested: 67.800,00 € (75.684,92 $)
Amount granted: 67,800,00 EUR (77,154 USD)
Funding period: 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021
Application created: 20 October 2020
Recommended application date: 1 November 2020
Midpoint report due: 15 July 2021
Final report due: 30 January 2022

Application[edit]

Background[edit]

Link to these documents, for the upcoming funding period, only if you have them.

  1. Link to your organization's staffing plan, for the upcoming funding period. Staffing Plan 2021
  2. Link to your annual plan, for the upcoming funding period. Activities Plan 2021
  3. Link to your strategic plan, which includes the upcoming funding period. Strategic Plan 2019-24

Programs[edit]

Please describe any changes to your programs for the upcoming funding period, including the addition of new programs or any programs you are no longer doing. Include your rationale for any major changes to your programs here.

Please use the templates provided to add information about each program you are planning for the upcoming funding period.

The organisation

Amical Wikimedia, also known as Amical, is one of the two thematic organisations in the Wikimedia movement. Instead of a territorial scope, ours is cultural: we promote the Catalan language and culture. We are a community-based, strategy-led organisation since we believe in the communities as the main force of the whole movement. Our main focus is to help people from our cultural scope but also from other groups. For example, we run our own writing challenges, but also try our best to help the other communities with translations or by being a test wiki (Flow, Visual Editor, Content Translator...). We actively promote multilingualism as one of the key factors of our movement, that is why we have run several multilingual writing challenges (eg 288 Languages Challenge, Catalan Culture Challenge -CCC, Trace of Soul). Community, diversity and multilingualism will keep being some of the core values of our program this year while trying to knit our diverse communities together.

The 2021 proposal

Community

Progress towards our objectives
Green
Green
  Successes & Learnings:
  • Before being elected, the members of the new board worked hard contacting many of our members in to get people to vote. The elections brought a big change, as our association had an unstable situation with an interim board since mid 2020, and as a result people voted in larger numbers than in the previous elections. Even though there was a real danger of dissoluting the entity, the current Board made a step forward to preserve it, and we managed to assure the stability of our organisation and to keep all the achievements of the past, bringing the community into focus and recovering its harmony.
  • We worked closely with the youth group (Grup de Joves); even though most of them are not members of Amical yet, the communication between the two structures is excellent. After they created masks with a Wikipedia design, we took charge of sending them to any Wikipedians who asked for them and also made them available through our Wikipedia challenges. With the help of Marc Celeiro, a member of that group, we created a short video celebrating our Wikipedia's 20th anniversary.
  • We have established or consolidated contacts with diverse groups of Wikipedians. Besides the aforementioned Grup de Joves, substantial and strong contacts have been made with Gustau Navarro (Wikipedian and Delegate of the Generalitat) in order to foster contributions to the Wikipedia, and also introduce Amical Wikimedia to the Italian town of l'Alguer/Alghero (Sardinia), where we went as well to shore up ties and to host an edit-a-thon during an International Catalan Folk and Popular Culture Gathering (Aplec Internacional de cultura popular i tradicional catalana). After renewed communication (via videocall and messages), a few members of Amical from Catalonia participated in a meeting in València in order to strengthen our bonds with the Valencian Wikipedians.
  • Amical initiated an institutional campaign with the Government of Andorra in order to normalise the use of the Viquipèdia in the Principality -especially amongst the youngest-, cradle of the Catalan version of Wikipedia and where its first article was written on 16th March 2001. Said initiative, designed by the Grup de Joves, is being taken to educational and cultural Andorran centres to strengthen the institutional bond and reach a greater range of the project as a teaching tool, greater social participation, and at the same time reversing some worrying facts -both the low percentage of visits Viquipèdia has in Andorra and the lack of Andorran volunteers. Apart from this campaign, we started an unprecedented editing challenge so that it continues as a world's leading language in quality.
  • We have also maintained contacts with several institutions of the Catalan-speaking territories -Generalitat de Catalunya, Govern d’Andorra, Generalitat Valenciana, Govern de les Illes Balears, Govern d’Aragó, Government Delegation of the Generalitat de Catalunya in Italy, and the House of the Generalitat de Catalunya in Perpinyà- to get them involved in the VIII Viquimarató de la Llengua Catalana, the 8th edit-a-thon of the Catalan Language that took place from 5th to 12nd November in order to extend and increase the content in Viquipèdia related to the music in Catalan. It resulted in 106 editors creating 32 new articles, improving 57 and translating 33.
  • Despite all the changes experienced as a new board throughout these months and the difficulties we may have encountered in this delicate time of change, thus performing at a lower intensity in general, we have been successful in organising our 20th anniversary Viquitrobada (Wikimeet). Such a special date demanded a significant location and so Elna was chosen to host the event on 20th and 21st November: a town in the historical Catalan comarca of Rosselló, of which it was the first capital. This choice aligned with our objective of organising activities in each of the Catalan-speaking territories and also met the demand of reaching the Catalan-speaking community of the area (Catalunya Nord) for the first time. The Viquitrobada was aided also by the local French-speaking community and had a surprising attendance of 34 people who gathered in a small town despite it being rather far away from the usual meeting places and the fact of being still in the middle of a global pandemic. Altough the 20th anniversary Viquitrobada focused on imagining how the Catalan Wikipedia will be the next 20 years addressing recurrent topics such as educational projects, internal regulations and gender gap, the attendants worked on several technical issues and sister projects as well. The Wikimeet also served to calm some latent tensions that still existed, which led to a renewed atmosphere of trust.
  • Amical Wikimedia held an extraordinary general assembly in July, in which it was decided to hire one person as support staff with a technichal or administrative profile to thelp the Board being in charge of the administrative and managing tasks, with no representation functions, so that the Board members can be fully devoted to coordinating projects. This person would have their tasks description detailed in order to prevent any possible misunderstandings, and would eventually contribute to the stability of the organisation.
  • We had to switch to another provider for Amical's websites, since Softcatalà could not provide its service anymore. The process was somewhat shaky and took a lot of time, but the people in charge (our tech Board member Mikicat with Joan Creus' great help) finally managed to have it working well and it seems to be functioning properly right now.
  • A Signal group of Amical's members was created in order to promote communication and exchange, not just between the Board and the members, but between each and everyone of us. This has helped us improve our tone of communication with the members, thanks to the transparency and calm we have offered.
  • During the second half of the funding period, two sessions in Wikimania were hosted by Amical members: one describing Amical's role in knitting diverse Catalan-speaking geographical areas and communities together and the challenge it implies; and another one explaining the usefulness of magic games involving Open Knowledge tools in general in order to encourage editors and to keep them active and community-involved. On the other side, however, another project regarding how to attract and retain female and young editors was not accepted.


Green
Green
  On our way:
  • As it had been required by the Foundation previously, we have been working on developing a Code of Conduct. We, thus, contacted an association, Fil a l'agulla, which specialises in improving relationships and communication within groups or organisations. Many sessions have been conducted so far in order to better understand the context of last year's conflicts and how to solve such issues effectively and efficiently. The elaboration of said code is on hold, due to the fact that Wikimedia Foundation's Code of Conduct is expected to be prepared by 2022 and ours might not be needed. Also, the meetings maintained have proven the need to not only having a clear vision of the entity and its mission, but also establishing and clarifying Amical's internal operations. Before the Board replacement, a lot of work had been done following the non-written tradition, and this presented a discrepancy with our statutes. However, this time spent with Fil a l'agulla was very positive and helped us realise that such conflicts and issues were of a lesser relevance than we had perceived and were isolated cases, and from that moment on the environment has been calm.
  • We are in regular contact with several Wikipedians, Amical members, and institutions of Andorra and also in Northern Catalonia, where the 14th Viquitrobada (Wikimeet) was held.


Green
Green
  Mistakes & Missteps:
  • While it should not precisely be defined as mistakes nor missteps, due to the inexperience of the new board, the pandemic, and many processes affecting the banks, our board has lost lots of time dealing with administrative issues instead of focusing more on the community.
  • We haven't yet succeeded in creating a strong activity and exchange within the Signal group. Getting the community interested is still quite difficult, unfortunately, and we are still working on the fluency of said communications between the Board and the members.


Highlighted activities
  • Some members of the Board, meeting and working with our Valencian Amical members.
    Some members of the Board, meeting and working with our Valencian Amical members.
  • Quelet, one of our members, listening to the organisers of the Viquimarató Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas.
    Quelet, one of our members, listening to the organisers of the Viquimarató Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas.
  • The training webinars stand out for the diversity of the speakers and for their public acceptance.
    The training webinars stand out for the diversity of the speakers and for their public acceptance.
  • Creation of the youth group and meet-ups.
    Creation of the youth group and meet-ups.
  • Group photo of the attendees of the 20th anniversary Wikimeet in Elna.
    Group photo of the attendees of the 20th anniversary Wikimeet in Elna.


Community program against its targeted metrics
Objective Description Midpoint status Final status
Consolidate 12 very active members (leading more than 5 activities per year). Five activities might sound unrealistic given the current circumstances. However, we have had enough members who have led more than 5 activities during the period.
40%
60%
Get 3 new members or existing ones under 30 years old to increase their activity in Amical Wikimedia and ensure a generational handover. Few people joined during the first semester of this year because of the internal turmoil Amical Wikimedia had gone through and the volunteer crisis.
60%
60%
Get at least 3 women members to join Amical Wikimedia. One new woman member, but another one left.
0%
0%
Bring together and provide basics insights to our members in the Balearic Islands and Andorra meeting face to face at least once; in order to create the nucleus of 2 active member hubs. Due to the pandemic, most of the events were cancelled or postponed as online training activities, thus nearly no face-to-face meetings took place.
50%
50%
Hold personal or phone meetings and conversations with at least >50% of Amical Wikimedia's cohort. There has been an interaction between partners that covers more than 50% of the community, especially in the Wikimeet.
60%
100%
Facilitate at least 2 events aimed at the youngest segment of the community (under 25s). We held an online meeting with the youth group in April and a second one in May. Also, the ViquiPAU project was aimed at helping young people prepare for university admission exams.
100%
100%
One specific workshop for newcomers of Amical Wikimedia (our team, our ethics, our discourse, our how-to). We held it in the framework of the series of webinars. More debates about the specifics of our ethics are prepared. However, we send a welcome dossier to new members.
60%
60%

Education

Progress towards our objectives
Green
Green
  Successes & Learnings:
  • Round Table (7th June) about the Viquipèdia and Free Knowledge at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), with Vicenç Alluè, Àlex Hinojo and Anna Costa, together with Xavier Dengra.
  • This year we have also held a ViquiPAU contest, in order to foster the improvement of articles that students often need to consult when preparing for university access exams.
  • After the summer, the general situation regarding the pandemic and its preventive measures was more relaxed, and thus we were able to regain some normality and to organise various workshops: two about Wikidata in July, one about Global Communication Management in November with the Universitat Ramon Llull, a training for librarians in November and December, two other wikiprojects with the UAB (Food Microbiology in September and Food Biotechnology in October), and the IFMuC Wikiproject, coordinated by the promoters of the Inventari dels Fons Musicals de Catalunya (IFMuC) project (Catalonia's Musical Collection Inventory), from the Art and Musicology Department of the UAB, with the support of Amical Wikimedia. The result was 80 people and 1,400 articles involved.


Green
Green
  On our way:
  • Support for the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), regarding how to place technology at the service of the Wikipedia. After the UPC project was frozen by the end of 2018 when Amical Wikimedia's director of projects left his position, we have retaken it and been working in our relationship with the university to support it. We have redifined our lines of work to update them taking into account the digital progress, the objectives of the University and the current needs of the Wikipedian community, incorporating learnings from previous collaborations with other universities. The project represents an improvement in the community, academic cohesion and a support for Wikipedian volunteers, reusing contents (texts, images, databases, references) and dumping them into Wikipedia and its sister projects, and creating new materials with free licence. A technical group should be trained, constituted by volunteers, students, professors and research staff. We can also recover the public initiative of #Bibliowikis, in which university librarians can collaborate from their role as managers of knowledge, and where a public and more transversal discourse in favor of free knowledge can be made.


Green
Green
  Mistakes & Missteps:
  • Due to onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, our usual activities have decreased, both in terms of contacts and projects that were normally held every year. We were not able to go on with our usual eduwiki initiatives, which we have been developing since 2007 with universities and high schools, although in the second half of the year we started reversing the situation.
  • A UAB teaching innovation course regarding free knowledge addressed to the university's public administration and teaching staff was cancelled due to a lack of enrolment in said course. Its information was only communicated via internal messaging; so neither was it accessible on their website nor were we allowed to participate in its dissemination. As we are committed to this agreement and its cross-cutting objectives, we would like to try to improve the dissemination and information processes so that this situation is not repeated in the future.


Highlighted activities


Education program against its targeted metrics
Objective Description Midpoint status Final status
At least 3 educational collaborations (wikiprojects or other) with secondary schools (teenager-oriented). Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, there were no activities with secondary schools.
0%
0%
Mantain 75% of the wikiprojects started in 2020 as stabilisation and long-term preparedness for teachers. Done.
60%
60%
At least one new official agreement with an educational institution. Due the recent Board change and its adaptation period, there were no official agreements with educational institutions.
0%
0%
At least 3 university educational collaborations outside the area of Barcelona (preferably outside Catalonia). Although we collaborated with universities this year on various occasions, it was not for educational purposes.
0%
25%

GLAM & Sister projects

Progress towards our objectives
Green
Green
  Successes & Learnings:
  • During the celebration of Sant Jordi (Saint George's Day), we held a contest seeking to promote participation in Viquitexts, the Catalan version of Wikisource, where participants had the chance to transcribe and validate original Catalan classical literature. Not only it was another successful online event, but it also had news coverage.
  • As is traditional, the Wiktionary held the Concurs del punt volat, the Interpunct Contest on Viccionari, to make entries with words containing the "l·l".
  • In association with many Catalan organisations and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Amical participated in the Donants de veu (Voice Volunteers) campaign, a project aimed to build a network of 100 people giving their voices to audiobooks and make them available on Wikimedia Commons.
  • We started the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (TNC) Wikiproject, an initiative of this theatre, in order to provide all the contents related to theatrical world with better quality and with the commitment to realease cultural materials to be accessible to citizens.
  • As part of our 2021 GLAM objectives of organising and promoting two projects involving archives from the Catalan-speaking area, the Enric Valor Wikiproject took shape thanks to the collaboration of our members in València and the Valencian Museum of Ethnology, in order to pay tribute to the Valencian linguist by helping spread his work universally through Wikipedia and all his sister projects. The other one was the resumption of the Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas Wikiproject, which had already started in 2020.


Green
Green
  On our way:
  • Since Amical's board changed at the beginning of the year, added to the previous instability caused by the resignation of many members of the previous boards in 2019 and 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fact that it takes a while to get acquainted with every aspect of the organisation, Amical will need extra time in order to achieve more satisfying and, thus, better levels of activity. However, in the second part of the year we have regained some confidence and coordinated various Wikiprojects with a number of institutions.
  • A new project is being organised by Catgirl and Mikicat in order to create articles about women after whom streets, squares, places, buildings, facilities and so on are named, using free knowledge tools. This project is aimed at encouraging young people and women and works across Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.


Green
Green
  Mistakes & Missteps:
  • Unfortunately, the Wiki Takes Castalla photo contest, as part of the Enric Valor Wikiproject, had to be cancelled due to the rain.


Highlighted activities


GLAM & Culture program against its targeted metrics
Objective Description Midpoint status Final status
Detect and quantify stable or transitional community growth in the Catalan sister projects (currently active users in Wikisource: 3-4; Wikiquote: 1; Wiktionary: 2-3; Wikibooks: 0; Wikinews: 0-1). No survey has been done. However, the figures may remain stable or have slightly changed.
0%
30%
At least three projects focused on three sister projects, and three activities or events to promote these projects. This year, as is traditional, the Wiktionary held the "Punt volat" or Interpunct Contest. Also, the Sant Jordi wikiproject was mainly based on Wikisource. At the same time, we started Donants de veu, a project to create audiobooks of the aforementioned works and make them available on Wikimedia Commons. Besides, both the Enric Valor and the Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas wikiprojects, as well as the Adifolk Festival's edit-a-thon, held photographic activities aimed at improving its contents on Commons.
100%
100%
Updated status of #bibliowikis document. It has not been done, as different priorities emerged.
0%
0%
Updated document with renewed proposals for libraries and/or museums. It has not been done, as different priorities emerged.
0%
0%
At least 4 self-organised GLAMwiki projects or events. First, we have to highlight the wikiproject Els 10.000 to achieve the best quality in the 10.000 essential articles on Wikipedia. We also carried out 2 feminist projects: Dones independents and Viquidones de la Casa Masó.
75%
100%
At least 2 projects involving archives from the Catalan-speaking area. The Enric Valor wikiproject with the ETNO (Valencian Museum of Ethnology) and the Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas wikiproject with the library named after her, both had the contribution of the archives to improve the content related to those Valencian figures.
0%
100%
At least 2 projects involving content (i.e. picture) donation. During the first half of the year, the Muixeranga wikiproject was held, its second part consisting of a photo contest to foster people's contributing pictures. During the second half of the year, the TNC wikiproject released content from the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya.
50%
100%
Establish alliances with at least 2 institutions that are based outside Catalan-speaking territories and have a scope which is aligned with Amical's mission or projects. Not done yet.
0%
50%

Communication & Outreach

Progress towards our objectives
Green
Green
  Successes & Learnings:
  • At the beginning of the year, Davidpar took control of Amical's Twitter account and given it a much better pace and visibility, more audience and more daily content. He is also in charge of the weekly account of all the activities Amical and its members are organising, and all the events related to the Wikipedia/Wikimedia sphere.
  • We continue working successfully with Jitsi, not only for our internal communications, but also for livestreams in wikiprojects.
  • Contacts were made with several institutions in l'Alguer/Alghero (Sardinia, Italy) in order to promote the Viquipèdia during the Adifolk Festival that took place there from September 24th to the 26th; with a number of institutions of the seven Catalan-speaking territories to get them involved in the 8th edit-a-thon of the Catalan language; and with some in Elna, which helped us organise our 20th anniversary Wikimeet.
  • We have been present in several media coverages, some of them regarding our projects (like Wikipedia's 20th anniversary or Donants de veu) and some others of a wider scope, such as Viquipèdia's generational change, women categories on Viquipèdia, or the model of altruism an collaborative work that Wikipedia represents in contrast to the privatisation of information and culture in the business world.


Green
Green
  On our way:
  • Although Amical continued both the notable achievements of its social media networks and having a positive and steady impact on the Catalan-speaking community and within the Catalan-speaking territories, our communications through these channels are not as frequent on Facebook and Instagram as they are on Twitter, and during the second half of the year Amical's Instagram account has remained inactive. Moreover, we have discontinued our posting on Mastodon as well. Those accounts are all run by volunteers. Besides, we struggle to publish blogposts regularly and to stimulate volunteers and members from our community to do so more often. More planning is needed on this side as well.
  • With Davidpar's help, we also participated in a specific initiative against TERREG, together with Wikimedia France and Wikimedia Deutschland, and renewed contacts with the lobby our organisations have in Brussels. Communication with Naphsica Papanicolaou, the advocacy officer of Wikimedia France, was intense in order to have Amical Wikimedia participate in that initiative. We followed the information were getting from Brussels and our partners so as to participate in the next actions and events. Nevertheless, after some time we decided not to continue with that line of work, as there were other entities that had already done a lot of work in that area, and we realised that it would be more effective if we focused on the many more important and closer issues that affected Amical at that time.
  • After various meetings with the Communitation Committee to work on the development of a formal Communication plan for the period 2020-2024, which started being drafted during 2019, said plan has not been finished yet. The Committee has continued working through Signal shaping the main lines of communication, both internally and externally.


Green
Green
  Mistakes & Missteps:
  • Even though we have improved our internal official communication with our members through our channels, we need to encourage more people to join our communication programme.


Highlighted activities
  • Our Twitter accounts have been receiving good feedback and have increased their number of followers.
    Our Twitter accounts have been receiving good feedback and have increased their number of followers.
  • Amical Wikimedia's letter to the Catalan Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) requesting their support in the initiative against TERREG.
    Amical Wikimedia's letter to the Catalan Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) requesting their support in the initiative against TERREG.


Communication & Outreach program against its targeted metrics
Objective Description Midpoint status Final status
Publish at least 12 relevant blog posts in one year. This includes blog posts about Wikimedia events or activities where community members or staff participated. Almost accomplished. A decrease in activity due to the Board changes, but a regular pace has been reached lately.
80%
90%
Increase our impact in Twitter up to 25K followers in @Viquipedia as one of the most relevant "influencer" accounts in Catalan. Last year we did not monitor our social networks to analyse the impact they had. However, there was a general growth of followers in all the accounts of Amical and its sister projects (managed all by volunteers), with some of them having a greater increase than others.
100%
> 100%
Content and style redesign of Amical Wikimedia website. The forced change of Amical Wikimedia website has initiated some improvement of its design.
30%
75%
Establishment and publication of a regular newsletter. This was done after the Board finally reached a steadier pace, and it is working well and regularly now.
85%
> 100%
Evaluate feasibility and establish a university student internship for some communication tasks. Thus far, the community has not clearly agreed to this, so eventually it was cancelled.
0%
0%
Attendance and presentation of our projects in 5 national or international events about Wikimedia, technology, digital advocacy, or free knowledge during the course of the year. Covid made it difficult to attend any event. However, we have tried to participate in most of the important Wikimedia events since April-May and even had a good level of involvement in the Free Knowledge Advocacy (Brussels).
40%
85%

Staff and contractors[edit]

Please describe any changes to your staffing plan for the upcoming funding period. These should include increases in staff or contractor hours, new staff positions, or staff positions you are removing. Include your rationale for any staffing changes here.

We had a project coordinator, Esther Solé i Martí (user ESM), for Amical Wikimedia until mid 2020. As stated previously, Amical dismissed her, an action that created internal issues and led to Amical's instability. Our current board (elected in January) is considering hiring a person soon.

For each new staff or contractor position, please use the template provided to add information about each new staff or contractor you are planning for the upcoming funding period (or to describe significant increases in hours or changes in job descriptions for existing staff). You are not required to provide this information for existing staff where no changes are required.

The members voted in July in favour of hiring a person, though so far, there is no staff member yet.

Budget and resource plan[edit]

Link to a detailed budget for the upcoming funding period. This budget should include all of your organizations expenses. Please specify which expenses will be covered from your APG.

Expenses segregated by program for 2021
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