Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Creating free knowledge through educational, GLAM & capacity building projects & collaborations while enhancing diversity & social representation in He-WP & AR-WP

Feedback from the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Regional Funds Committee on your proposal FY25

Hello and peace be upon you @Michal-WMIL: and Wikimedia Israel team,

Thank you for submitting your multi-annual application to further the Wikimedia communities and projects in Israel. The Northern and Western European Regional Committee has made an initial review and wishes to offer our first feedback and some questions for your review.

The committee felt that the submitted application was clearly structured, well thought-out, realistic, and providing a good balance between activities to support communities and activities to include diversity. It was also found that the plans were underlined by an exemplary and well-prepared new strategy for 2025–2027, which contains brave new elements such as increasing public awareness of critical consumption of knowledge or media literacy, which are highly important. Furthermore, the Committee was impressed to see the success in staff retention and programmatic maintenance despite the very difficult situation in the country, and reviewing your strategies to mitigate and adapt programming over the year as was explained in the mid-term presentation, wishes to congratulate WM Israel for navigating the situation so well.

The committee raised a few specific questions that we kindly ask you to elaborate on:

• Adaptation to the ongoing armed conflict and responding to challenges given that the conflict unfortunately seems to last longer and affect broader areas of the country. The Committee would like to understand how do you evaluate: which specific communities your projects can support, which ones will be most affected in implementation, which ones can you re-engage with or will need to stop activities with? Which activities do you expect that you will need to adjust over the course of the project proposal? How will you work on community and staff health and safety in the current challenging situation?
• Partnership analysis: we welcome the fact that WM Israel is able to maintain and build new partnerships with NGOs, institutions and organisations to implement your projects. We would like to know more about your approach: what drives the selection of new partners, how the selection process is carried out, i.e. why and how you choose new partners to work with. Have you e.g. analysed your current and prospective collaborations (e.g. which ones are strong and stable collaborations and which new ones are you targeting, and why), and how will you be able to balance maintaining existing collaborations with new ones?
• You mentioned an unprecedented wave of blocks in 2024, how do you plan to address this issue in 2025 and beyond?
• In your work plan it is stated that you plan to appoint a special coordinator for maximising the potential of volunteering. Can you please share some thoughts on the possible balance between online and offline activities in this work?
• What is Wikimedia Israel's longer-term strategy regarding support and sustainability of the GLAM Wiki Dashboard? Are you considering collaborating with Wikimedia Sverige as part of the Content Partnerships Hub on this?

In terms of the schedule for our review process, please complete your review and responses to committee feedback by 20 November 2024. After this time, the Regional Committee will begin a final review of the proposal to make a formal decision.

Thanks again for your work on the proposal and supporting our review and we are looking forward to hearing from you.

On behalf of the NWE Regional Committee — NickK (talk) 01:17, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I would like to thank the committee for their feedback and the opportunity to respond. Please see our responses to each of the questions separately.

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1. While the conflict presents challenges, we continue to adapt, maintaining our high level of activity and even finding opportunities to expand our impact.

Our school programs are held in communities across Israel, including areas near the south-western and northern borders, where our work has required adaptations due to the ongoing conflict. Some schools we collaborate with have been evacuated and their children were integrated into other institutions, temporarily pausing our projects with them. However, this has allowed us to onboard new schools from other regions, ensuring full program capacity.

In regions further from the border, where many schools increased distance learning due to safety concerns, our online educational initiatives have proven particularly valuable, offering structured and innovative learning alternatives under these challenging conditions.

The war has impacted academic schedules, leading to condensed semesters and delayed starts, which increased our workload as we balanced closing previous projects and launching new ones. Despite this, we adapted by reprioritizing tasks and leveraging our team and volunteers. Our Zoom-based courses continue to serve participants across Israel, with safety protocols in place during alarms, while in-person activities are held in venues with safe rooms and clear safety measures to ensure participants' security and confidence.

Regarding staff, during heightened periods of rocket fire in 2024, we instructed team members not to commute to the office for their safety, encouraging remote work. Team meetings continued on Zoom to maintain connection, foster a sense of belonging, and reinforce commitment to our mission.

While we hope to face fewer challenges in 2025, we remain prepared to act cautiously if necessary. Thanks to our team's professionalism, cohesion, and dedication to our shared vision, we are confident in our ability to continue overcoming challenges with minimal disruption to our annual work plans.

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2. Establishing sustainable partnerships is a central pillar of our success. We seek partners who meet defined strategic and mutual needs and align with Wikimedia Israel's values. Selection criteria include the organization's size, expected level of involvement, capacity to implement joint initiatives, and willingness to invest diverse resources such as manpower, marketing platforms, and budget allocation.

Furthermore, we prioritize partnerships with the potential for renewal and expansion into additional areas. For instance, our partnership with the Community Centers Organization (Hevra LeMatnasim) allows us to engage a wide audience in diverse communities, particularly senior citizens, who are a significant part of the Centers network. This collaboration helps promote digital literacy and the active participation of older adults in contributing to Wikimedia platforms. Similarly, our collaboration with Heritage Sites across Israel fosters innovative ways to document and preserve cultural history, leveraging their expertise to enrich Wikimedia projects. Additionally, our work with Autism Experts ensures that our courses and initiatives remain inclusive, enabling individuals with autism to contribute meaningfully to Wikimedia platforms.

Wikipedia, as a tool that connects diverse people, provides a solid foundation for fruitful collaborations—whether bridging societal groups or making knowledge accessible to marginalised communities. We view partnerships as an opportunity to advance our vision.

Despite growing demand for collaborations with us, we carefully choose our partners. The selection process is based on an in-depth analysis of our strategic goals and their alignment with potential partners' objectives. While we constantly seek impactful collaborations, we also balance sustaining long-term partnerships with welcoming new ones. For example, some partnerships are concluded when mutual goals are achieved or if priorities shift. This approach enables us to build meaningful, sustainable partnerships that contribute to achieving our vision, while ensuring our capacity to manage them effectively.

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3. The wave of blocks results from decisions by bureaucrats on Hebrew Wikipedia, and Wikimedia Israel is not authorized to intervene. However, we have decided on two steps to support the community:

New Editors: We are refining guidelines in our editing courses and developing a model for enhanced support for new editors.

Veteran Editors and Community: We aim to deepen our engagement with the community by better understanding its needs and providing tools to handle conflicts and practical training in nonviolent communication to reduce misunderstandings and friction and improve discourse culture.

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4. The person developing the community and volunteer field will work both online and through in-person meetings, like other team members. Training, from professional tools to AI-based editing and deep dives into Wikimedia Commons, will primarily occur on Zoom to maximize accessibility for all.

Simultaneously, we plan in-person events like tours, team-building activities, and one-on-one meetings. These face-to-face interactions will take place in various regions across Israel, including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ashdod, Ramat haSharon, Kfar Saba, among others. These interactions significantly enhance community familiarity, strengthen belonging, bridge conflicts, reduce stereotypes, and increase members' pride and connection.

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5. The GLAM Wiki Dashboard is a high-quality and particularly useful product for those involved in the GLAM field across the movement. For example, we observed growth in the number of institutions using the tool in 2024 compared to 2023 (from 102 institutions to 140 institutions), indicating the high demand for this tool.

However, unfortunately, the Wikimedia Foundation has chosen not to support its further development or allocate additional resources to it beyond the provision of storage space and maintenance funding that was approved in 2024. Financially, our capabilities are quite limited, and the ambition to scale the tool cannot be realized under these conditions.

It is worth noting that, in the absence of guaranteed funding, we have reached out to other foundations for funding, but no approval has been received yet. In addition, we are exploring alternative funding models, including the possibility of a membership-based approach, to ensure the sustainability of the tool. We also held a meeting with our fundraising consultant, where several ideas were discussed, and we are currently analyzing their feasibility.

Regarding collaborations with colleagues within the movement, we would be happy to explore cooperation with any relevant party, including Wikimedia Sverige. Michal-WMIL (talk) 17:44, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Round 1 2025 decision

Congratulations! The Northern and Western Europe Regional Funds Committee has recommended your proposal for funding!

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved the committee's recommendation to fund your proposal in full for ILS 4,500,000.00 for the period of 1st January 2025 - 31st December 2027.

Comments regarding this decision:
Wikimedia Israel demonstrated outstanding strength and commitment to deliver activities in support of the Wikimedia movement during 2024. We thank the entire team for their tolerance, empathy and compassion towards one another, and towards the implementing partners and volunteers in these difficult times. We hope that this extraordinary group of people will be able to continue the work, innovate and embrace new creative areas of work in the next three years without further disturbances and escalations in the region. The new strategy is well positioned to respond to upcoming challenges in the society and in the movement as a whole, and we are looking forward to learning about your important innovations with AI, in education, information literacy and civic engagement, and in embracing diversity, among others.

Thank you for your team’s and WM Israel’s large group of core organiser volunteers’ contributions to the Wikimedia projects. We wish all the best, and a chance for a peaceful implementation of your activities between 2025-2027!

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
2. If you have questions, you can contact the Regional Program Officer for the Northern and Western Europe Region.

Posted on behalf of the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Funding Committee, ABruszik-WMF (talk) 22:02, 2 December 2024 (UTC)