Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Growing the wiki spirit in Turkey, 2025

Initial Feedback and Questions

Dear members of Dijital Bilgi Derneği,

Thank you very much for submitting this proposal! The strategy you've outlined, which focuses on education, engagement in schools, universities, and partnerships with cultural organizations and NGOs, is thorough and well thought out. It's exciting to hear that the partnership with some of the organizations such as the Bursa Uludağ University is already underway.

I had a couple of questions.

• In addition to the listed metrics, are there any plans to supplement your analysis of results? For example, will you be collecting success stories, lessons learned, or feedback from teachers who collaborate on educational initiatives?
• Also, I was curious about the process of selecting partner schools. Do you already have schools in mind, or will there be a more formal selection process? Any additional details on that would be helpful.

Thank you again for your hard work on this important initiative! Saygılarımla, Nataev ^talk 02:14, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey, and thanks for your proposal. In addition to Nataev's questions above, I had a few other requests for clarification:

• The budget contains a Travel Line item for regional events (Regional and international Wikimedia meetings & conferences), but it has no requested funding assigned to it. Does this mean that your organization has other funding available to support its travel needs, or will your organization not attend certain regional events in the next year?
• Outside of editing archaeological articles and and photographing at museums mentioned in the proposal, are there any other skills or areas for training that community members requested funding for, or otherwise expressed an interest in?
• Realtedly, given the focus on skill building, what do you think about the idea of adding something in your metrics related to the investments you will be making in skill-building opportunities? This could be (for example) the number of participants supported to participate in such workshops, or the number of organizers supported to facilitate training opportunities.

Please let me know if you have any questions or needs for clarity around these comments and requests. To support our review and decisionmaking, responses to proposal feedback from myself and Regional Committee members will be due on 2 May 2025. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:11, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Response

Thank you very much for the questions and comments @Nataev @I JethroBT (WMF). Please find our responses below:

Collecting Success Stories and Lessons Learned

Yes, our group is willing to collect success stories and lessons. We believe that the impact of our activities goes far beyond increasing the number of contributors and contributions. By collecting participants' and organizers' stories and reflections, we can better understand the broader effects of our work. As always, we will encourage participants to share their experiences in whatever way they feel most comfortable — whether by writing blog posts, sharing reports on Meta pages, or submitting articles to relevant newsletters such as the CEE Newsletter or the Education Newsletter. Another option we plan to offer is video interviews with event participants.

Additionally, one the ideas discussed for this year is to collect instructors’ and teachers’ experiences teaching Wikimedia projects in their courses, presenting them as one-page stories, and compiling a Case Studies document similar to this one: Case Studies. However, this idea has not been finalized yet.

Planning Activities at Schools and Universities

At the beginning of each school year, we first reconnect with our existing partners. We maintain a growing list of schools, instructors, and teachers we have previously worked with. We check in with them to learn if they will assign Wikipedia-based projects again and if they require support. Some schools expect annual visits where we present to students and teachers; these recurring activities are planned collaboratively. For example, at Kadir Has University, we have signed a protocol to support first-year students in designing and implementing social responsibility projects through Wikimedia contributions as part of the KHAS 110 Civic Responsibility Project Course. You can find some information about the course here:KHAS 110

Secondly, we work with new partners. Typically, more than half of our educational partners each year are first-time collaborators. We do not have a predetermined list of these new partners at the start of the year; connections are built as the year progresses.

We attend 1-2 academic events annually, where we deliver presentations or workshops. Through these events, we meet school administrators, librarians, and instructors (or are recommended to them) who are open to implementing Wikipedia editing assignments. Most of our collaborations are based in Istanbul, followed by Ankara. When seeking new partnerships, we prioritize educational institutions in smaller or disadvantaged areas rather than Istanbul and Ankara. Every year, we aim to establish at least one new educational partnership in a city where our group has not previously worked.

You can find a document about how we expand educational partnerships here:How to expand Education Program partnerships

Budget for Event Participation

Our group allocates some of the budget to support members in attending Wikimedia events, especially when self-funding would be difficult. The "Regional events" budget item primarily covers participation in regional events like the CEE Conference. This year, we expect more self-funded participation to regional events and we plan to givesupport participation to other events more; therefore do not allocate budget for this item.

Skill development

Some of our members have expressed interest in developing skills such as presentation and public speaking. While the number of members attending events is increasing, a few still need to build self-confidence and develop the skills necessary to actively participate in discussions and share their experiences beyond editing activities.

Metrics

Thank you very much for the suggestion. We might add following metrics:

• Number of participants supported to participate the skill-development workshop 5
• Number of events organized for skill development of members 2

Basak (talk) 14:00, 27 April 2025 (UTC)