Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Growing the wiki spirit in Turkey, 2023

Regional Committee feedback and questions

Hello Zafer and Basak. Thanks for your proposal supporting the Wikimedia User Group Turkey’s annual activities projects over the next year. The CEE/Central Asia Regional Committee has initially reviewed the proposal, and wanted to offer some initial feedback and questions for your review:

• In its initial review, the committee wanted to highlight two important strengths in the proposal:
  • First, your work recruiting and preparing volunteers for organizational tasks, such as preparing materials for events, outreach, visual design, and some program management is a great example for how affiliates can support volunteers to contribute to the Wikimedia movement in different ways.
  • Second, the committee feels that your work in educational engagement and training is particularly robust. The work of preparing around 15 workshops for university courses and clubs that are expected to reach around 400 students is significant in terms of its potential impact in youth engagement as well as supporting productive relationships with these institutions.

• Regarding your work to address the gender gap, it’s great to see your plan to work together with universities as well as women’s groups to support some of this work. In terms of practices, the committee recommends that Wikimedia Turkey User Group tries to engage women across different age groups to support its content-related goals. In terms of your proposed project partners, do you know if these partners have members across age groups? If not, is it possible to seek out partners that represent younger as well as older women who may have an interest in participating in these activities?

• Also related to your gender gap work, the committee also wanted to ask about gender representation in your trainers. Ensuring women are in these positions of leadership is one factor that can support better participation from women in your community. How are women currently represented as trainers in your organization? What practices has your user group been doing to encourage women to learn about and step into training roles?

In terms of the schedule for our review process, please complete your review and responses to committee feedback by May 8th. 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.

On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 04:44, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Responses

Dear Regional Committee Members,

Thank you for reviewing our proposal, for the comments and the questions. Please find our answers below.

Women presenting about Wikidata at an Istanbul event

• It's a great recommendation to reach out to more varied age groups for gender-related content. We are expecting to reach younger participants (graduate and undergraduate level students) through partnerships with Gender Studies departments as well as sexual orientation and gender identity focused student clubs; whereas partnership with associations like “Women Filmmakers” is expected to bring older age groups.

In the past, our group partnered with an aging studies association in organizing an online training for elderly women about wiki projects. This was not very fruitful in terms of contribution to wiki projects as the digital capacities of the participants were very limited. However, considering that Senior Citizen Academies are becoming popular for third age people in Turkey, we might also contact such organizations and find more partners that might bring contributions from elderly citizens.

Girls are leading the Wikipedia Club activities and expecting more boys to join!

• Our trainers are mostly women. We have one man and one woman wikimedian who regularly give training at universities (User:Basak and User:Zafer); in addition, we have a women volunteer who organizes Art&Feminism related activities (User:Yagmurkozmik). We supported the founding of a Wikipedia User Club at Üsküdar University and most of the founders as well as their president (User:İsnaaa) were women. This group is giving training to their fellow students with women trainers. In addition to training about Wikipedia editing, we also have women contributors who can support the group for trainings about other wiki-projects, as the two women speakers (a librarian and a software developer) from the WMTR group did at Wikidata Trainings for Turkic Wikimedians held at Istanbul.

Our group does not specifically focus on women volunteers to encourage becoming trainers. However, our basic presentation for introduction to Wikipedia editing includes the discussion of the Gender Gap issue and; we observe that becoming aware of this issue from the very beginning is a good motivation for women to become first editors and then organizers and trainers.Basak (talk) 05:38, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 63,550 USD

@Zafer and Basak: Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 63,550 USD with a grant term starting 1 July 2023 and ending 30 June 2024.

The committee supports full funding for Wikimedia User Group Turkey for its project and activities over the next year. The committee noted important areas of strength in your organization’s work that supported their decision:

• Your breadth of work with students and universities will have good impact in building understanding and supporting students to both use and contribute to Wikimedia projects,
• Your organization has prepared to flexibility implement your programs in the case of limitations on meeting in person,
• WIkimedia User Group Turkey shows good community engagement practices and invitations for volunteers to set priorities and support their retention (e.g. active Telegram group, VikiSalı )
• The proposal demonstrates supportive partnerships for your programmatic work including Swedish Embassy, multiple universities, and the Istanbul Paint & Sculpture Museum
• The committee also appreciated learning more about gender representation amongst organizers and trainers, and that your programmatic work has the potential to reach different generations of women in your communities.

One important change in the General Support Fund is that a written midpoint report is no longer required for the General Support Fund. We will continue to have a midpoint conversation to meet and generally reflect on your progress, needs, and updates on your ongoing and future movement work.

In terms of next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
2. If you want to discuss the funding decision or have questions during the funding period, you are welcome to contact your regional program officer.

Thanks again for your hard work preparing the proposal and supporting our review process for the General Support Fund. We look forward to your work this year!

On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 05:45, 29 May 2023 (UTC)