Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Working Groups/Community Health/Minutes/2018-08-13

27 August

Gap analysis

• East Asia and SouthEast Asia candidate idea submissions look solid while differently abled and Sub Saharan Africa still look like a challenge.
• For differently abled, the Working Group will need more time to think through how to fill this gap, aside from one possible Malayali community member (wheelchair bound person) and one blind person, possible members on the autism spectrum would be highly desirable but challenging to identify suitable candidates.
• There was a LGBTQAI application, which will be explored further but would also desire a member from the trans community.

Decide on proposed candidates and actions.

• Working Group going over the list to verify all the names prior to submitting to the core team, the list of names does not include names that were already rejected last time. The core team will do an outreach to the candidates together with the Working Group.
• The Working Group acknowledge that people might go through periods throughout the time of the working group’s existence where one has to step back temporarily to address real life needs.
• If the Working Group cannot reasonably propose names for members addressing gaps from within the movement, external candidates that demonstrate an understanding of the kind of platform and movement our communities rely on can also be identified.

Next Steps

The Working Group will Prepare for next meetings: frequency, communication channels, tasks, and expectations.

13 August

Diversification template, process, and gaps

The process of diversification has started, with an aim of having all the working groups fully represent the diversity of the movement or at least fill some gaps before starting to work together. The process of diversification has started, with an aim of having all the working groups fully represent the diversity of the movement or at least fill some gaps before starting to work together.

The Working Group was asked to work with the diversification template, and determine if the questions relate and apply to the Community Health working group. Some of the gaps identified included more representation from the following communities:

• African (specially Sub Saharan Africa) communities.
• South East Asia communities.
• East Asia beyond mainland China.
• Women of color or other people working on representation issues within the movement.
• Non-binary identities and LGBTQ+ community.
• Island people, broadly-construed
• People who are different abled in terms of capability, including:
  • autistic spectrum disorder community.
  • blind
  • physically-challenged, e.g. wheelchair-bound
• Outside expertise. What can we learn from other open communities? How community health is identified and handled?
• Academics researching our focus topic.
• Individual contributors

There was a discussion about the role of external people within the group, the time commitment to work in the group and whether having external people within the group is the best for bringing in their expertise or there are other possible ways to reach more people. The current diversification (in terms of geography and affiliate or role) of the Community Health Working Group can be found on meta:

Another suggestion is to design a Working Group coordinator for diversification and then appoint two co-coordinators for the rest of the work.

• Sandra volunteered to be the interim coordinator