Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy/Implementation/Affiliate health criteria/Reports/2025/Inari Saami Wikimedians User Group
| Affiliate basic information | ||
|---|---|---|
| What is the affiliate name? | Inari Saami Wikimedians User Group | |
| Please list the languages supported by this affiliate | Inari Saami; Skolt Saami, Northern Saami, Finnish, English | |
| Please list countries where this affiliate operates | Worldwide, but mainly Finland at present | |
| Reporting timeline (e.g. January-December) | January-December | |
| Reporting year (e.g. 2024 or 2024-2025) | 2025 | |
| Primary contact (user name) | Yupik | |
| Secondary contact (user name) | Seipinne | |
| Goal delivery | ||
| What is the affiliate mission? | The Inari Saami Wikimedians User Group is a Wikimedia user group that is dedicated to promoting the Wikimedia projects in Inari Saami and to increasing the visibility of Inari Saami in digital linguistic landscapes. The group works to promote awareness of the Inari Saami language, and through it the other Saami languages, and also to advocate for their speakers to be able to use these languages across the Wikimedia projects. Through outreach, training, content creation, and partnerships with affiliates and educational institutions, the User Group strives to strengthen representation of the Inari Saami language online and provide support and assistance for other Saami languages and their communities in their Wikimedia journey should they request it. | |
| What are the affiliate goals? Link to the strategic plan, if there is one. | 1. Increase high-quality content on the Inari Saami language, history, culture, and heritage across Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and other platforms.
2. Maintain and grow the amount of contributors from the Inari Saami-speaking community via events and activities organized by the user group. 3. Promote the use and visibility of Inari Saami language online, including standardization efforts in Wikimedia projects. 4. Develop partnerships with cultural, linguistic, academic, and GLAM institutions to document and share Inari Saami language knowledge. Advocate for free knowledge in Inari Saami outside of the Wikimedia projects and the reuse of the Inari Saami Wikipedia. 5. Expand content in Inari Saami across the Wikimedia projects. | |
| Organizational development | ||
| How does the affiliate make decisions? How are decisions communicated? | Our group uses a consensus-based decision-making model. All founding members and active participants can participate equally in discussions, and we strive for open communication and inclusivity when making decisions. Meetings are held, either in person, virtually, or in a hybrid format, when necessary and decisions are based on the input of the group as a whole. In case of more urgent decisions, the core leadership team, comprised of experienced Wikimedia contributors and language experts, will act in accordance with the group’s overall vision and goals. Decisions are communicated mainly in the Village Pump (Kähviviste) on the Inari Saami Wikipedia. If a decision should need to be communicated as soon as possible, then e-mail, Telegram, or text messages can also be used. For events, newspaper articles are written in the online Inari Saami newspaper Anarâš aavis about them beforehand, so potential contributors can find them and join in. In addition, a newspaper article is often written afterwards about the event, who participated, what happened, etc. The events are also often posted on the Inari Saami community’s Facebook page Anarâškielâ orroomviste. | |
| What is the current state of the affiliate finances? Link to the latest financial report, if there is one. | The Inari Saami Wikimedians User Group did not receive any grants from the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia Finland and Anarâškielâ servi have, however, financed travel grants and event costs. Wikimedia Finland also received a 5000€ grant from the M. A. Castrén Association that was used for the Finno-Ugric Wikimedian meeting in Oulu and the December Inari Saami Wikipedia workshop in Helsinki. | |
Affiliate health and resilience
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| How many people participate in the decision-making process in the affiliate? | 4–5 | |
| Has there been any significant changes in the level of the affiliate membership body (e.g. increase/decrease of number of dues-paying members)? | Membership is rather stable. In 2025, one member left the user group and a new one joined. | |
| Are there any affiliate activities in the past year that were led by affiliate members? Please share the highlights. |
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| Leadership and inclusion | ||
Diverse, skilled, and accountable leadership
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| What kind of skills does the affiliate leadership possess? | The affiliate leadership has long-term experience with the Wikimedia projects, localisation, translation, working with indigenous languages and communities, and collaborating with diverse partners. | |
| Is there any kind of succession plan for the affiliate leadership? | We are currently a tiny user group, so we do not have any formal succession plan in place. | |
| Are there any trainings that affiliate leadership undergo before they assume their leadership position? | We do not have any formal training required, but our current leaders have come with the relevant leadership experience via other Wikimedia and non-Wikimedia projects. Both leaders have served as administrators on the Inari Saami Wikipedia since the beginning. One of the leaders has also served as our interface administrator. The other leader has been an administrator and bureaucrat on the Northern Saami Wikipedia for a long time. She has also sat on the board of Wikimedia Finland and has been a member of the Language Committee since 2019. She has also served on the steering committee for AvoinGLAM and the Language Diversity Hub. We have received technical mentorship from one of our members (Jon Harald Søby) when it has been needed. In turn, we use the same hands-on method to mentor others. | |
| Are there any requirements for affiliate leadership to disclose their conflict(s) of interests? | We have no formal conflict-of-interest disclosure policy in place since we all know each other, but leaders are expected to act transparently. In cases where COI exists, we adhere to the Foundation’s official policy (here in Finnish). | |
Diversity balance (especially gender)
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| What is the diversity level of the affiliate leadership and membership body? | We welcome everyone to join our affiliate leadership team and our membership body. So far, we have had people from school-age children to pensioners participating in our workshops. As for gender diversity, we do not require anyone to disclose their gender nor do we assume anyone’s gender, so we cannot provide specific statistics about that. | |
| How is the affiliate leadership encouraging gender diversity in the decision-making process(es) of the affiliate? | We encourage and warmly welcome all members of the Inari Saami community to become active in our user group. We also welcome anyone from outside of the community who shares our goals and objectives. The Inari Saami Wikipedia active group and administrators have always been diverse and no one gender has been over-represented. | |
Universal Code of Conduct compliance
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| How does the affiliate leadership ensure, enforce, and evaluate compliance with the Universal Code of Conduct obligations? | Members who do not abide by the Universal Code of Conduct are not welcome to join our user group or participate in our events. Previously, we did not have any mention of the UCoC on our user group page, but this has now been rectified. | |
| Engagement and Collaboration | ||
| Please share the publicly available records of regular meetings, activities, events, or conference in the past year where the affiliate has participated. | Annual Report 2025 (in Inari Saami) | |
| Community connection | ||
| How many affiliate members are active contributors to the Wikimedia projects? | 9 | |
| How many affiliate members are not active contributors to the Wikimedia projects? | 5 | |
| How many affiliate members are active organizers (of projects, events, conferences, initiatives, etc) within the Wikimedia movement? | 5 | |
| How many people have participated in affiliate projects, events, conferences, and/or initiatives in the past year? | At least 30 unique individuals have participated in our events in the past year. | |
| Partnerships and collaboration | ||
| Please list all activities/initiatives that the affiliate has organized or co-organized in past 12 months. | Please see our Annual Report 2025 (in Inari Saami) | |
| What would affiliate leadership list as the top 3 (three) capacities of the affiliate? (e.g. evaluation, community governance, programs and events, organizational governance and resource policies, conflict management, partnerships, fundraising, communication and media relations, contributor development, on-wiki technical skills, policy advocacy, etc) | Media relations | |
| On-wiki technical skills | ||
| Networking and partnerships, such as the one with the Inari Saami language and culture program at the University of Oulu which means that students can receive credit for writing Wikipedia articles. | ||
| What are the 3 (three) capacities that the affiliate would like to strengthen in the next 12 months? | Programs and events | |
| More partnerships with schools and their teachers, with the Säämi kielâkäldee, Saami festivals, and the Saami Parliament | ||
| Contributor development | ||
| What are the organizations, community projects, or groups that the affiliate had been working or seeking to work with to develop and support the 3 capacities? | We have been working in close cooperation with Wikimedia Finland, Anarâškielâ servi, Wikimedia Norway, the Giellagas Institute at the University of Oulu, the National Library of Finland, and AvoinGLAM. In addition, we actively participate in various language diversity groups. We will continue to work with these organizations and partners listed above. At the same time, we hope to establish and foster new partnerships in the upcoming years with more Saami organizations. | |