Overview

Executive Summary

The first half of 2021 saw a major transition from severe COVID-19 restrictions, most notably lockdowns and social distancing, to a cautious back-to-normal approach (as of mid-April), thanks to Israel’s successful vaccination campaign. This transition was naturally reflected also in the modus operandi of our chapter, enabling us to combine online and in-person modes of action, as required by our audiences and the circumstances, and according to our possibilities.

Selected Achievements and developments:

In line with our strategic goal to increase the diversity of people and contents in Wikimedia projects, we have made a quantum leap toward expanding women’s presence in he-wp, in both the content and recruiting new editors. More specifically, we initiated a new innovative version of our senior-citizens online editing course, targeted at women only, developed toward the end of 2020 and started during 2021 (in addition to our regular long-standing gender-mixed course). This new version, aimed at creating a safe space for women, enabled us to include messages relevant specifically to women and support women’s engagement in Wikipedia. It proved a great success in various aspects. A second edition of this model is currently taking place. (Read more)

Measures to narrow the center-versus-periphery gap have also become possible for the first time thanks to the implementation of the online editing course, which allows unlimited geographical accessibility. In this year’s courses, participants from the northern and southern peripheries of the country took part for the first time, and some participated even from abroad. The upcoming launch of the online editing course, through the “Campus IL” platform - the national digital learning venture, will increase our outreach and accessibility to new audiences, particularly in peripheral locations, and even further.

The dialogue we had initiated last year with senior echelons of the Ministry of Education, regarding our "Students Write Wikipedia in Arabic" educational program, bore fruit this year and brought about a unique teachers’ training program in Arabic, which was held last month (June 2021), and attended by 20 teachers of the Arabic-speaking education system from all across the country. The value of our "Students Write Wikipedia in Arabic" project has been recognized by the MOE as a way for enhancing students’ skills and capacities, in the framework of the OECD’s Future of Education and Skills 2030. The related training offers the Arabic-speaking teachers an opportunity to become change agents who will be able to implement our know-how and experience in a large number of schools, supported by the chapter’s professional team. This is another step toward the goal we set at the beginning of the year, to strategically scale up our work with the Arab-speaking education system. (See "Teachers Course in collaboration with Ministry of Education" under Arabic-speaking Educational System)

Metrics and Results

Program	Participants	Newly registered	Content Pages	Index of choice	Index of choice
Wiki-Women (annual target)	55	30	2 new articles/significant expansions, 28 Wiki-gnomings	Running 2-3 rounds of the Wikipedia editing course for women	Establishing a support mechanism for the women's course graduates
H1	66 (120% performance)	50 (167% performance)	113 new articles/significant expansions, 174 Wiki-gnomings (WP+Wikidata) 24 images	2 rounds opened (1 completed, 1 ongoing)	Partially completed (details below)
Senior Citizens (annual target)	110	70	415 new articles/significant expansions, 580 Wiki-gnomings	Integration of course graduates in the he-wp community and in WMIL’s community of volunteers	Following the online senior citizens' editing course: lesson learning and implementation of 4 most desired changes.
H1	90 (82% performance)	20 (29% performance)	1293 new articles/significant expansions, 2488 Wiki-gnomings (WP+Wikidata) 231 images	Completed: Course graduates were invited to 13 community and chapter events and 2 content-creation initiatives. 50 of them took part. 3 course graduates were recruited as new volunteers, 5 were fostered as veteran volunteers.	Completed (details below, under "Senior Citizens - Lesson Learned").
Hebrew-speaking Educational System (annual target)	950	380	380	30 classes	26 teachers (8 new)
H1	655	300	300 articles (234 Wikipedia, 66 Wiktionary)	25 classes	25 teachers (9 new)
Arabic Education Program (annual target)	350	200	200	N/A	15 teachers, 5 returning
H1	145	111	67 articles (38 new article, 29 improved)	8 groups	6 returning teachers, 10 new connections were created
Collaborations for Releasing Contents(annual target)	N/A	N/A	-	No index of choice was originally set, due to early stage development of the tool at the time
H1			5,670 images	No. of new Wikimedia commons Categories of GLAM Institutes uploaded to the GLAM Wiki Dashboard : 2 new Israeli GLAM institutes (total 4) + 17new International GLAM Institutes (Total 19 during H1)
Academic Institutes (annual target)	450	225	450 (300 new, 150 expansions)	15 courses	Marketing the project in at least 3 academic institutes
H1	394	227	248 (185 new, 63 expansions)	20	0
Wikidata (annual target)	100	80	4500	5 “data and information” classes	teachers course
H1	38	38	2383	N/A	N/A
Capacity Building and Skill Development (annual target)	23 unique	-	-	-	-
H1	22 unique (96% performance)	-	-	-	-
Total annual target for all programs	2,038	985	5,947 new articles / significant expansions 608 Wiki-gnomings	N/A	N/A
Total H1 for all programs	1,410	746	4,404 new articles / significant expansions 2,662 Wiki-gnomings 5,925 images	-	-

Social Diversity & Representation

Wiki-Women

Metric	Yearly goal)	Progress (H1)	Projected (end of year)	Comments
Participants	55	66 (120% performance)	75	-
Newly registered	30	50 (167% performance)	55	-
Content pages	22 new articles/ significant expansions 38 Wiki-gnomings	113 new articles/ significant expansions (514% performance) 174 Wiki-gnomings (WP + Wikidata) (458% performance) 24 Commons Uploads	135 new articles/ significant expansions 190 Wiki-gnomings (WP + Wikidata)	-
Index of choice (1)	Running 2-3 rounds of the Wikipedia editing course for women	2 rounds opened (1 completed, 1 ongoing)	2 rounds finished	-
Index of choice (2)	Organizing 2-3 editing events for creating content about women, in cooperation with different organizations, and with with the participation of 20 people.	1 event was held in cooperation with 1 organization and with 10 participants	2 events in cooperation with 2 organizations and with with 20 participants	-

The Program’s Rationale

Narrowing gender gaps on he-wp and other Wikimedia projects:

Narrowing the demographic gap, i.e. recruiting more female editors and encouraging the persistence of existing female editors
Narrowing the content gap, i.e. encouraging the addition of quality content related to women, feminism and gender

The Program’s Status

Progress is good.

Details: During this half, a significant progress has been made toward the development of an effective modus operandi. Certain approaches that proved less successful have been abandoned or minimized, and the main focus was brought on the women’s course that proved particularly prolific. There are still, nonetheless, some challenges, as detailed below.

What’s Been Done, Achievements & Highlights

Women’s editing course:
- Our editing course was launched for the first time in a women-only format. We completed one women-only round and started a new one (details in the frame below).
- For the purpose of recruiting participants to both of these rounds, we made special adaptations in both the content and the design of our marketing materials. We also developed specially adapted marketing channels.
- Following the end of the first round, we maintained and fostered our relations with its graduates in various ways, including sending messages and calls for action, invitations to events and personal guidance.
On the International Women’s Day, we launched a campaign to celebrate women’s engagement in creating free contents (more details under “Marketing”).
Our cooperation with the Artport center of arts continued and included an edit marathon about women in art.
Three initiatives focused on writing about women, feminism and gender, and another three aimed at female youths, were included in our educational and academy programs.
Graduates of former rounds of the senior-citizens course were encouraged to write articles on the topics included in the “Women in Red” list. Many of them took the challenge.
The chapter’s team efficiently handled issues that revolved around the acceptance of certain articles about women and gender by the community of he-wp editors and around serious biases that were found in some of them.

Highlight - The first women-only editing course During the first half of 2021, we completed the first round of our women-only editing course and started a second round. This format has proved a major success. Registration rates for both rounds were higher than usual (in fact, the number of registrants for the second round was the highest we have ever had). Both women-only rounds attracted high-profile highly educated candidates. Among them were women who held senior positions at the academy and the education system, as well as the civil service, the economy, and also in arts and architecture. Many of the participants developed careers in field specifically related to women and gender, e.g. gender studies, campaigns against sexual violence, and promotion of women’s rights. They have therefore been good candidates for the project of narrowing the gender gap in Wikipedia also in their ability to contribute content about women-related subjects. This exceptionally good starting point was reflected in the participants’ high level of motivation in both rounds of the course. They were also highly motivated to continue editing after the course had ended. In their feedback following the course, nearly 93% of the first round’s participants stated that they were “likely” or “very likely” to continue editing. In practice, 73% of them continued to edit during the three months following the end of the course; most of them even beyond that. 33% edit Wikipedia on a regular basis, sometimes even daily. The participants’ successful engagement in Wikipedia is also evident in the diversity of their contributions. Their edits spread out on three Wikimedia projects and six different namespaces. Looking at the products of the first round’s participants shows that they have become exceptionally prolific. Since January 2021 until now, 20 of the first round’s participants have made more than 200 thousand edits, leading to the creation or improvement of nearly 300 pages in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects (particularly WP articles, but also Wikidata items and files on Wikimedia Commons). These products are focused on topics related to women, gender and feminism - about a quarter of all WP articles created or improved by the first round’s participants deal with these topics, among them, biographies of women, feminist organizations, related academic and professional fields, artistic work by women, women’s health, biological functions of a woman’s body, LGBTQ rights, and gender aspects of religion and tradition. In light of this success, we intend to have more rounds of this women-only course, which is part of our general editing-course project, and to keep fostering its participants in order to retain them as prolific female editors of he-wp.

Challenges

An important part of the concept to have women-only editing courses is working with the graduates. We sought to foster the graduates as individual editors and as a community that can provide a sense of support and belonging, and enable the graduates to organize for joint efforts. In practice, the limited amount of working hours available to the chapter’s team resulted in less support and guidance than we had wished to provide.
In the 2021 work plan, we included the goal of establishing a volunteers’ forum to lead the Wiki-Women project. By achieving this goal we wished to ensure a sound basis of support for this project, in the conceptual and planning level as well as the practical leadership level. We found out, however, that most of the volunteers recruited for this forum were not available enough for this engagement in leading the practical work, and that there was a serious difficulty in locating suitable candidates. We therefore froze this path of action.

Lessons learned

Traditionally, we used to include in the Wiki-Women project non-recurring edit-a-thon events that were open to the public. During this half, we realized that while these events served well the goal of raising awareness of the Wiki-Women project and chapter’s activity, they were not successful in terms of producing mass of content and recruiting persistent editors. As a result, we decided to focus on the model of women-only editing course. We will continue to hold public non-recurring events, but in smaller numbers and in a format that will be aimed at raising awareness.

What's next

We will continue to foster female graduates of our courses, as much as our resources allow.
We will hold one non-recurring event for raising the awareness of Wiki-Women.
We will increase the visibility of Wiki-Women on he-wp by reopening the project page about it and informing the editors’ community about it.

Gallery: Some of the contemporary Israeli women whose WP articles were created or edited by our first Wiki-Women course participants

Rachel Mamlok Naaman, a scientist and science teaching expert
Yael Balaban, a drawing and sculpture artist
Karen Avraham, a genomics researcher

Karen Avraham, a genomics researcher
Miri Barak, a researcher of education and technology
Bella Kaufman, an oncologist and cancer researcher
Rotem Abuhav, an actress and comedian
Zehava Ben, a singer
Linoy Ashram, a rhythmic gymnast
Anastasya Gorbenko, a swimmer
Eden Alene, a singer
Suzanne Landau, an art museum curator
Avishag Semberg, a taekwondo athlete
Yael Bar-Zohar, a model and actress
Mickey Kam, an actress
Nechama Rivlin, a researcher and former First Lady of Israel
Galila Ron-Feder Amit, a children books author
Sara Zibershtrum, a leading educator
Noa Tishbi, an actress

Senior citizens

Metric	Yearly goal)	Progress (H1)	Projected (end of year)	Comments
Participants	110	90 (82% performance)	140
Newly registered	70	20 (29% performance)	55-60	It was decided to invest in women who are senior citizens, and this is reflected in the data we presented on the number of newly registered in the wiki-women program (see above).
Content pages	415 new articles/ significant expansions 580 wiki-gnomings	1293 new articles/ significant expansions (312% performance) 2488 Wiki-gnomings (WP + Wikidata) (429% performance) 231 Commons Uploads	1370 new articles/ significant expansions 2500 Wiki-gnomings (WP + Wikidata)	-
Index of choice (1)	Integration of course graduates in the he-wp community and in WMIL’s community of volunteers	Completed: Course graduates were invited to 13 community and chapter events and 2 content-creation initiatives. 50 of them took part 3 course graduates were recruited as new volunteers, 5 were fostered as veteran volunteers	Continue work according to the goal set	-
Index of choice (2)	Following the online senior citizens' editing course: lesson learning and implementation of 4 most desired changes.	Completed (details below, under “Senior Citizens - Lessons Learned”).	Continuing ongoing processes of drawing lessons and applying them	-

The Program’s Rationale

The program is meant –

to allow its participants to become WP editors;
to strengthen and diversify he-wp’s core of editors;
to contribute to the creation of a large amount of diversified quality content on he-wp;
to expand WMIL’s team of volunteer instructors.

The program includes two channels: (1) WP editing course, which includes group and personal guidance; (2) advanced track of support, additional information and volunteering offered to course graduates (see Impact Report 2019 under “Community Support” for more details).

The Program’s Status

Very good.

The first channel of this program, namely the editing course, is thriving. This channel developed tremendously thanks to a methodological and content development, which had been implemented mainly during 2020, and thanks to the increase in the number of people involved in leading the project.
The second channel of the program, namely the graduate track, has been available in a capacity that does not fully meet the increasing demand, owing to the heavy workload with which the chapter’s team has to cope. We attach a great deal of importance to this channel, and see a lot of potential in it, but the team can currently dedicate only a certain amount of working time to further support and develop it.

What’s Been Done, Achievements & Highlights

The online editing course -
- Following a successful pilot test in 2020, our online editing course has been established as a major channel of activity.
- The first round of the course has been completed successfully. The participants were asked to send their feedback. Those who responded rated their satisfaction with the course at 4.9 on average on a scale of up to 5. Since this round of the course has ended (about 2.5 months), 72% of the participants continued to edit, many of them on a regular basis and even daily. (Note: Further rounds of this course in this half were meant for women only among the senior citizens, and are therefore reported under “Wiki-Women”).
- The first completed round was followed by another cycle of improvements in the training methodology (details below).
- The process of marketing of this course has been improved. We developed and designed various marketing materials and expanded our distribution channels.
- The process of uploading the course to the “Campus IL” platform is underway, see “Training”.
Graduates -
- We continued to provide support for previous rounds’ graduates, upon their requests.
- We sent a letter to the graduates with an invitation to join various editing projects and to community and educational events on behalf of the chapter.
- With the help of volunteers, we developed and launched a series of follow-up meetings, which offer further acquaintance with sophisticated editing tools.
- The course graduates continued to accomplish impressive achievements. Three of them won prizes and awards in he-wp writing contests, and another one has recently written his 1500th article.

Challenges

The current workload handled by the chapter’s team, in order to support our various projects, leaves only a certain amount of available working time to further expand and develop the senior-citizens program. This challenge is relevant to both channels of the program, and particularly to the channel we call “the graduates’ track”. Even though many of the course graduates keep on editing and contribute to the chapter’s activities in various ways, we feel we are far from fulfilling the entire potential of our relations with them. This understanding is the result of our ever-growing acquaintance with this audience throughout the years, which proves very fruitful and positive, and the consistent expansion of the community of course graduates. We have an abundance of ideas on how to expand our activities with them, however, dedicating the right amount of time to other projects is also necessary, hence the bottleneck of available time that holds back full implementation of these ideas.

Lessons learned: Methodology and content improvements There is an ongoing process of improving the online editing course. As a result, the efficiency and effectiveness of the learning process have increased even more than the initial expectation. The following are the main lessons learned and implemented during the first half of 2021, with regard to the teaching method and contents. Changing the organizing principle of the pivot of learning - The original organizing principle - “from simple to complex” - has been replaced with a new principle, “the personal project”. Accordingly, we created a series of practical tasks that offer the participants an opportunity to plan, and gradually implement, a personal editing project. We rearranged our teaching materials, so that each task is accompanied by the specific practical knowledge needed for its implementation. This change reflects the practical workshop-approach of this course that seeks to train active editors. From “flipped classroom” to “discussing classroom” - The course’s original methodology was based primarily on the principle of the “flipped classroom”, which is based in turn on two main channels of learning: self learning, i.e. reading and watching teaching materials on one’s own, and group meetings dedicated to real-life practice. We later realized that the group meetings do not adequately serve the purpose of real-life practice owing to the difference among the participants’ habits of work and their various needs. We therefore removed from the group meetings the real-life practice, which is now done individually, with or without the assistance of a mentor. This has led to two other changes in the course: We added another channel of learning, namely personal mentoring upon request. The mentors are the course’s volunteers, and they offer their assistance according to a weekly schedule in various channels of remote communication. We changed the purpose of the group meetings. The meetings are now dedicated to activities that involve semi-structured interactive group discourse: discussing dilemmas, emotions and experiences, and questions raised by the participants. “Less is more” - We reduced the load of contents introduced during the course. Some of the contents have been moved to a series of follow-up meetings developed for the course’s graduates.

What's next

One or two new rounds of this course during the next half of 2021
Hiring a freelancer to lead future rounds of this course
Creating a document with a proposal to develop our work with editing-course graduates, in order to raise resources for this end.

Creating Quality Content, Information and Data

Hebrew-speaking Educational System

Metric	Yearly goal)	Progress (H1)	Projected (end of year)
No of Participants	950	655	760
No. of Newly registered	380	300	390
No. of Articles / Content pages	380	300 articles (234 Wikipedia, 66 Wiktionary)	390
Index of choice (1)	30 classes	25 classes	29 classes
Index of choice (2)	26 teachers (8 new)	25 teachers (9 new)

The program’s rationale:

Initiating editing projects on he-wp and he-wiktionary in the Hebrew-speaking education system, for the sake of enriching available free content while also improving the students’ academic writing skills.

The program’s status:

Despite many challenges resulting from the COVID-19 crisis, the program achieved most of its goals and reached 75% of its annual goal.

What’s been done?

As of the end of June 2021, 25 classes completed the project and wrote a total of 300 articles (234 he-wp articles and 66 he-wiktionary entries).
Long-term strategic partnerships: We continued our efforts to create long-term cooperations with institutes and school networks. We enhanced our cooperation with the Unit for Science-Oriented Youth at the Tel Aviv University and continued to lay the foundation of our cooperation with the Amal network of schools. We also started to build cooperation with programs of civic studies that serve as an alternative to the civic matriculation exam.
The Hebrew Wiktionary has been enriched with 62 new entries written by students of the Mofet program, which promotes excellence among school students in their studies and social activities. We have initiated this move back in 2019 by contacting the program’s nationwide coordinator, and following two years of ongoing dialog with her, we can say that it proved very beneficial, as this top-bottom approach strengthens the teacher’s commitment to their work with us and improves the quality of their students’ products.
We continued our successful cooperation with Yad Vashem, which has recently resulted in 17 new rich articles about the Holocaust, described from interesting lesser-known angles.
Three different schools wrote 26 articles about Israeli laws. This work has a special importance for both the students and WP users. Writing an article about a statute requires acquaintance with the legal language, which is different from the common language, and developing awareness of civil issues. As for the users of WP, such an article offers them a better understanding of its content, the problems it serves to solve and the dilemmas it may reflect.

Achievements and Highlights

We continued to work with diverse audiences of students: groups of gifted students, students from the center of the country, as well as from geographical or social peripheries. This includes an Arabic-speaking Bedouin school, whose students wrote in Hebrew about topics related to the Bedouin community and culture.
For the first time, we experimented with charging a so-called “seriousness fee” from schools. We asked some of the schools to pay, if they wished, a symbolic share of the program’s expenses, as a statement of commitment and seriousness. Following positive responses, we decided to adopt this measure as a consistent future policy.
We collected feedback from all of the students who participated in this project. The students were asked about the contribution of the project to their education and their level of satisfaction with the guidance they had received. The results (see chart) show that over 80% say the project had a “significant” or “very significant” contribution.

Challenges: Working during the COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 crisis continued also during the second term of the school year (H1 2021), and had an impact on all projects in the education system. The project was conducted mostly through remote teaching. Teachers saw the students face-to-face only at the end of the project, but these meetings offered them an opportunity to help them make necessary corrections. From April to June 2021, however, most editing workshops were conducted face to face.
This year, 15 classes left the project, most of them at the beginning of the year. The reasons stated were the COVID-19 crisis, poor acquaintance of the teachers with their students (some of them did not meet the students face to face until April 2021), limitations of the remote teaching method and the frequent changes that occurred in the teaching schedule.

What's Next?

During the school year of 2021-22, we plan to temporarily reduce the scope of the “Students Write Wikipedia” program and focus on the most interested and promising teachers and classes. The idea is to free time resources for developing new directions of our activities with the Hebrew-speaking education system, primarily training courses for teachers and teaching candidates. According to this new concept of ours, the graduates of these courses, following their development and implementation, will take a leading role in this program and allow its expansion, deepening and optimization.

Arabic-speaking Educational System

Metric	Annual Goal	Half-year Performance(H1)	Remarks
No. of Participants	350	145	Number refers to participants in all activities: school activities, collaborative activities with Siraj (NGO), teachers training course.
No. of Newly registered	200	111
No. of Articles / Content pages	200	67 articles (38 new article, 29 improved)	Activity at some schools was terminated due to COVID-19 related difficulties.
Index of choice (1)	N/A	8 groups	In H1, the organization activity included activity with classes at schools, one course in collaboration with an NGO, and a teachers training course.
Index of choice (2)	15 teachers, 5 returning	6 returning teachers, 10 new connections were created	The organization was in touch with 18 schools and institutes in total by the end of 2020 and first half of 2021.

About the program

In this program, middle- and high-school students write Wikipedia articles for ar-wp in Fuṣḥā Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic) and improve articles written by others. The program introduces Wikipedia and free knowledge to Arabic-speaking schools for both students and teachers while emphasizing the concept of collaborative content creation, digital literacy and academic writing skills.

Students participate in the program in different formats planned and managed by school staff: as a class activity/task led by the teacher, as a volunteering frame for the social involvement program required for the matriculation certification, or as an optional alternative assessment format chosen by the teacher.

The program aims to strengthen and establish long-term collaborations with schools, thus recruiting new schools and introducing the program to more teachers is a constant objective. In addition, the program wishes to reach and create activity in Arabic in collaboration with cultural institutes and other partners.

What’s been done?

During H1 of 2021, the organization developed connections with 10 new schools in addition to establishing new partnerships with other institutes.

Participants at the editing workshop at Siraj offices, Beersheva, May 2021

Activity at schools was majorly affected by the pandemic. All the uncertainties became stronger as remote learning led to a burnout among both the students and the teachers. Teachers continuously described the challenges they faced in the process of organizing and following up with the students due to the lack of physical presence. Some planned activities did not take place eventually even after a process of planning and after making the initial steps within the groups and the schools due to the unstable conditions caused by lockdowns. Some schools decided to postpone the activity to the upcoming school year which starts in September.

The chapter organized a course in collaboration with Siraj Technologies, an NGO that seeks to integrate the Bedouin community into Israel’s hi-tech sector. The course took place remotely except for the last meeting which was held at Siraj’s offices in Beersheva. The course introduced Ar-wp to university students and friends of Siraj. The group worked on writing notability, history and geography articles related to the Negev area and Bedouin community.

In June 2021, and for the first time, the chapter ran an intensive course in collaboration with the Ministry of Education designed for Arabic language teachers. The course focused on using Wikipedia activities as an alternative assessment tool.

Achievements and Highlights

The chapter developed new connections with 10 new schools, one NGO (Siraj Technologies) and the Ministry of Education.
Despite the inconsistent activity at schools due to the pandemic, 67 articles were written and improved on Ar-wp.
The chapter launched its first official collaboration with the Ministry of Education and designed a comprehensive course for Arabic language teachers about using Wikipedia activities as an alternative assessment tool.
The chapter organized its first Arabic activity in the Negev and launched a course in collaboration with Siraj Technologies, an NGO that seeks to integrate the Bedouin community into Israel’s hi-tech sector.
Two Arabic writing programs included university students from Al-Qasimi College and Ben Gurion University.

Challenges: The COVID-19 pandemic and Education Projects

As previously mentioned, the lockdowns have disrupted the activities of multiple projects at 8 schools out of 18 who started a process during the school year but couldn’t achieve the set goal.
Teachers faced difficulty in communicating with the students throughout the year. In some schools, teachers saw the students face-to-face only by the end of the school year. It was difficult for teachers to promote the project within the school as they couldn’t be physically present in the school campus neither could they recognize the students as most students chose not to open cameras in Zoom lessons.
The inability to communicate with the students caused a gap in achieving the goal article number and affected the quality of the articles. Given the fact that public libraries were closed, students' access to sources of information was limited.

What's Next?

The program will continue to recruit new schools for the new school year 2021-22 that starts in September through different channels: renewing previous connections, social media, person-to-person marketing, marketing through partnerships with MoE and other institutions.
Fostering collaboration with the Ministry of Education to support using Wikipedia for alternative assessment.

Note: The chapter is looking to hire a new project coordinator to replace the previous coordinator. Activity may temporarily be affected by the hiring process.

Teachers Course in collaboration with Ministry of Education: Using Wikipedia as a tool for alternative assessment

H1 of 2021 ended with a very special activity! The chapter collaborated for the first time with the Ministry of Education in organizing an intensive course dedicated to Arabic teachers and instructors. The course was initiated by Dr. Rawya Burbara, supervisor of the Arabic language and curriculum in MoE. The course presented Wikipedia as a tool through which Arabic teachers can use it to evaluate students in alternative formats besides the standard formula of exams and homework. Nowadays, MoE integrates the alternative assessment in order to enhance students skills and focuses on planning and achievements set individually for each student, taking into account the variety of cognitive and social abilities of the students. Alternative assessment constitutes 30% of the student’s final grade in each subject, and it is obligatory for the Bagrut diploma.

The course worked on two levels: 1) introduction about Arabic Wikipedia and the concept of free knowledge and wisdom of the crowd while highlighting the cooperative aspect of sharing knowledge 2) using Wikipedia-based activities as a way to evaluate students' writing/reading capacities and improve their digital literacy. The course was designed specifically for the purpose of creating a core group of teachers who are willing to initiate Wiki writing projects in their schools and who are willing to be engaged in educating their students about Wikipedia and instructing them to use it smartly. The course was divided into chapters: a. Reading Wikipedia in class: how to evaluate articles, how to notice structure, and what changes to initiate? How can Wikipedia be used as a tool for alternative assessment? b. A deeper insight about sources in Wikipedia: what is a reliable source? How does references affect the article? c. What is encyclopedic notability and how can we create a list of topics for school activity? d. How to edit Wikipedia? e. What are the characteristics of encyclopedic writing? f. How to run a Wikipedia activity in school?

The course took place on Zoom and it included 20 participants from different Arabic-speaking schools in different towns and villages. The meetings included interactive sections and exercises that either focused on the teachers Wikipedia knowledge and skills or on preparing a school activity. The teachers were provided with tools and resources including wikiwarsha.org and the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom guides.

Teachers course: Using Wikipedia as an Alternative Assessment Tool
Alternative assessment options in grid
Planning a writing project at school

Academic Institutes

Metric	Yearly goal)	Progress (H1)
Participants	450	394
New editors	225	227
Content pages	450 (300 new articles and 150 expansions)	248 (185 new, 63 expansions)
Index of choice (1)	15 courses	20
Index of choice (2)	Marketing the project in at least 3 academic institutes	n/A

As the academic year began in October 2020 it became clear that the effects of the pandemic on higher education institutes would continue throughout the year, in particular, remote learning and a high level of uncertainty.

Consequently, some new lecturers joined the Wikipedia assignment program because they were seeking an alternative to Zoom-examinations, which they felt were highly prone to cheating. We also took on new forms of collaboration (see Impact Report 2020) at the Haifa University Honours program, with the Hebrew University’s Center for Disability Studies, and the Life Sciences project, at the Tel-Aviv University and the Ben-Gurion University.

The collaboration with the Honours program was the first time we gave students a thorough training on how Wikipedia works. This was done as part of a course about encyclopedias and knowledge which was given by Dr. Orr Scharf, a lecturer from the Cultural Studies department. The course consisted of three parts. The first part was like a traditional course, with the lecturer teaching about the history of encyclopedias. The second part was practice oriented – WMIL’s academic coordinator was in charge of these lessons and taught (remotely of course) in four meetings the principles of Wikipedia editing, including the topics of the creation of content, using reliable sources and NPOV, the rules of participation in a collaborative community, and the technical aspects of editing. The teaching materials were largely based on those developed for the Online Senior Citizens course. In between the weekly meetings the students received tasks, and learned the basics of editing by expanding an article each. In the last part of the course the students wrote a new article in pairs, under supervision of the lecturer.

As this was the first time we tried such a collaboration we were curious as to how students would engage in this activity. However, in contrast to our initial agreement with the Honours program, the course was an elective course, and only 5 students chose it. Thus, the effort and involvement of WMIL’s academic coordinator was not commensurate with the course products. It also became apparent that students in the Honours program are under intense pressure, and this kind of course that aims to “expand their horizons” doesn’t fit well in this stage of their studies. Another mismatch was that students had to choose the articles which they would work on from a list curated by the lecturer, as he would be the one checking the content. However, none of the students were from the Cultural Studies department and the topics on the list were quite foreign to them. All in all, although the participants found the project interesting and a positive experience, we conclude that the feasibility of scaling up this type of collaboration is not high.

The collaboration with the Center for Disability Studies involved students who received a scholarship for participating in this project. The collaboration model was more similar to the traditional Wikipedia assignment: participants got an Introduction to Wikipedia, after which they chose a topic to write about from a curated list, or suggested one themselves (but it needed to be approved by WMIL’s academic coordinator); participants wrote the assignment outside Wikipedia and their work was checked by the project’s academic supervisors, and finally the participants uploaded the work as a Wikipedia draft, and, after WMIL’s academic coordinator approval and revisions it was published in the article space. Unique to this project, there was an additional meeting with the participants after they published their article, in which the academic coordinator suggested ways they could continue to edit on articles related to the topic of disability, emphasizing issues of NPOV and the rules of participation in a collaborative community.

In general the project was quite successful, though the initial goal the organizers had – that each participant would write two articles – turned out to be unrealistic in the time frame of the project, so each participant wrote at least one article. We will follow participants’ contributions, to see if they continue to edit, in order to assess the long-term impact of this project.

The Life Sciences project is a collaboration with the Life Science faculty at the Tel-Aviv University, the Life Sciences department at the Ben-Gurion University and the Israel Young Academy, in which any biology student – from second-year undergraduate to advanced graduate (Master) students – can write a Wikipedia article for academic credit. Unfortunately due to the uncertainty surrounding the format of the studies this year, we have not been able to promote this option effectively, and only two articles have been published until now.

Gallery: Some of the historical archival pictures which students at the Kibbutzim College of Education researched the background and details of:

Palyam training, 1943
Kiryat Anavim group, 1937
A Bedouin sheikh at a jewish wedding, 1933
Operation Horev, January 1949
Hannah Szenes, 1942
Rishon LeTzion, 1911
Holocaust survivor working at a farm in Italy, 1945
Rina Nakova ballet, 1946

We were pleased to see eight lecturers from previous years who chose to continue using the Wikipedia writing assignment in their course. The collaboration at the Kibbutzim College of Education in which history students research historical pictures on Commons (see Education Newsletter, August 2020) also continued this year. There were six new lecturers who joined the program with 8 different courses. One of these was a lecturer who included a Wikipedia assignment in her course in the years 2010-2012, and returned to the program after a 9 (!) year hiatus. We were also pleased to see Dr. Tehila Hertz continue the Wikishtetl project, about Jewish communities that perished in the Holocaust, with a writing competition like last year began on Holocaust Memorial Day (April 7th) and will end on Tisha B'Av (July 25th).

Shani Evenstein-Sigalov, who has been teaching Wikipedia courses to students at the Tel Aviv University since 2013, taught the all-campus elective Wikipedia Course, now titled “From Wikipedia to Wikidata” for the third time this year.

Wikidata

Metric	Yearly goal)	Progress (H1)
Participants	100	38
New editors	80	38
Content pages	4500	2383
Index of choice (1)	5 “data and information” classes.	n/A
Index of choice (2)	A training course for the teachers of these classes about Wikidata in general and the Wikidata 10th-grade project in particular.	n/A

This year we continued our efforts to promote Wikidata to relevant audiences in academia, GLAM institutes and the education system. These efforts were impeded by the continued uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and exacerbated by the political crisis in Israel, and specifically, the dissolvement of the parliament at the end 2020 because the government failed to pass a budget.

Due to these budgetary issues, the collaboration with the Ministry of Education in the “Information and Data” matriculation track (previously known as Cyber Informatics) could not proceed as planned. The ministry halted all teachers’ trainings, and therefore the planned Wikidata teachers’ training (an 8-part online training by WMIL’s Wikidata coordinator) has been postponed to an unknown date. Our pilot study last year has indicated that without proper training teachers are unable to guide their students through the project. Consequently, our goal of having 5 classes participating in the collaboration could not be achieved.

As we reported previously (IMPACT 2020), there is currently only one university in Israel that offers Information Studies (the Bar-Ilan university). Although a Wikidata internship was one of the options their program’s students could choose from, we did not receive any applications from suitable candidates. The only academic activities in which Wikidata content was created were in Shani Evenstein-Sigalov’s courses, in which 64 new items were created and statements edited on another 62 existing items.

The majority of content creation in the first 6 months was part of the ongoing collaboration with the National Library, to synchronize their National Authority File with Wikidata, starting with publishers' data. In 2021, this collaboration resulted in 312 new items and 1945 new statements to existing items.

Collaborations for Releasing Contents

Metric	Yearly goal)	Progress (H1)	Comments
No. of new Institutes uploaded to the GLAM Wiki Dashboard Images uploaded to the Commons	0	2 Israeli GLAM institutes (total 4) + 17 International GLAM Institutes (Total 21) 5,670 images	At the time of preparing the work plan, the development of the dashboard was in its very early stages, therefore we could not estimate when we could start uploading GLAM users’ media files to the dashboard and to what extent. Accordingly no quantitative goal was set. IDF Spokesperson Archive - 1665 files “Articles with no Photo” project - 28 files (lead images) A contest for improving articles - 70 files Files uploaded through the Israeli Pikiwiki project in cooperation with the Israel Internet Association - 3907

The GLAM Wiki Dashboard, which was developed with support and advice from Wikimedia Sverige, upon an open-source infrastructure originally developed by Wikimedia CH, reached its technological prototype and friendly UX design stage earlier this year. This phase enabled us to start uploading to this platform diverse GLAM end-users who turned to us, and can now follow the usage of their free-content files, uploaded to Wikimedia projects, and their overall impact. It also provides us with important feedback that helps validate ideas that can be tested in the next stage of the development process. Currently, 21 GLAM institutes are using the tool and more are in process of adopting it, including institutes from Israel, Sweden, Brazil, Belgium, USA and Argentina. It is being translated into 5 languages.

An interesting feedback, received by one of our Israeli users, the IDF Spokesperson Archives, states that “Since December 2019, about 10,5000 files of images and documents originating from the IDF Spokesperson's Unit have been uploaded to various Wikipedia projects. In recent months, this content has been exposed to millions of viewers and users in Israel and around the world in Hebrew and other languages. Thanks to the data available on the dashboard, we can appreciate the significance of the great resonance of information on Wikipedia. This data is available in addition to the exposure of the IDF Spokesperson's website or in posts on social networks. That is, the content is updated and available regularly, and while information on social networks comes and goes quickly, the dashboard allows efficient and continuous tracking and decisions making in the big data era.”

Capacity Building and Skill Development

Training

The Program’s Rationale

Our activity in the field of training focuses on developing and fostering instructional infrastructures which are vital for all of WMIL’s activities.

These infrastructures include: (1) the instructional team (i.e. the human resources engaged in training, namely staff members and our main group of volunteers), (2) our instructional materials.

Program’s status and main challenges

In this half, our instructional program reached several prominent achievements, particularly in methodology and development of materials for the Arabic-language educational program and the senior-citizens program (see details below).
Nevertheless, the limited amount of available person-hours is a burden on this program. The instructional field adds as another layer of work to the team’s main regular activities. The idea to compensate for this limitation by outsourcing some of the work was not always possible.
As a result, we had some difficulty in meeting the defined goals. Overall, we experienced a limited ability to expand and develop our instructional program and make it more effective. This affects other programs that rely on the instructional program, such as, the senior-citizens program, Wiki-Women, the educational programs in Hebrew and Arabic, as well as our work with academic institutes and Wikidata.

Development of the Instructional Team

Metric	Yearly goal)	Progress (H1)	Projected (end of year)	Comments
Participants	23 unique	22 unique	23-24 unique	-
Index of choice (1)	1-2 complementary activities for promoting the professionalization of the coordinators' team in the instructional field	Not completed yet	1 complementary activity	-
Index of choice (2)	Operating the chapter's forum of coordinators for educational and instructional activities	The activity took place as planned (details below)		In the second half of 2021 the forum's activity may be affected by the absence of the staff member leading it, due to maternity leave
Index of choice (3)	Holding 5 meetings for deliberation and learning for the volunteer team for educational and instructional activities	40% completed (2 talks out of 5 planned)	4-5 meetings	-

What’s been done, Achievements & Highlights

We held six meetings of the education and instructional forum, which is made of team members who handle these fields. Subjects that were learned in this forum include: processes of data collection for research and feedback, development of teachers’ training courses, creating contacts with potential partners, and others.
We held two online meetings for the chapter’s education and instructional group of volunteers: a meeting for introducing the Wikidata guide for queries and discussing relevant instructional principles, and a meeting about the relations between the volunteers and the chapter and the financial meaning of their activity.
We recruited three new volunteers to support the chapter’s activity, all of them are graduates of the general senior-citizens course or the women-only course. Another volunteer has been brought back after a long recess in his activity.

Challenges

Following a growth in previous halves, this half saw a slight decrease in the number of volunteers in the education and instructional group. This is a result of the limited amount of time available to the chapter’s team for fostering and supporting our community of volunteers (see above), combined with the effect of the COVID-19 crisis. The crisis forced many volunteers, whose work involved face-to-face meetings, to freeze their activities. We also avoided in-person meet-ups of the group of volunteers, which led to a weakening in the relations between the chapter and the volunteers.

Case Study: Engaging volunteer instructors as a major force in the senior-citizens program A group of talented volunteer instructors has gradually developed around the senior-citizens editing course. They were either recruited or joined of their own initiative. Some of them have been volunteering for several years, whereas others have joined just recently, in a move that doubled the number of volunteers in this group. The importance of these volunteers for the senior-citizens program has been growing steadily with time, and their role has developed as well, from supporting the teaching process to participating in the processes of lesson learning and concept development. Recently, these volunteers also take part in the teaching process itself. Throughout 2019, these volunteers were invited to take significant part in the thinking process that would lead to the introduction of improvements in the course. The numerous improvements that were made in the framework of the digital transformation during 2020 included, among others, the implementation of suggestions offered by the volunteers in the aforementioned thinking process. Once the online editing course was launched (near the end of 2020), we insisted on engaging the course’s volunteers in the regular lesson-learning processes. Their insights helped us introduce another series of methodology and content improvements (see above, under “Senior Citizens”). Beside these improvements, we sought ways to maximize the value of these volunteers’ work and strengthen their sense of satisfaction following their valuable effort. We therefore expanded the role of these volunteers in the teaching process. Whereas in the past, their main role was assisting the course’s leading instructor, today, the volunteers are also responsible for areas that place them occasionally at the front line of teaching. (1) Volunteers may lead sessions and analyze interesting test cases with the course’s participants, to which they were exposed as Wikipedians. (2) Volunteers offer individual sessions to participants. This method has become a central component of the course in its recent rounds. (3) Volunteers have developed follow-up sessions for course graduates, about advanced editing tools (more under “Senior Citizens” above). We feel that the engagement of volunteers in the development and teaching processes of the course, constantly and in a profound and significant way, has increased their sense of belonging and involvement, as well as their interest in the course and satisfaction with their work. Furthermore, this engagement led to a significant increase in their contribution, which is a force multiplier for the senior-citizens program.

What's next

We will continue to hold regular meetings of the two branches of the instructional team: the chapter team’s education and instructional forum, and the group of volunteer instructors.

We will hold a face-to-face meet-up for the group of volunteers, to strengthen relations, enrich knowledge and express gratitude.

Development of the Instructional Materials

Metric	Yearly goal)	Progress (H1)	Projected (end of year)	Comments
Index of choice (1)	Upgrading the instructional material about encyclopedic writing, while adapting it to the various audiences and programs we have	Not completed yet (details below)	May not be executed due to various constraints (details below)
Index of choice (2)	Development and upgrading of materials for the educational system programs dealing with Wikipedia in Hebrew and Arabic and with Wikidata	Completed (details below)

What’s been done, Achievements & Highlights

Arabic educational program

We developed for the first time a training course for teachers of the Arabic-language education system, about the pedagogical applications of Wikipedia, approved and endorsed by the Ministry of Education and recognized for salary credit purposes (details under “Arabic Education Program”).
We upgraded a presentation meant for the educational teams involved in the “Students Write Wikipedia” program.

Hebrew educational program

Instructional documents for students who take part in editing workshops were upgraded by adding screencasts.
We developed a guideline document for educators who check draft articles written by students.

Senior-citizens program

We introduced methodology and content improvements to the editing course (see above under “Senior Citizens”). We also created stable versions of the instructional materials used during the course’s group online meetings.
Under the leadership of the editing-course volunteers, we developed and launched a series of follow-up meetings for course graduates. We developed four meeting plans and four matching instructional presentations.
With the help of an external professional, hired specifically for this purpose, we started the process of integrating the course into the “Campus IL” platform, run by the Ministry of Digital Affairs. This process required some adjustments of the teaching materials and making them accessible to people with disabilities.

Wikidata

Because our collaboration with the Ministry of Education, specifically the teachers training, was halted (see Creating Content section), the Wikidata coordinator recorded, at the end of 2020, six videos about Wikidata, including demonstrations and exercises that teachers could do with their students. The target audience of these videos are the teachers and students of the “Information and Data” high-school track, they are available to the general public through the Ministry of Education website, and can be used for other Wikidata purposes and activities.
In 2020 we launched the tutorial website for the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS), for users who want to learn how to write SPARQL queries to query Wikidata. Currently, the site is offered in English and Hebrew, and so far was used by over 2800 users (34% returning users). We received several requests for collaborations to translate the tool into a number of languages. So far, the collaboration with Wikimedia Brasil, who translated the tutorial into Brazilian Portugese, is progressing swiftly, and a version of the website in this language will be created in the coming months.

What's next

Promoting the upgrading process of the instructional materials about encyclopedic writing - based on available working hours and resources
Completing the uploading process of the editing course’s materials onto the “Campus IL” platform
Developing instructional materials for a teacher training course in Hebrew

Introducing Wikidata

We continued our efforts and dialogue with academic programs to include Wikidata as part of the curriculum in the field of data sciences. We met with the heads of the Internet and Society program at the Hebrew University, and with two lecturers from the Data Sciences program at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Despite the positive reactions around Wikidata, introducing it as part of the curriculum is not a trivial goal. So far, none of the stakeholders we met with was inclined to take on this challenge, and part of the problem is that no one has any practical experience with Wikimedia projects. We consulted a few international academic researchers (Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff, Prof. Dr. Ina Blümel, Dr. Daniel Mietchen) who are working on the cusp of academic computer science and Wikidata. These meetings and further conversations led us to the conclusion that in the absence of a thriving open-source community in Israel, and lacking Wikidata expertise, even the most positive lecturer would require more incentive and reward to introduce Wikidata in their course.

One option we plan exploring is a joint collaboration with the Technion’s Social Hub which facilitates engagement of faculty members, lecturers and students with diverse communities and strengthens the Technion's social commitment to its environment. We hope to interest lecturers, in the mediation of the Social hub and the support it can provide, to introduce Wikidata and/or use Wikidata in a project that is community related.

We plan to present Wikidata to the Digital and Technological Information department at the Ministry of Justice. This is related to a suggested project of creating a Wikibase instance for a Semantic Web Database for all Israeli laws.

Raising Awareness and Sustainability

Marketing and events

Hebrew Wikipedia editors' birthday meetup - For the second time in a row, and due to the COVID-19 lockdown, we held an online community meet-up. 83 Wikipedians celebrated Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary. The participants played a few online games, all of them featuring the number 20, on Kahoot! trivia, Online Quest and other platforms.

Wikipedia's 20th birthday online meetup in Israel 2020
Wikipedia's 20th Birthday celebration - Israel
Wikipedia's 20th Birthday celebration - Israel
Wikipedia's 20th Birthday celebration - the online Quest

Online Webinars - During the first half of 2021 we continued the Wiki-Talk initiative. This is an online series of webinars about Wikipedia, presented by members of our community and WMIL staff. In 2021 we held 10 new webinars through “Zoom”. We were excited to see the number of participants - about 45 on average per meeting.

Wiki Talk 2021 Webinar- Wikipedia's 20 University, The Next Decade (screenshot)
Wiki Talk 2021 Webinar- Wikipedia & Truth in the Digital Age, From ‘fake news’ to the ‘good cop’ of the internet (screenshot)
Wiki Talk 2021 Webinar- How much is enough When It Comes To Wikipedia
Wiki Talk 2021 Webinar- Encyclopedias (screenshot)
Wiki Talk 2021 Webinar- Travelling At Archives Without Leaving The House (screenshot)
Wiki Talk 2021 Webinar- Pictures, Behind the Scenes (screenshot)

A contest for improving articles - We resumed a contest that had been held in our community yearly until 2013. The purpose of the contest is to improve short articles by adding information and images. 30 people took part in this contest, improving 38 articles, writing 58 new ones and adding 70 new photos.

Articles with no photo - Many of the he-wp articles do not contain any images, usually due to copyright limitations. In this project, WMIL and some local members of our community reached out to Israeli celebrities and politicians and asked them to send a free-licensed photo to be added to their Wikipedia article. This project added a total of 28 new images to Wikipedia.

Social media - In April this year, he-wp launched its Instagram account, sharing knowledge, top viewed articles and more; reaching out to the general public, beyond our local editors’ community.

International Women's Day campaign - In 2021 we tried a different approach to increase awareness of the Wikipedia gender gap, in addition to the yearly Art & Feminism editing meet-up. A month before the day, we contacted seven different women who contributed content to Wikipedia: Wikipedian, teachers, professors and a senior-citizens course graduate. Each of them wrote about her experience in the world of Wikipedia. From the beginning of March, we shared each day one of their stories on our Facebook page. Our followers loved their stories, and this project got very positive feedback. We shared all of their stories in our quarterly newsletter which was dedicated to the International Women’s Day. We contacted our local community member, who is in charge of the weekly article feature and asked to make the theme of the first week of March, “women around the world”. Our local community took part by adding more articles about important women.

Fundraising and Organizational Infrastructures

Resource development challenges have intensified since last year as a consequence of the Covid-19 new reality, namely, the shift in spending priorities by and capabilities of individuals, foundations and the philanthropic industry. This reality required us to lead a careful ongoing examination of the availability of resources and funds while increasing fundraising efforts and diversification of sources to ensure a more sustainable model for the long run. Following this approach, and over the past months, we have begun to examine a number of models less used before, such as - submitting applications for governmental calls for proposals, identifying activities that may generate revenues (cost-sharing), and more. These steps are taken in parallel to ongoing traditional fundraising efforts that are also enhanced.

Revenues received during this six-month period

Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.

Revenue source	Currency	Anticipated	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Cumulative	Anticipated ($US)*	Cumulative ($US)*	Explanation of variances from plan
Balance 2020	ILS	250,000	349,954				349,954	74,295	103,999
Revenues from private donations	ILS	15,000	12,006	803			12,809	4,458	3,807
Sponsorships	ILS	0	0	0			0	0	0
Foundations	ILS	367,750	36,720	10,009			46,729	109,288	13,887
Revenues from membership fees	ILS	1,000	580	360			940	297	279
Wikimedia Foundation	ILS	1,107,250	775,075	0			775,075	329,053	230,337
Revenues from collaborations	ILS	10,000	1,116	2,572			3,688	2,972	1,096
Revenues from courses	ILS	5,000	2,180	1,800			3,980	1,486	1,183
Round Up	ILS	125,000	30,018	21,340			51,358	37,148	15,263
Revenues from companies	ILS	0	0	0			0	0	0
Total revenues (should equal the sum of the rows):	ILS	1,881,000	1,207,648	36,884			1,244,533	558,996	369,850

* Provide estimates in US Dollars

$ Rate 0.29718
Revenue for the first half of the year is lower than we expected. This is because some of the philanthropic foundations we have approached have postponed their decision-making dates regarding grant applications, beyond the original planning. Accordingly, only closer to the end of the year will we be able to assess (or actually know) what the final status of our grant applications currently in the pipeline is.

Spending during this period (6 months for progress report)

Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)

Expense	Currency	Budgeted	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Cumulative	Budgeted ($US)*	Cumulative ($US)*	Percentage spent to date	Explanation of variances from plan
Enhancing diversity	ILS	273,690	80,232	37,238			117,470	81,335	34,910	43
Wikidata and Enhancing Content	ILS	103,103	28,910	13,508			42,418	30,640	12,606	41
Education - Hebrew	ILS	187,205	58,964	30,170			89,134	55,634	26,489	48
Higher Education	ILS	90,603	29,415	13,487			42,902	26,925	12,750	47
Education - Arabic	ILS	221,205	58,649	34,537			93,186	65,738	27,693	42
Training	ILS	142,205	39,938	26,301			66,239	42,260	19,685	47
Free knowledge awareness	ILS	66,000	1,286	100			1,386	19,614	412	2
Global engagement	ILS	41,000	842	1,684			2,526	12,184	751	6
Communication and publicity	ILS	216,000	51,392	29,034			80,426	64,191	23,901	37
Management and Administration	ILS	492,690	146,181	76,282			222,463	146,418	66,112	45
TOTAL	ILS	1,833,701	495,810	262,341			758,151	544,939	225,307	41

* Provide estimates in US Dollars

$ Rate 0.29718
Budget expenditure for the first 6 months of the year meets expectations.

Compliance

Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement?

As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No". YES

Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No". YES

Signature

Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.

RevitalP-WMIL (talk) 11:12, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Resources

Resources to plan for measurement

Global metrics are an important starting point for grantees when it comes to measuring programmatic impact (Learning Patterns and Tutorial) but don’t stop there.
Logic Models provide a framework for mapping your pathway to impact through the cause and effect chain from inputs to outputs to outcomes. Develop a logic model to map out your theory of change and determine the metrics and measures for your programs.
Importantly, both qualitative and quantitative measures are important so consider both as you determine measures for your evaluation and be sure to ask the right questions to be sure to capture your program stories.

Resources for storytelling

WMF storytelling series and toolkit (DRAFT)
Online workshop on Storytelling. By Frameworks institute
- The origin of storytelling
- Story frames, with a focus on news-worthiness.
Reading guide: Storytelling and Social change. By Working Narratives
- The uses of the story.
- Case studies.
Blog: 3 Tips on telling stories that move people to action. By Paul VanDeCarr (Working Narratives), on Philanthropy.com
Building bridges using narrative techniques. By Sparknow.net
- Differences between a report and a story
- Question guides and exercises.
Guide: Tools for Knowledge and Learning. By Overseas Development Institute (UK).
- Developing a strategy
- Collaboration mechanisms
- Knowledge sharing and learning
- Capturing and storing knowledge.