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Learning and Evaluation/Inspire Campaigns/Gender gap/Developing leaders

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Inspire campaign for gender diversity

A number of Gender Gap Inspire grants supported the development of community leaders who are continuing to organize projects and/or inspiring others to develop projects of their own.

The four project leaders of Just for the record - Myriam Arseneault-Goulet, Loraine Furter, Sarah Magnan and Mia Melvær - are artists and designers who were originally inspired to get involved with Wikimedia as part of the global Art+Feminism editathons in 2015. After a year of their grant, which included organizing expert lectures about how gender is represented in Wikipedia and hosting editathons to address systemic issues, they are continuing their project in 2016/2017. This continuation focuses less on who contributes and what they contribute, and more on how articles are written with a bias around gender. The team has developed a space for critical discussion with an expanding community of people and aim to create guidelines, tools, and policy proposals for addressing bias.

Gender Gap Inspire grantees have also motivated others to organize similar projects and served as mentors to these new project leaders. After participating in the Linguistic Editathon series, User:loztron successfully applied for her own micro grant from Wikimedia UK to organize a series of similar editathons in London. To get ideas to spread, it is often key to have examples of what is possible and how it can be done. We encourage all grantees to share their experiences through grant reports, blog posts, social media updates, and presentations at community gatherings in order to share what they have learned and inspire others.