Grants talk:Conference/WikiWomenCamp 2020

Outcomes

What will be the expected outcomes that will justify this kind of high budget? How will the wiki community or its online projects will be benefited by this conference.--Hindust@ni^{क्या करें? बातें!} 03:32, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Response

Online contributors create information that is consumed by millions of people globally but creating information alone isn't sufficient to build a successful movement. We need to evaluate the ongoing activities, analyze outcomes and needs, and advance skills in order to serve better.

Considering the number of thematic events planned globally around various Wikimedia projects, we all understand, relate to and value the need for in-person discussions. The proposed event will help the online community to learn and enhance their skills, provide many direct and indirect collaborative, and plan activities to have more better outcomes thus making the movement stronger.

Considering the findings of gender gap studies, discussions in women-only space which is usually referred to as a safe space can provoke action and collectively bring about change.

Considering various factors like- the diversity of groups from where women will be coming, the limitation of having less women editors and given that wikimedians are free to work on the projects of their interest, we can't specify numeric targets. But we have definitely decided our desired targets on the basis of inputs gathered through Community engagement survey. Our success markers would be-

• More women in leadership roles and affiliate representation
• Policy inputs to combat harassment
• Research Projects on Gender Gap and Harassment and Civility issues.
• More collaborative Projects
• Reduced Gender Gap.
• Collaboration with Institutions and allied organisations
• Planning New initiatives in line with Strategy.

Along with this, we would like to share that we have initiated our work on building collaboration with some organisations as knowledge partners to work on different projects (Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata) related to Gender Gap.

Knowing that the gender gap is one of the prime concerns that is contrasting to the Wikimedia goal of creating a sum of all human knowledge, it requires understanding and planning decisive actions required to bridge the same. The information related to the budget and women camp is available in the FAQs- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiWomenCamp_2020#FAQs.

Regards, Manavpreet Kaur (talk) 21:09, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

What is that gender gap which this conference proposing to remove or minimize. How is this relevant and affect the online wiki projects which are ultimately the main focal point of the movement. Is there will be an training season to train possible female editors?--Hindust@ni^{क्या करें? बातें!} 15:00, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

According to the recent statistics, with help of a number of innovative, multidimensional and programmatic initiatives that exist in the movement to tackle the gender gap, we have been able to reduce the gender gap a bit in terms of online content on Wikipedia but it still remains as a prevalent bias in the Wikimedia projects. See more-https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ijon/Content_gap#Data_as_of_February_2020

As English Wikipedia mentions:

Surveys have indicated that between 8.5% and 16% of Wikipedia editors are female.

Concerns like less women editors, lesser representation of women in leadership and Affiliates should be addressed. For instance, In India, all the affiliates have only male representatives and this concern hasn't been acknowledged or addressed by anyone from the communities till date. We need to study the global trends and the identify the reasons behind this too.

In addition to this, there are a very few research projects on Gender Gap analysis, in order to plan efficiently, we need statistics to base our hypothesis.

There are many reasons for the gap- lack of women leaders in the movement, unwelcoming environment, lack of training, etc. During various discussions (Off-wiki), it was submitted that one of the issues in recruiting women to wiki was having no women in the group.

We need to have the discussions around the causes and action plans in a safe space in order to design research (to evaluate) and programs (to bridge this gap).

In line with the Whose Knowledge? objective to create, collect and curate knowledge from and with marginalized communities, particularly women, people of colour, LGBTQI communities, indigenous peoples and others from the global South we expect everyone to build the information with us, not for us.

User:Netha Hussain and User:Camelia.boban are supporting us with their knowledge and experience by leading the Program Team for the Camp. Considering the amount of time, energy and effort required to frame a program, we are waiting for the Grant decision before initiating this process. In order to practice inclusive approach in designing the program, we have gathered the community inputs through a survey. The Program Team will plan the Training and session as per the needs listed by the survey participants. Please keep following the meta page for updates.

In addition to this, you can use the following links to gather more information about the gender gap and initiatives, need and progress-

• https://air.mozilla.org/mozfest-2017-saturday-dialogues-and-debates/#@1h14m13s How to Build an Internet With Us, Not For Us] - keynote at MozFest (October 2017)
• Wikipedia:Gender bias and editing on Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Gender gap
• Wikipedia:Gender bias on Wikipedia

Thanks & Regards

Manavpreet Kaur (talk) 18:57, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

So just giving women the power like direct place in movement affiliated group will solve the gender gap? So this conference will be focused on how to get women in positions of power. Good but what will they achieve if they reach that point for the movement, because "information" can only be built by being a regular editor.--Hindust@ni^{क्या करें? बातें!} 01:36, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

There are a few points I would like to highlight here-

• The camp isn't intended to merely give power to women but to review the existing status and plan actions that includes creating equal opportunities for deserving and competent women.
• The long term goals are to make movement balanced by achieving milestones like reduced gender gap in representation in affiliates, information on wiki and also editors.

The plan and action of achieving that requires discussions, deliberations, reviews and planning which are agenda items for the Camp.

• The information creation doesn't only involve writing, but also reviewing in order to check gaps and plan corrective or preventive actions. Conferences or events like this have been organized for years to review the past activities and plan the future actions in order to keep the movement thriving like Wikimedia Summit, Regional conferences, etc. Some of the thematic events being organized are- Diversity Conference, Education Conference,etc. This Camp is the third iteration after two conferences in 2012 and 2017.
• As it has been discussed at various instances, we have data to check online contribution, but the time and effort that goes into planning and organizing outreach and offline activities, usually goes unacknowledged. We need to discuss the ways to showcase the same as the offline work is no less than online editing. Events help us build collaborations, raise awareness (its important to have readers for the generated content), bring more editors or improve the skills of existing members.

As per UN Women- The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by world leaders in 2015, embody a roadmap for progress that is sustainable and leaves no one behind. Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is integral to each of the 17 goals. Only by ensuring the rights of women and girls across all the goals will we get to justice and inclusion, economies that work for all, and sustaining our shared environment now and for future generations.

Manavpreet Kaur (talk) 19:41, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

See also

• Wiki Women Camp 2017/Report: Information in the 2017 WikiWomenCamp report might be helpful to understand what happens at WikiWomenCamp and why attendees feel it is useful. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:10, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

WMF comments

Dear @Manavpreet Kaur:, Thank you for submitting such an informative proposal! We are happy to explore the opportunity to support you in hosting the Wiki-Women Camp 2020.

Your proposal has many strengths to highlight. The efforts and vision are very clear. I especially appreciate the willingness to focus on non-wikimedia allies, and of course the work to strengthen our wiki-women leaders in the movement. I also appreciate the thorough information from past events and the learnings. Thank you.

I reviewed your proposal, and have some follow up questions and comments to offer as a part of staff review:

Community input

• I think the ‘3 track’ approach for Thematic discussions; Advanced training and Strategy discussions is clever and eficiente.
• Women representation statistics - you said that even with great growth, the representation statistics are not the same throughout the world, and you want to bring it to where it’s needed the most. Do you have the Data on where it is indeed needed? Do you currently have any specific efforts to bridge those gaps, in those communities?
• I haven't seen a translation budget item. How do you intend to translate to the second most preferred language?

Plan

• Sharing knowledge and experience is very important, but I’m missing some active learning components to the program proposal. As you mentioned ‘advanced training’ and skill building as a high priority, I imagine you will design the program accordingly. But I will be happy to know what kind of active training you plan. Will you have workshops, working groups or any other format of non - oral presentations?

Budget

• Merchandise - When it comes to swag, we ask to be environmentally mindful and we don't encourage merchandise or advertising products. You really have a lot of swag, and honestly I don’t see the need for so many items. Not environmental, or budget wise. Therefore I ask that you limit swag to low cost items like stickers.
• Can you please further clarify the following costs?:

1. Staff Assistance costs? What are the differences between all 3 types? And what is the quantity breakdown? I also see one of them is for Travel Coordination, but you also have 2 additional items for Booking Assistance. Is it for staff costs and outsource travel booking services?
2. Preparations committee meetings. Aren't you meeting online? Why is it necessary to meet in person and what will be covered by the meeting costs?
3. Meeting with Partners - what will the expenses cover?

• I see quite a few separate budget items related to preparation: 2 travel items (Travel to the event venues + Travel for organizational work); 2 Accommodation costs (Accommodation during visits + Accommodation for volunteers working in the city of event); 2 Daily allowance + food. Please give more details such as costs breakdown, how many people will it accommodate, and what is the need.
• Laptop and Printer - we usually don’t fund permanent equipment as part of a conference grant. Can you please elaborate on the need for those?

When you're able, please respond to the questions above and revise the proposal as needed. These revisions will be due by 25 February 2020, after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal.

Thank you and team again for the inspiring work you are doing to bridge the gender gap! Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 22:36, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Responses to the Observations

I am sharing the details and responses on behalf of Rajeeb Dutta, Chinmayee Mishra and I.

Thank you so much for the appreciation and acknowledgment of the time and effort our team has invested in preparing this draft proposal. We are glad to know that you could see and relate to the vision that we had in mind while planning various sections of the proposal. Considering this will be the first time to organize a volunteer lead international initiative in India, we know we have to be extra cautious of various factors while designing.

* Women representation statistics - you said that even with great growth, the representation statistics are not the same throughout the world, and you want to bring it to where it’s needed the most. Do you have the Data on where it is indeed needed? Do you currently have any specific efforts to bridge those gaps, in those communities?

The gap that we are referring to is not in terms of online information about women, but also about women as Affiliate representatives and leaders. A few researchers have taken this subject into consideration and have worked on finding the reasons and methods to narrow down the same, but still more elaborate (in terms of sample size, diversity, analytical tools, inclusivity, etc.) projects need to be designed to reach to the core cause.

We don’t have observed figures, but generic information (facts) as an Affiliations Committee member, that none of the Affiliates in India have any woman representative including the recently derecognized Wikimedia India Chapter. This is evident enough of the lack of women representation in leadership roles. In addition to this, the various studies we have reviewed show the statistical differences in the coverage of women online.

A few observations on Gender representation in Wikimedia movement were shared in 2018 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/2018_Report/en. Excerpts related to the Gender section of the research is as follows-

• Between 2017 and 2018, no statistically significant changes were found in gender for Wikimedia contributors. A decrease in gender diversity in emerging communities was observed, but the change in the sampling strategy could have influenced this outcome.

• 
  Gender for Contributors in 2018

• Gender: As with 2017 data, program organizers and affiliate organizers reported a higher percentage of women compared to Wikimedia contributors and volunteer developers. For program organizers, 36% reported being women, and, for affiliate organizers, 26% reported being women. Among volunteer developers, 12% reported being women. Program organizers in our sample this year seems to have increased 10% from last year, while Affiliates seems to be 2 percent lower.

• 
  Gender in 2018

The last country-specific survey was done by the WMF in 2012. Here is the link to the summary of their findings. https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/27/nine-out-of-ten-wikipedians-continue-to-be-men/ It shows that India has the least women editors among surveyed countries (3%). We have a research intern from CIS A2K joining us for the camp and once the budget is approved, we will start our work on designing a research program and questionnaire for the much required studies on Gender Gap.

We have been forming groups in order to create a support network for fellow women wikimedians, understanding their needs and also organizing training. Some of the examples are as follows-

• WWWW2018 which was first of its kind content generation and capacity building training event in India with only women as leaders working on the subject of women wellbeing. This project made us build a support network and work together as a team to bridge the gender gap and has also proved assistive for us to emerge as leaders.
• Women TTT 2019 was the first ever “for the women, by the women” training for women to be better leaders. This event gave us the opportunity and platform to share our concerns and to plan actions to counter them. The sessions were quite helpful in understanding global initiatives and also in planning our future activities.
• UNESCO Wiki4Women 2019 edit a thon at UNESCO New Delhi Office where women wikimedians from different regions of India worked together with representatives from different UN organizations and the Swedish Embassy. The energy was high and the excitement was incomparable.

I haven't seen a translation budget item. How do you intend to translate to the second most preferred language?

English is a widely used, understable and official language and is used for communication across the globe, therefore we have chosen English as the medium to write the budget. Considering the learnings of the previous Camp, we were clear of the participants’ expectations and that’s why specifically asked about the preference for 2nd language. Considering the fact that the majority of people in India speak Hindi, we have volunteers (Hindi Wikimedians) to support us in translating the information and the sessions.

As Spanish and French are next in line, we have volunteers to support us with the same.

Plan

• Sharing knowledge and experience is very important, but I’m missing some active learning components to the program proposal. As you mentioned ‘advanced training’ and skill building as a high priority, I imagine you will design the program accordingly. But I will be happy to know what kind of active training you plan. Will you have workshops, working groups or any other format of non - oral presentations?

We took inputs from women on their experience, expertise, and expectations from the sessions and activities during the Camp. Considering the major change that the movement is going through, the mid term plans to keep the movement thriving and the 2030 goal, we as women need the space to discuss how this is going to affect our involvement and scope in the movement. That’s why we planned the 3-track approach.

In addition to this, as a trainer to the various Train the trainer Programs, Organizer of various workshops, I realised the impact these have on the growth and quality of output through projects. I have also observed that there are some wikimedians who aren’t even aware of the advanced tools on wikipedia and wikidata. This all necessitated the inclusion of Wiki Advanced Training to the program.

The program team will finalize the activities and schedule, but some of the probable areas would be-

• Wikidata Training

• Learning and Evaluation

• Advanced Wikisource Training

• Advanced Wikipedia Training- DYK, Good Article, Advanced Google search, Hunting citations from Google books, news, scholar etc., Verifiability, No original research & Reliable sources, TWL, AWB, etc.

• Tools- For COMMONS, For events- Dashboard, Fountain, etc.

Budget

• Merchandise - When it comes to swag, we ask to be environmentally mindful and we don't encourage merchandise or advertising products. You really have a lot of swag, and honestly I don’t see the need for so many items. Not environmental, or budget wise. Therefore I ask that you limit swag to low cost items like stickers.

A swag in the name of T-Shirt always inspires every wiki(p)median, every one of us feels proud to wear one and inspires us to go volunteering for the movement. We will be getting cotton environment-friendly T-shirts with prints from GOTs approved water based non toxic inks. We want every participant to feel the honor of wearing it, and feel associated with a campaign or cause and that's why we asked for 80 units.

In order to have a plastic-free conference, we requested bottles which can be refilled by participants from time to time during the conference. But considering the budget, we have striked it off the budget. Specific item budget deducted from requested budget.

Requested Budget (A)= 7980357 INR (111614.94 USD)

Item Budget (B)= 21000 INR (293.75 USD)

New Total= (A)-(B)= 7959357 INR (111321.19 USD)

* Can you please further clarify the following costs?:

Staff Assistance costs? What are the differences between all 3 types? And what is the quantity breakdown? I also see one of them is for Travel Coordination, but you also have 2 additional items for Booking Assistance. Is it for staff costs and outsource travel booking services?

Considering the amount of work for planning and managing the event, we will be appointing one event manager, one for Travel coordinator (Visa, travel documents, contact person and Volunteer management, Travel Bills) and one for Communications (As mentioned earlier, in order to plan studies on gender gap, we need inputs for which we will be conducting interviews with as many women as possible, the staff member will prepare a questionnaire and help us gather information and document conversations). 10,000 INR is a nominal amount assigned for this work, if required we can remove this from the proposed budget.

The Booking assistance is the per flight charges taken by the Travel agent for booking flights and local travel arrangements.

Preparations committee meetings. Aren't you meeting online? Why is it necessary to meet in person and what will be covered by the meeting costs?

Yes, we had and will have online meetings, at the same time to confirm the importance of face to face interactions, physical meetings will allow to check out others aspects of the conference, like checking with the logistics, meetings with local volunteers, to have an overall physical survey of the venue to avoid any unforeseen events. As none of us is based in Delhi or Amritsar, the costs will cover the travel, food and stay (if required).

Meeting with Partners - what will the expenses cover?

As none of us is based in Delhi or Amritsar, the costs will cover the travel, food and stay (if required).

* I see quite a few separate budget items related to preparation: 2 travel items (Travel to the event venues + Travel for organizational work); 2 Accommodation costs (Accommodation during visits + Accommodation for volunteers working in the city of event); 2 Daily allowance + food. Please give more details such as costs breakdown, how many people will it accommodate, and what is the need.

During WikiConferenceIndia, some members had to go to Chandigarh every alternate day to the venue for a month to monitor the progress and for local arrangements. Also, the host institution provided us space for office. The accommodation charges will help us rent a space.

Travel for organizational work is reserved for Volunteers- It will cover rental cabs for checking arrangements at venue(s) to manage the event work ensuring that it progresses smoothly. It will also cover the travel for edit-a-thon.

Travel to Venue is cost reserved for rental vehicles to move stuff to and fro the venue swag, banners, standee, screens, etc.

The daily allowance was kept to cover the expenses for the volunteers (especially male members) who were not allowed at the venue, but helping us manage work on ground. If required, we can strike it off the budget.

* Laptop and Printer - we usually don’t fund permanent equipment as part of a conference grant. Can you please elaborate on the need for those?

Both equipment are a prerequisite for any events or conferences. The conferences are usually hosted by Chapters and they have the resources they can lend for organizational work. Here, we don’t have a chapter to provide this support so we have kept it in our budget. Considering that there are multiple people on the registration desk, we can’t afford using the personal laptops at the desk.

Also, Punjabi Wikimedians added a laptop and a printer to our proposed budget for WikiConferenceIndia2016 and following the same, this budget line was added. Also, we don’t want to specifically buy new systems, but we wanted to list it in the requirements. If we can get this support (hardware support), we can strike this off the budget.

Thanks & Regards,

Manavpreet Kaur (talk) 19:59, 25 February 2020 (UTC)