Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Growing the wiki spirit in Türkiye, 2024

Comments from Grant Committee

Good day Zafer and Başak! Thank you for your proposal. It's good to see that Wikimedia Movement in Türkiye and Wikimedia UG Türkiye grows, also to mention that this grows goes along with developing partnerships (we can see grows in financial coverings by 3rd parties from 8,6 to near 14%). However, we need some clarifications, mostly on some numbers described in this proposal.

1. You've mentioned 800 students participating in Education program. Can you elaborate on this program a bit and describe your approach to achieve this number of participants?
2. I've noticed a difference between amounts in two collumns in the budget file: is № 31 "Sehrin Iyı Hali Event with Akbank" 1200 or 1300 USD?

Красный^{wanna talk?} 07:04, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi Красный and the Committee! Thank you very much for the comments and questions. Please find the answers below.

1. The Wikipedia Education Program includes different kinds of activities carried out at education institutions at different levels -mostly at undergraduate courses but also at some graduate level programs and high schools as well-. In total, we organize the program in 15-20 partner institutions during the school year. Below is the description of the type of the activities of the program.

Wikipedia Assignments.The most common activity is visiting a graduate or undergraduate course in any department, making a presentation about the basic principles of Wikipedia editing and different ways of contributing. Students are then given assignments to contribute to Wikipedia (sometimes Wikidata and/or other Wikimedia projects) either in the topics covered in the course or in any topic they chose. According to preference of the instructors, sometimes predefined tasks are given (e.g. lists of articles to improve, translate, etc.). After visiting the class, we follow the contributions of the students until the end of the school term; answer their questions; sometimes make a second or third visit to the course or make online Q&A sessions. During such activities, in most courses we give the basic training to 30-60 students. The number of instructors and schools tend to increase every school term. The program is promoted by word of mouth but also by presenting it at several academic conferences and events during the year.

Volunteering Courses. Some education partners integrate Wikipedia editing as a part of a required volunteering course they offer. In such cases, we make a presentation about digital volunteering and Wikimedia projects to the all students taking the course. Those who are interested in learning more and making a volunteer project based on their Wikimedia contributions do contact us; we help them discover the different aspects of Wikimedia projects better and to develop a volunteer project. In this model, we reach a large number of students, because all first grade students or all 3rd grade students of the school in all departments take those compulsory courses and therefore follow the basic Wikipedia training. Please find the story of such partnership here: KHAS University

General Presentations. Another activity covered under the Wikipedia Education Program is giving a 1-hour in person or online training about Wikimedia projects in an event open to all students of a faculty/department or giving a presentation to the teachers/instructors about Wikimedia projects and how to use them in education. Usually, when we first contact a potential education partner, they invite us to give such general presentations rather than giving a Wikipedia assignment to their students in a course. Most of the time we do not know the exact number of people attending those events, but the number can go over 100 in some as those are rare opportunities to meet with wikimedians.

Extracurricular activities. The last type of activity under the program is the activities in high schools and secondary schools. At two schools in Istanbul, we meet with students and answer their questions as they make small contributions to Wikimedia projects under the guidance of their teachers as an extracurricular activity. This kind of activity is yet experimental and small in numbers.

2. About the number in the budget; you are right; the sum for "Sehrin Iyı Hali Event with Akbank" event was mistakenly written as 1300USD in one of the columns; it is now fixed as 1200USD.

--Basak (talk) 06:28, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 72,911 USD

@Zafer and Basak: Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 72,911 USD with a grant term starting 1 July 2024 and ending 30 June 2025.

The committee supported continued funding for Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey, as well as its requested increase to help address persistently high inflation that has significantly affected many of the organization’s programmatic and operational expenses in the past year.

In addition, we supported this increase on the basis that your user group has demonstrated a healthy level of growth across different areas of your organizational and programmatic work, and that the current proposal seeks to sustain this progress. The committee also appreciated learning more about the organization, its activities, achievements, and challenges as a result of Chris’s site visit in October 2023. For example, that your user group has been working to train more event organizers/trainers and build leadership in your organization shows that you are improving the overall stability of your organization as well as creating sustainability in your programs. This was recognized as an important strength of your proposal and organizaton overall.

The committee was also glad to learn about how your user group is exploring new partnerships, and that an office space is now available through one of your partners for members and leaders to use for various activities. To the extent that user group leaders or members would like to use this new space to try new programs or events related to your organizational goals or are otherwise Wikimedia movement-related, we encourage you to support this kind of experimentation where possible.

The committee also recommends that your user group consider applying for multiyear funding in your next proposal if interested, as your organization maintains a multiyear strategy, which is the main prerequisite if are seeking to request funding increases year over year. Your program officer is available if you have any questions about multiyear funding, and you can review more about these funding arrangements here.

We look forward to your work and contributions to the Wikimedia Movement in Türkiye and the broader Wikimedia movement over the next year! On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:01, 10 June 2024 (UTC)