Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Belgium/2021

APG approved in the amount of EUR 16,500

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of EUR 16,500, with a grant term starting 1 January 2021 and ending 31 December 2021.

Wikimedia Belgium has presented a sound strategic plan defining the verticals of the organization’s mission and their objectives with different partners. While this creates a comprehensive understanding of the organization’s work and their aligned mission and objectives, we would like to see a clearer fusion of movement strategy recommendations incorporated in the strategic plan. The annual plan of Wikimedia Belgium has undergone changes to their programmatic structure with a shift towards coordination of virtual activities to emphasize the social distancing safety for a pandemic. They highlight their programs in four areas this year focused on volunteer support, GLAM, education, and collaborations with heritage organizations.

Volunteer resources have been one of the core strengths of Wikimedia Belgium that has been self-sustaining without paid staff for operations. Their organization depends on the skills and efforts of the board and the volunteers to maintain the programs and they have been taking special care to invest in skill-building and capacity building. We highly appreciate their efforts to provide quality support in the number of their programs through technical training programs for copyrights, Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Lysteriabot. Their work to provide rental laptops, corona masks, and travel scholarships addresses practical needs that facilitate volunteer engagement.

In the GLAM collaboration front, Wikimedia Belgium has planned partnerships with eight institutions to support several efforts including digitization, photo workshops, and transfer of datasets through sister projects for the visibility of books. Their education program includes an interesting myriad of activities and programs planned with over ten institutions to combat misinformation and engage academic staff and students in the movement. With their heritage program, they are planning to leverage the community engagement for gathering content related to heritage with their Wiki Loves Heritage focusing on Belgian heritage with Wikidata, Wikipedia, and Commons through planned collaborations with five cultural organizations. There have been steps taken to improve the leadership and management skills of the board which is an optimistic sign of the organization’s health and development.

Their shared metrics are projected to decrease from last year, but the difference makes sense keeping in considering restrictions imposed by the pandemic. Their grantee defined metrics reflect their efforts to introduce quality metrics in their work plan. Overall, the plan is well devised and we hope that 2021 will be a year of stability and focus. We look forward to working together.

On behalf of the Simple APG Committee and Staff, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 14 December 2020 (UTC)