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The Capacity Exchange initiative - cXc

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Attention: These pages of the 2021-2023 initiative are out of date. Please see the live Capacity Exchange project.
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CONTEXT: Wikimedia movement that formed in the past 22 years around Wikipedia (with all its language communities), related technologies (like MediaWiki software), its sister projects (like Wiktionary or Wikidata), entities (like Wikimedia Foundation and affiliates), different partnerships (like UN and other organizations) has been developing its Movement Strategy towards 2030. One of the many efforts to reach some of its goals is this one, focused on supporting bottom-up and self-organized development of capacities from the smallest and most important unit of movement — individual Wikimedian sharing with other Wikimedian.

The Capacity Exchange (working title, also styled short as cXc or CxC), is a pilot of a platform to facilitate peer-to-peer capacity building and knowledge-skills-services sharing. It was initially focused on Europe and now is international partnership. More details are available in our Draft Implementation Plan.

Overview

cXc theory of change

It is a project that was started after a pitch at a Wikimedia European Affiliates meeting. Since May 2021, a working group has been meeting on a weekly basis to move the project further.

Project short URL: https://w.wiki/_zb3J

The project directly addresses two of the changes and actions from the movement strategy Recommendation 6 – Invest in skills and leadership development:

  • Establish a methodology that maps assets and needs and generates aggregated data for deploying skills development initiatives based on real needs.
  • Establish a service that facilitates connecting/matching peers across the Movement for teaching and learning skills (e.g. peer-learning, networking, and pooling of information from partners and allies).

FAQ

Why don't you do this on meta?
We have heard from many during the strategy process and after that meta is hard to search, hard to find good information, and even harder to use as a tool to connect people face to face.
Will this also be the knowledge base?
No, for now we just foresee this to be connecting people (groups and affiliates), based on the skills and resources they enter into their profiles. The platform of learning resources is an important separate action in Recommendation 6. It should be added on later or be a separate initiative.
How will this be coordinated with past, existing and future capacity building efforts?
Past efforts have largely been limited to training and have failed to unleash the potential of peer support. Nevertheless, training and learning formats and resources can be continuously accessed and developed. In fact, we foresee that the data on the platform will serve as a real time map of assets and needs and will help movement entities to then create targeted capacity building interventions such as online courses, peer support groups and learning materials, based on actual needs of Wikimedians.

The Capacity Exchange will

  • be an easy way to ask for and offer help around any issue
  • aggregate data on Wikimedia volunteer and staff needs and priorities
  • enable us to surface and utilize mutually beneficial assets as well as address gaps
  • provide quick benefits and easy to reach wins
  • support diversity, solidarity and analytical skills
  • grow and distribute the movement's capacities

Assumptions and principles

  • Learning is always a 2-way street.
  • We start in Europe, but we keep the global community in mind.
  • We are conscious of and apply the Movement Strategy principle of contextualization.
  • The knowledge and skills needed are mostly available among us, and we need to find ways to match needs with assets.
  • We design this with a focus on emerging and marginalized communities, and on small affiliates or affiliates to-be.
  • There are many methods for building capacity: coaching, mentoring, tutoring, internships, technical and financial assistance, group learning, communities of practice, training.
  • Working with what we already have will be easy, cheap, and practical, while furthering solidarity, efficiency, and resilience.
  • Once we have a better understanding of capacity needs and desires, we can figure out group/cohort activities or even more systemic approaches to meet them.

Milestones and Plans

Inititiative transformed into the project. Please follow new Capacity Exchange page maintained by WM Brasil team.

This page is kept for documentation purposes only and will no longer be maintained.

May 2023

After a huge delay in processing WM Brasil proposal for a grant, we received general confirmation of interest and a lot of diverse feedback (in April) and are responding to it in hope that practical work can start again (in June?). Administrative burden around this and reorganizing proposal and project documentation was taken on hugely by WM Brasil staff + contractor likely to lead the project, with significant work also by few cXc team members.

January 2023

We started to scale, trans-localize and work towards sustainability. We have connected with African communities and we decenter Europe by moving the platform care towards WM Brasil. As of November 2022 we are developing plans and proposal for the next phase of scaling and sustaining in more professional way, also by collaborating with compatible Let's Connect initiative. This will create a first larger usecase of a platform. With these input, we can experience wider set of experiences needed to build flexible but stable and sustainable service.

March 2022

We will start small, and we will learn and iterate. We have created a structure and categories for the platform. As of December 2021 we are in the process of adjusting an existing open source software package currently utilized by OER World Map. This will create a first demo of a platform that a small group of interested future users can test and provide feedback on. With this information, we can then decide which software to use for the real thing and build or adapt a better version.

We have also received a rapid grant from the Wikimedia Foundation to work on project documents, connecting to different partners and ensuring language translations for minority languages.

A longer-term implementation plan will be drafted over the winter break and shared here.

We have identified several areas of interest and content which we want to focus on. We will run a pilot using an adapted instance of the open source OERworldmap software. Currently we are working on modifications to the software with the support of Wikimedia Deutschland's software development team.

Members of the working group

(Name, Affiliation, Areas of interest in this context)

Former members and contributors

Documents

Communication

Aside for option of joining us privately in Zoom meetings, we hope to meet all in asynchronous way on public Wikimedia Chat #capacity-building !

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