Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round1/Wikimedia Serbia/Impact report form


Purpose of the report

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FDC funds are allocated to improve the alignment between the Wikimedia movement's strategy and spending; support greater impact and progress towards achieving shared goals; and enable all parts of the movement to learn how to achieve shared goals better and faster.

Funding should lead to increased access to and quality of content on Wikimedia project sites – the two ultimate goals of the Wikimedia movement strategic priorities, individually and as a whole. Funded activities must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

Each entity that receives FDC funding will need to complete this report, which seeks to determine how the funding received by the entity is leading towards these goals. The information you provide will help us to:

  • Identify lessons learned, in terms of both what the entity learned that could benefit the broader movement, and how the entity used movement-wide best practices to accomplish its stated objectives.
  • Assess the performance of the entity over the course of the funded period against the stated objectives in the entity's annual plan.
  • Ensure accountability over how the money was spent. The FDC distributes "general funds", for both ongoing and programmatic expenses; these funds can be spent as the entity best sees fit to accomplish its stated goals. Therefore, although line-item expenses are not expected to be exactly as outlined in the entity's proposal, the FDC wants to ensure that money was spent in a way that led to movement goals.

For more information, please review FDC portal/Reporting requirements or reference your entity's grant agreement.

Basic entity information

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Note you can copy this from your recent progress report if the information is the same.

Table 1

Entity information Legal name of entity Wikimedia Serbia
Entity's fiscal year (mm/dd–mm/dd) 01/01-12/31
12 month timeframe of funds awarded (mm/dd/yy-mm/dd/yy) 01/01-12/31
Contact information (primary) Primary contact name Filip Maljković
Primary contact position in entity President
Primary contact username Dungodung
Primary contact email filip@vikimedija.org
Contact information (secondary) Secondary contact name Ivana Madžarević
Secondary contact position in entity Project and Community Manager
Secondary contact username IvanaMadzarevic
Secondary contact email ivana.madzarevic@vikimedija.org


Overview of the past year

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The purpose of this section is to provide a brief overview of this report. Please use no more than 2–3 paragraphs to address the questions outlined below. You will have an opportunity to address these questions in detail elsewhere in this report. Also, we encourage you to share photographs, videos, and sound files in this report to make it more interactive, and include links to reports, blog posts, plans, etc as these will add context for the readers.

  • HIGHLIGHTS: What were 2–3 important highlights of the past year? (These may include successes, challenges, lessons learned. Please note which you are describing)

Wikimedia Serbia has faced numerous challenges this year. However, the organization has succeded in realizing most of its projects and has started new ones (like FemWiki). In 2014, we have hired a new employee who takes care of the projects and the community, we have organized an EduWiki conference, we have solidified collaboration with the education institutions and broadened our network of new ones. This year, the teachers’ seminar has been accredited as well: The use of the online Wiki encyclopedia in the Serbian language in teaching and learning. Wikipedia in Serbian has reached its 250,000th article.

As far as the challenges are concerned, WMRS has gone through a transition period this year because the Executive Director has been changed. Over the course of two months, there was only one employee at the office, so human resources were diminished. At the end of the year, WMRS has gone through another process of hiring a new person. This position was reserved for an Education Program Manager. The natural disasters that have affected Serbia in May of last year were very challenging, and thus prolonged the planned activities. The uncertain and changeable political climate also has a great influence, especially in collaboration with government institutions.

WMRS has learned a lot over the year and will strive to apply that knowledge in the 2015 Annual plan. The Microgrants project needs a larger project supervision and more meetings with the volunteers who lead them. Also, the evaluation criteria need to be raised/altered when selecting. We had a great number of applicants for the organization of the WikiCamp, but there were difficulties in communication with Wikimedia Hungary, which resulted in a small number of volunteers from Hungary.

  • SWOT: Reflecting on the context outlined for your entity in the FDC proposal, what were some of the contextual elements that either enabled or inhibited the plan? Feel free to include factors unanticipated in the proposal.
    • Strengths: Organizational strengths that enabled the plan
      • Active participation of the Board - involvement in the work of the organization and project realization, working with great commitment
      • The transition period acted as an incubator for educating one of the employees in everything organization-related, which consequently means that she has a better insight in functioning of the organization (alleviates the implementation of its activities).
      • A developed education project
    • Weaknesses: Organizational weaknesses that inhibited the plan
      • A small number of active volunteers
      • A large number of projects to be realized
      • Sometimes, the communication with the Board and other volunteers takes time, which may affect the efficiency
    • Opportunities: External opportunities that enabled the plan
      • We have been recognized as good associates by cultural and education institutions
      • Digitization has become one of the mandatory activities of the government institutions (they need partners with experience in that segment)
    • Threats: Risks or threats that inhibited the plan
      • Bureucratic problems - problems with excessive documentation and customs clearance
      • Political situation in Serbia - changes in government and management of the institutions have affected achieving a collaboration
  • WIKI-FOCUS: What Wikimedia projects was your entity focused on (e.g., Wiki Commons, French Wiktionary) this year?

Last year, Wikimedia Serbia was mostly focused on Serbian language Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Also, the activities on the Serbian Wiktionary have increased.

  • GROWTH: How did your entity grow over the past year (e.g., Number of active editors reached/involved/added, number of articles created, number of events held, number of partipants reached through workshops)? And what were the long term affects of this growth (e.g. relationships with new editors, more returned editors, higher quality articles, etc)?

Wikimedia Serbia has gained 39 members in 2014, 8 exhibitions have been held (Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Monuments), 3 competitions on Serbian Wikipedia (one of them was organized from December 2014 through January 2015). 5 edit-a-thons and over 30 workshops have been organized (Wikipedia, Wiktionary). WMRS has gone through two processes of hiring a new employee (Executive Director and Education Program Manager). Also, WMRS has renewed the initiative that the community gathered around Serbian Wikipedia organize meetings on a regular basis.

Response:

  • Regardless of the fact that we were facing numerous challenges this year, Wikimedia Serbia succeeded in realizing most of its projects. Additionally, FemWiki project was created. Another great challenge was the change of the Executive Director, due to which human resources were diminished over the course of two months. By the end of the year, the position of Education Project Manager had been added in order to further develop Education Program, which recorded a large growth over past years.

Financial summary

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The FDC requires information about how your entity received and spent money over the past year. The FDC distributes general funds, so your entity is not required to use funds exactly as outlined in the proposal. While line-item expenses will not be examined, the FDC and movement wants to understand why the entity spent money in the way it did. If variance in budgeted vs. actual is greater than 20%, please provide explanation in more detail. This helps the FDC understand the rationale behind any significant changes. Note that any changes from the Grant proposal, among other things, must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

If you'd prefer to share a budget created in Google or another tool and import it to wiki, you can do so in the tables below instead of using wiki tables. You can link to an external document, but we ask that you do include a table in this form. We are testing this approach in this form.

Revenues

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Provide exchange rate used:


Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

  • Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
Donation RSD 9,128,308.00 7,479,376.71 3,400.00 2,422,158.56 33,650.00 9,938,585.32 109,699.84 115,412.29 Currency at the beginning of the year was 1 USD = 83.13 RSD. We used middle exchange rate at the end of every quart.

31st of March 1 USD = 83.8855 RSD
30th of June 1 USD = 84.8493 RSD
30th of September 1 USD = 93.6202 RSD
31st of December 1 USD = 99.4641 RSD
Positive exchange rate at the end of the year was 276,261.29 RSD

Membership fees RSD 2,400.00 0 0 0 2,400.00 28.61

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Spending

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You can find audited financial report from our bookkeeper on our website. Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
Office RSD 1,622,220.00 417,541.91 305,499.84 381,032.55 437,005.9 1,541,080.2 19,495.10 17,041.61 87% Occasionally WMRS did some reallocation of resources within the planned budget in annual plan. There are several reasons for this such as implementing the new projects (FemWiki and Wiki Loves Earth) but also the transition period, which included a selection of New Executive Director of WMRS. In addition currency at the beginning of the year was 1 USD = 83.13 RSD. We used middle exchange rate at the end of every quart.

31st of March 1 USD = 83.8855 RSD
30th of June 1 USD = 84.8493 RSD
30th of September 1 USD = 93.6202 RSD
31st of December 1 USD = 99.4641 RSD

Staff RSD 2,925,407.58 491,044.1 751,205.75 753,504.84 1,001,495.09 2,997,249.78 35,156.21 32,824.59 93%
Services RSD 150,639.6 104,156.21 38,267.18 124,527.08 299,310.57 566,261.04 1,810.32 6,032.01 330%
Reserves and Board RSD 285,000.00 5,815.4 4,126.00 20,474.98 9,406.00 38,822.38 3,425.00 431.2 12.5%
Participation in events RSD 820,800.00 205,766.00 113,520.00 114,444.00 126,974.20 560,704.20 9,864.00 6,289.85 63%
Projects and activities RSD 3,324,240.00 654,508.62 124,612.38 803,500.98 1,032,819.5 2,615,441.48 39,949.20 28,237.44 70%
Negative exchange rates RSD 11,168.10 2,747.25 12,083.60 19,350.50 45,349.45 489.13
Sum RSD 9,128,307.18 1,890,000.34 1,339,978.40 2,209,568.03 2,926,361.76 8,365,908.53 109,699.83 91,345.86 83%

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Progress against past year's goals/objectives

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The FDC needs to understand the impact of the initiatives your entity has implemented over the past year. Because the FDC distributes general funds, entities are not required to implement the exact initiatives proposed in the FDC proposal; the FDC expects each entity to spend money in the way it best sees fit to achieve its goals and those of the movement. However, please point out any significant changes from the original proposal, and the reasons for the changes. Note that any changes from the Grant proposal, among other things, must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

Program 1

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Education Program

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Education program of Wikimedia Serbia consists of several different projects, for which we will give key objectives.
 
EduWiki Conference Belgrade 2014
    • EduWiki Conference: This was a conference with the goal of getting educational and scientific institutions acquainted with Wikimedia projects, creating two-way communication, introducing Wikimedia projects in the curriculum of Serbia’s educational institutions and informing state institutions about positive aspects of free knowledge, which is the foundation of Wikimedia projects.
 
High school students editing articles on EduWiki Conference 2014
    • EduWiki Learning Day: This was a one-day event which happened after EduWiki Conference. The key objective was exchanging experiences between project managers (both local and guests from abroad) regarding leading and realization of education programs in the global community and strengthening partnerships.
 
EduWiki Learning Day
    • Wikipedia in Schools: WMRS has a long tradition of conducting lectures and workshops within projects for all types of educational institutions: elementary, high schools and university faculties. The goal was to use Wikimedia projects in educational purposes as a free platform that could be used in many ways. One of those ways is writing articles (seminal papers) on Wikipedia, which help increase quality and quantity of this project. Thanks to the lectures and workshops, new editors and users can be informed about the ways Wikimedia projects work.
    • Seminars and Trainings: This is a project that includes training teachers and professors to work on Wikipedia, so that they would be able to edit on their own and later train their pupils or students and use Wikipedia in their curriculum.
    • Professional Development: This is a project that deals with including seminars and training in the system of professional development of teaching staff through attending obligatory courses and seminars. In contrast to the “Seminars and Trainings” project, which isn't mandatory and is conducted as an extension to the cooperation with an educational institution on a specific Wikipedia article writing project, “Professional Development” is a project where teachers and professors from all over Serbia attend a seminar because they are required to attend several of such seminars throughout a year, with the goal of professional development.

Criteria for success:

    • EduWiki conference: The conference will be considered successful if at least 50 people from Serbia’s education sector attend and participate in the program. Some effects of the conference might not be visible at first, but we do intend on creating new cooperation after the conference, so having two or more new partners in education projects could also be considered a success.
    • Wikipedia in Schools: The expected result of this project depends on the number of institutions we will be working with, as well as their size. All in all, we plan on having at least 400 new articles by the end of the project.
    • Seminars and Training: Seminars are tied to the number of education institutions which we will cooperate with in the project “Wikipedia in Schools”. We expect cooperation with teachers/professors from at least 5 educational institutions.
    • Professional Development: Organizing at least one seminar for teachers from all over Serbia, with at least 20 participants, will be considered successful.
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
  • EduWiki conference: It was a good turnout of planned speakers from Serbia and abroad. As the entrance was free, there was a great number of listeners from Serbia. Because of the working day (Monday) and bad weather, attendance was slightly lower than we expected, so careful choice of terms, as well as better media promotion is something that we might work on in the future. Conference involved staff and several volunteers who had experience in organizing similar events. You can find photos from conference here. 20 volunteers and two employees took part in the organization, and a total of 73 participants had been in attendance. We had two media appearances. Prosvetni pregled shared the information from the Wikimedia Serbia blog. Filip Maljković gave a statement for a TV show “Biljana za vas” (39:14). During the conference, 6 students of the Third Belgrade Gymnasium wrote 7 Wikipedia articles.
  • EduWiki Learning Day: Seven visitors from abroad and several representatives of Wikimedia Serbia attended a very rich program that was designed for this event. Many experiences have been exchanged, and everybody learned something. Staff and several volunteers assisted with the preparation and implementation of events, and we will try to implement what we’ve learned in our future work and development of educational activities of Wikimedia Serbia. You can find photos from Learning day here.
  • Wikipedia in Schools: This project has had very intensive education activities at multiple Faculties and high schools in Serbia. Based on the number of conducted workshops, institutions, students, and volunteers involved, it surpassed the same period in last year. A similar trend is expected in the period to come, which has been presented in the annual plan. This requires additional resources for monitoring and coordination of the events, which is why we hired a new person solely in charge of the Education program in late 2014. It is important to mention that a new project titled “Unipedia” was created at the University of Niš, which focuses on local topics from Niš. Wikimedia Serbia representatives conducted two lectures and two workshops in Niš. On October 15, within the European Week of Programming, Đorđe Stakić held a lecture on Wikipedia to the pupils of the Ninth Gymnasium “Mihailo Petrović Alas”. Below is an overview of high schools and Faculties we have worked with, and metrics we have taken into consideration for monitoring projects (number of articles, number of pupils/students, number of positive and negative bytes). A special page and template have been crated for keeping track of each project, and the WikiMetrics tools have been used for measuring bytes.
 
300

High Schools

  • Third Belgrade Gymnasium (December 2013 - January 2014) - 14 pupils, 15 articles, 93516 positive bytes, 855 negative bytes.
  • Mathematical Gymnasium (February - March) - 33 pupils, 55 articles, 409353 positive bytes, 11001 negative bytes.
  • Fifth Belgrade Gymnasium (May - June) - 10 pupils, 11 articles, 40850 positive bytes, 97 negative bytes.
  • Ivanjica Gymnasium (April - July) - 5 pupils, 7 articles, 98 photographs, 35425 positive bytes, 1363 negative bytes.
 

Faculties

 
Wikimedia Serbia lecture at the Faculty of Mining and Geology, Belgrade

A total of 531 articles have been written, 393 pupils and students have participated in the projects, which is why we can consider this project successful.

  • Seminars and Training: A large number of high school professors, Faculty assistants and professors that we have worked with have been trained in working on Wikipedia, and have been following the promotional materials and other resources. Most of them are planning to dedicate themselves to educational projects in the years to come, and one portion of them has already collaborated with us on these activities. 7 high school professors, 8 teacher’s assistants and 8 professors from the Faculties took part in the projects. 12 librarians have also been trained, and their usernames can be found in this category. A paper titled “Innovations in Teaching Computer Science in Schools Through Work of Pupils on Wikipedia” from the last year’s symposium “Mathematics and Applications” has been accepted and sent to print. It is located in the anthology available at this address. On July 17 and 18, “Open education and digital competence of teachers” conference was held at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, organized by a team of experts for high education reform from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Republic of Serbia. Wikimedia Serbia was also invited to the conference. On July 17, Ivana Madžarević held a lecture “Wikimedia Serbia projects in education and using Wikipedia as a platform for learning and spreading free knowledge”, and on July 18 a workshop titled “Editing Wikipedia in Serbian language” was held. Photos from the conference can be seen here. On November 6, Đorđe Stakić held a presentation at the Faculty of Chemistry, within the 2nd Symposium “Theory and Practice of Science in the Society”. A paper of several pages titled “Wikipedia in Faculties and High Schools in Serbia - Experiences and Challenges” has been published in the symposium anthology.
 
Conference on Open education and teachers' digital competences
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?

Education projects have always had a role in popularization of Wikipedia and increasing participation in terms of editing. Cooperation with education institutions through various projects increases Wikipedia’s visibility and enables even higher participation, and writing articles through education projects increases the quantity and quality of Wikipedia articles. EduWiki Conference deals with increasing participation and reach.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • EduWiki Conference: The preparations for the conference started in September 2013. A team was formed, and then we started coming up with a concept for the event. A website was created for education programs (and the conference itself), and promotional material was prepared. In collaboration with representatives of the local education program and the colleagues from abroad, a five month long program and topic planning began. All the ideas and suggestions that lead us to the final outcome were taken into consideration. In the final month of the event planning, a comprehensive list of preparations was made, including the finalization of the program, preparation of the participants (lecturers, volunteers, organizers), preparation of the venue (Belgrade Youth Center), various kinds of materials (promotional, written, miscellaneous), notifying the media, and public calls, presentations, catering, refreshments, etc. The conference was held on March 24, 2014 at the Belgrade Youth Center. A rich, all-day program was divided into multiple parts, the representatives of Wikimedia Serbia presented their activities, history, ideas, plans, etc. The guests from the institutions that we had worked with (Faculties, high schools, institutes, and the University Library) presented their experiences and examples of the successful collaboration with Wikimedia Serbia. After that, the guests from abroad presented their educational projects to all the participants. At the end of the event, Rod Dunican gave an interview for Serbian Wikinews. For this occasion, a Facebook event was created.
  • EduWiki Learning Day: Simultaneously with the preparations for the Conference, the preparations for the Learning Day were being made. Five months before it started, all the interested guests from the other chapters who have educational projects in their programs were contacted. They actively participated in coming up with ideas and topics for that day. After accepting proposals, the final program was created. In the final month, the preparations for the EduWiki Learning Day were made together with those for the Conference. This was a one-day event that took place on March 23, 2014 at the Wikimedia Serbia office. A rich and interesting program was devised, which included key questions from the education projects that we tried to answer together, and to share our thoughts and experiences with one another.
  • Wikipedia in Schools:
    • contacting professors and assistants
    • conducting preparatory meetings
    • forming a group of pupils/students and agreeing on the topics
    • scheduling and conducting workshops
    • creating a Wikipedia page for better coordination and monitoring of the project
    • creating templates
    • project supervision and consultations with the students
 
First Wiki ambassador at Belgrade University

A Wiki Ambassador for the University of Belgrade has been elected, Nikola Spasojević, and then also ambassadors for another three Faculties from that University: Faculty of Mathematics, Faculty of Philology, and Faculty of Security Studies.

  • Seminars and Trainingg: Activities on this project were often connected to the project Wikimedia in Schools. Contacting the professors, organizing and conducting workshops, counseling and directing to the Wikipedia pages were main activities. In addition to schools, we also trained librarians, which entailed agreeing on the time slot of the workshops, gathering librarians, and teaching about Wikipedia and Wikimedia. The preparation of the material for the conference at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences was also one of the activities.
  • Professional development:
    • scheduling and conducting meetings at Prosvetni pregled
    • composing lists of teachers and professors that we cooperated with
    • sending invitations for the seminars
    • considering the teachers and professors that had signed up and composing a final list of participants on the seminars


If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • EduWiki Conference was well organized, it had a well conceived program. Poor weather conditions and time slot did not go in favor of a better attendance. Also, a better media exposure could have helped the visibility of the event.
  • EduWiki Learning Day fulfilled our expectations. Creative thinking, exchange of ideas and experiences were but a few of the results of that day.
  • Wikipedia In Schools - This project exceeded our expectations by the number of education institutions that we have collaborated with, the number of articles and participants on the project. Seeing as the education projects grow every year, a new position for an Education Project Manager opened in 2015. By hiring another person, Wikimedia Serbia will be able to devote even more time to these projects, and to better supervise and coordinate the activities.
  • Seminars and Training - Professors, teachers, and librarians have been trained, and could actively participate in the projects. A cooperation with professors from all the above listed institutions has been established.
  • Professional Development - Two accredited and prepared seminars (scheduled for December 6th and 13th) have not been realized. After all the preparations and sent invitations to the professors, Wikimedia Serbia has been informed that, due to budget cuts, the seminars have been cancelled and cannot be held. Wikimedia Serbia wanted to take over the expenses and the rest of the organization, but at that moment we were unable to get the information whether that was possible.


Any additional details:


Program 2

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Competitions

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
 

The primary goal of this project is to increase free knowledge through creating new or completing the existing articles on Serbian Wikipedia that have very small chances of being written, except by organizing competitions on Wikipedia. In addition to that, competitions are a good way to increase the motivation of the community. The goals listed in the annual plan are:

  • at least 300 new articles
  • at least 150 improved articles
  • at least 15 participants per competition
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)

In 2014, Wikimedia Serbia has organized three competitions, one of which lasted from December 21, 2014 to January 21, 2015. The metrics are as follows:

  • United Kingdom (March 20th - April 20th): 375 articles, 16 participants (9 new user accounts, 7 existing ones)
  • Women’s Topics (October 17th - November 17th): 248 articles, 8 participants (2 new user accounts, 6 existing ones)
  • Astronomy and Astronautics (December 21st, 2014 - January 21st, 2015): 330 articles, 18 participants (10 new user accounts, 8 existing ones)
 

Two volunteers (per competition) worked on the organization, and they had the support of the employees. Members of the jury were also volunteers - experienced Wikipedians.

Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?

The competitions have proven to be an excellent way to increase the participation on Wikipedia - of both new users as well as the active ones. In addition to that, the competitions affect the increase in quantity and quality of the articles.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?

Key activities are:

  • picking a topic, time frame and awards
  • finding members of the jury
  • creating a Wiki page for every competition (United Kingdom, Women’s Topics, Astronomy and Astronautics)
  • animating the community and promoting the competition (blog post (2, 3), website, Facebook events (1, 2, 3), announcement on the internal list, announcement at the Village Pump)
  • communication and editing help during the competition
  • contest completion, notifying the winners and dispatching the awards
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?

All three planned competitions have been organized. The number of articles also fulfilled our expectations. The number of participants in the Women’s Topics competition was slightly smaller, but we think the reason for that is the topic itself, which is quite specific.

Any additional details:

  • The Astronomy and Astronautics competition had been postponed and thus pushed forward to the following year. The reason for the delay is that we wanted the competition to begin, symbolically, on the winter solstice.


Program 3

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Free Photo Content

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.

In the annual plan for 2014, it was stated that Wikimedia Serbia, within this project, will organize 4 Photo Safaris and competition Wiki Loves Monuments. In addition to these planned activities, WMRS realized the Wiki Loves Earth photo contest.

 
Photo Safari 1
 
Photo Safari 2
 
Photo Safari 3
  • Photo Safari is a continuation of the Wiki expedition in 2013. The main objective was to collect photos from the various places in Serbia that are poorly foto documented or not at all on Wikimedia Commons. It may be a cultural monuments, everyday life, places of great importance in Serbian villages and small towns. For 2014, four Safaris were planned and about 400 high-quality images on average (1600 in total).
  • Wiki Loves Monuments - The main objectives of this project were collecting photos of protected cultural objects in Serbia by organizing the photo contest. One of the aims was to organize competitions in writing and improving articles on protected cultural property in Serbia. The plan is to promote competition through traveling exhibitions.
  • Wiki Loves Earth - In order to support the project Wiki Loves Earth on international level, the decision was made regarding reallocation of resources and organizing the local competition. The objectives of the competition were collecting a great number of photo content of protected natural resources of Serbia, but also to enrich the articles on Wikipedia with relevant photographs. The project concept is very similar to the Wiki Loves Monuments and covers the period of the competition period and judging the submitted photos by eminent members from the world of photography, followed by at least three exhibitions in Serbia. Expected goals are at least 500 photos, at least 15 participants, two photo tours and at least three exhibitions in Serbia. Through the promotion of competition as well as exhibitions and awards, we will promote other projects of Wikimedia Serbia related to the collection of images under a free license. This was a good opportunity to promote Wiki Loves Monuments before its commencement.
 
The winning photo from Wiki Loves Monuments
 
Prize giving event - WLM
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
 
The winning photo from Wiki Loves Earth
  • Wiki Loves Earth: 769* (it is possible that this number goes higher. Many participants had difficulties with uploading images and finding the right way around setting up templates) photos were collected by 41 participant. Five volunteers were in the organization team. We organized four exhibitions in Serbia. All activities are covered by the media through the 20 media appearances. In this project, we had five partners.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • Photo projects have contributed to the raise of visibility and promotion of programs and activities of Wikimedia Serbia and all its projects. These projects also increased the participation of users on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and other wiki projects (online and offline).
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • Photo Safari:
    • determining the places that are not very well covered (or not at all) with photographs
    • creating a route
    • selection of volunteers who will participate
    • photo tour
    • uploading photos to the Commons
  • Wiki Loves Monuments:
    • updating the list of immovable cultural property in Serbia
    • announcing the competition and its propositions on WMRS website, WLM website, on Facebook (page, event), on WMRS blog, on the internal list and Village pump.
    • selection of the jury members
    • selecting and purchasing prizes
    • finding space for exhibitions
    • during the competition there were opportunties to promote competition and we maintained communication with participants by providing assistance and advice
    • announcement of the winners and award prizes (facebook event, the images from the prize giving event and other exhibitions)
    • organizing three exhibitions (two in Belgrade, one in Knjaževac)
    • Project partners were the Centre for the Promotion of Science and Homeland Museum in Knjaževac. In theirs premises exhibitions were held. With the Homeland Museum in Knjaževac and we also realized GLAM cooperation.
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • The objectives were partially met. It was planned to organize four photo expeditions but due to the floods in Serbia some activities regarding Photo Safari were postponed. However, the number of photos exceeded targets. In 2015 we are concidering two-day photo tours. As far as Wiki Loves Earth is concerned our plan was 500 photos and we collected more than 700. We haven’t set an ambitious target initially due to the lack of time for organization and better promotion. The problem appeared with floods after which the competition began. Many natural resources were inaccessible for the shooting, which affected the motivation and the number of participants. Wiki Loves Monuments showed a slight decrease in the number of participants and the number of photos (but increase in the number of photos per user). Many cultural heritage monuments in Serbia are already covered with the images. WMRS believes that organizing Wiki Loves Monuments competition in 2015 would not bring good results anymore and therefore we’ll not proceed with this project.

Any additional details:


Program 4

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GLAM and Digital Belgrade

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • GLAM - The purpose of the GLAM project in 2014 was to strenghten the existing and establish new cooperation with GLAM institutions, developing a two-way collaboration, and releasing content. The plan for Wikimedia Serbia is to contact as many institutions as possible and establish one of the possible models of collaborations with them.
  • Digital Belgrade - Digital Belgrade is a continuation of the project from 2012. The plan for 2014 was to continue working on that project through training the Faculty of Organizational Sciences students, strengthening the collaboration with the Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments, translating and posting texts on Wikipedia, creating the QR codes, and setting up the panels.
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
  • GLAM
    • Five edit-a-thons have been organized:
      • Museum Night in Ivanjica - 8 participants, 10 new articles, 3 improved articles, 60 uploaded photos (12 new articles have been translated into English). Photos from the marathon can be seen here.
      • National Library of Serbia - 9 participants, 19 new articles. Photos from the marathon can be seen here.
 
Fashion Edit-a-thon in Museum of Applied Arts
      • Museum of Applied Arts - 25 participants, 12 new articles, 1 improved, 3 uploaded photographs. Photos from the marathon can be seen here.
 
Homeland Museum in Knjaževac
 
Wikipedian in residance
  • Digital Belgrade
    • students of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences have been trained
    • Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments has submitted a statement about releasing over 900 texts and photographs under the free license
    • meetings have been held with the representatives of the Institute and Svetlana Jovanović, assistant at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences
    • translating the texts and looking for partners for printing the panels with the QR codes is still in progress.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • The main strategic priorities of GLAM activities were increasing the reach, participation, and strengthening cooperation with local partners. Some parts of this program (Wikipedian in Residence and Digital Belgrade) helped increase the quantity of articles, photos and sources available on Wikimedia projects.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • GLAM
    • Edit-a-thons: contacting the representatives of the institutions, conducting preparatory meetings, creating Wikipedia pages, posting the announcements on the blog, website, social networks, animating the community, conducting workshops, and helping the participants.
    • QR Codes at the Museum Night in Ivanjica: organizing the edit-a-thon about cultural heritage and archeological sites, writing and translating (a certain number of) texts, releasing photographs, generating QR codes, forwarding to the organizers of the exhibition.
    • Wikipedian in Residence: conducting two meetings with the intern, agreeing on the work mode, signing the contract, conducting workshops and setting up material, digitization of the 4 volumes of the Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian National Encyclopedia, as well as Three Short Stories by Simo Matavulj, a WMRS representative conducting two guest lectures at the library, in which the GLAM project and the modes of collaboration were more thoroughly presented, writing reports by the intern.
  • Digital Belgrade
    • Organizing the training, communication with the students who participated in the project regarding the editing problems, negotiations with the representatves of the Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments, looking for potentional sponsors.
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • Bearing in mind that the cultural institutions are directly influenced by the changeable political situation, sometimes even a shift in the management department influenced or delayed our collaboration, but WMRS thinks that we have made a significant step forward in promoting the program and the activities, not only in Belgrade, but also in other cities in Serbia. Some of the institutions approached us themselves in 2015 and asked about a possible cooperation with us.

Any additional details:


Program 5

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Wiktionary

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Continuation of the project “1001 Arabic words” and the starting of new Wiktionaries through cooperation with the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, were the main objectives of Wikimedia Serbia in 2014. The potential gain is the activation of volunteers involved in Wiktionary and other activities of WMRS. When we contacted the Faculty of Philology and negotiated with their representatives, it was decided that the initial goal for other dictionaries be 100 words per dictionary.
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)

We have organized introductory lectures and workshops where three volunteers, previously active in the project “1001 Arabic words” and one employee have participated.

 
Workshop in Wikimedia Serbia office
  • 1001 Arabic words - The project has continued since February 2014, after the end of exam term in universities. At the beginning of the project, Dictionary counted 664 words. The project team has received two new volunteers. Every Thursday and Saturday volunteers gathered and had workshops in the Wikimedia Serbia office. The goal was achieved according to the plan in June, when we held a promotion of Arabic-Serbian dictionary in Belgrade Youth Centre, which was attended by about 70 guests. Guest speakers were Professor Ivana Mali, Professor Rade Božović, team members and Exectuve Director of WMRS, Mile Kiš. During the summer no activities were conducted, but the team gathered in October. This time, students have sent a public invitation to their colleagues from the faculty who wish to participate in the project. A total of nine volunteers has signed up, seven of whom were engaged in the project. Workshops were held until the end of the year in the WMRS office and the total number of implemented words during year 2014 was 467, while the total number of entered words amounted to 1131. The group had the support of the office in the form of technical issues and provision of refreshments and food.
  • Swedish dictionary (started November 6) - Wikimedia Serbia has already collaborated with the Department for the Swedish language at the Faculty of Philology. In the meantime, they have heard about Wiktionary project and were interested in implementing the project in their department. The project was preceded by a meeting with the lecturer and an agreement on the ultimate goal - 100 words by the end of 2014. Volunteers from the project “1001 Arabic word”, with the support of an employee, held an introductory lecture and workshop. A group of 12 volunteers exceeded the goal and implemented 128 words.
  • Ukrainian dictionary (started November 7) - Activities in this dictionary were conducted similarly to the organization of other dictionaries. Students expressed a desire to work from home or in groups at the university, and, if necessary, to come to the WMRS office or ask for help from volunteers and employees. A group of nine volunteers implemented 97 words.
  • Slovak dictionary (started December 13) - Activities include preparatory meeting with assistants, team organisation, introductory lectures and organizing workshops at the university and in the WMRS office. A group of five volunteers implemented 117 words into the dictionary.
  • Norwegian dictionary (started November 20) - A group of seven volunteers implemented 21 word into the dictionary.
  • Chinese dictionary (started November 24) - This project has encountered some problems. WMRS representatives held an introductory lecture and workshop, Trello was introduced as a platform for better organisation and communication, but the group didn’t succeed to properly dedicate itself to the completion of the project.


Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?

By supporting the development of smaller projects, we are encouraging innovation, improving their quality and enhancing awareness of their existence. By engaging students to actively participate in projects like this, we are increasing awareness regarding Wikimedia and attracting new volunteers for Wikimedia Serbia.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
 
Promotion of "1001 Arabic words"
 
  • 1001 Arabic words
    • Volunteers organized their own preparatory meetings in the first and second phase;
    • Assembling a team that will work on the project
    • Scheduling workshops - communication in a group
    • Holding workshops
    • Revision by more experienced team members
    • The organization of Wiktionary promotion - contacting the Youth Center and scheduling the venue; program design; posting news on the blog, website and facebook; sending invitations to embassies, professors of the Faculty of Philology and other guests; ordering catering; designing, printing and setting up posters for promotion; address by Professor Rade Božović and Professor Ivana Mali to the audience, presentation of the project by the team members of “1001 Arabic words”, speech by Mile Kiš; distribution of promo material to guests.
    • Opening a public call for students to participate in the project in its second phase
    • Contacting and selection of candidates
    • Scheduling and holding workshops twice a week in the WMRS office
  • Other dictionaries

contacting assistants from the Faculty of Philology preparing and holding the introductory lectures and workshops creating a dictionary

If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • Two dictionaries have not reached the goal of 100 words. Students felt that the best option for them was to work from home, which did not prove to be effective. Others were successfuly finished and ran according to the plan.

Any additional details:


Program 6

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Supporting Regional Corporation

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.

As one of the oldest chapters in the region, Wikimedia Serbia has started many initiatives for regional cooperation. We have previously organized several very successful regional conferences — the most recent was the CEE (Central and Eastern European) conference in 2012 — which resulted in the formation of communities and chapters in the region. Our goals were supporting development, strengthening and connecting of communities in our region. Also, our goal was to participate and enable participation of representatives of the broader community in events, to help in organizing events either by giving advice or by active participation in the organizational process. We expected the CEE conference to be successfully organized, having at least 30 participants from about 15 countries and to result in visible inter-chapter cooperation. From Wikicamps program: we expected at least one Wikicamp to take place, with a minimum of 20 participants and two topics across two days.

What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
  • Participation in conferences: In 2014, representatives of Wikimedia Serbia attended the following events:
    • Board Training Workshop in London (1 representative)
    • Executive Directors meeting in Berlin (1 representative)
    • Education Collaborative meeting in Prague (1 representative)
    • Wikimedia Conference in Berlin (4 representatives)
    • Wikimania in London (4 representatives)
    • EduWiki Conference / Education Collaborative meeting in Edinburgh (1 representative)
    • AdaCamp in Berlin (1 representative)
    • CEE conference in Kiev, where three representatives presented the work of the organization and presented their projects
 
Workshop at Palić
 
 
Workshop in Szeged
  • Wikicamp: Wiki Camp Palić-Szeged (Вики Камп Палић-Сегедин) was held for the first time ever this summer. It was organized by Wikimedia Serbia and Wikimedia Hungary in order to promote networking and develop stronger relationships among the chapters. On the next-to-last weekend of August, 17 volunteers from Serbia and 3 volunteers from Hungary gathered at Palić and Szeged. Three days, two cities, and 20 highly motivated participants resulted in a large number of photographs and 32 articles on the Serbian Wikipedia about topics related to Serbia and Hungary. All articles and attendees are listed here (in English and in Serbian). Photos are available on Commons. Among the participants of Wiki Camp, there were those who had not previously worked on Wikipedia or weren’t familiar with the projects of the organization, which is an opportunity for training new people and potential Wikipedians and Wikimedians. At the first edit-a-thon there were 20 Wikipedians. Eight new articles were written and five were improved, all covering topics related to Serbia. Participants from Hungary joined us a little later. Apart from the workshop and edit-a-thon, we had two photo tours in Subotica and Palic, where we visited the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Synagogue of Subotica and the Town Hall. After the second tour at Palic Lake, we successfully ended the first day of the camp with all participants full of positive impressions. The following day, we arrived in Szeged around 12pm. We first visited the city and its attractions, as well as the museum, where we took ​​a large number of photos. After lunch, we went back to the accommodation where we held a workshop about editing Wikipedia. Once again we were surprised by the motivation of the attendees – some of them stayed to edit until 11pm. 16 new articles were created and three were improved. This time, the topics were related to Hungary. The conference part of the camp was planned for the third day. Filip Maljković, the president of Wikimedia Serbia, presented the chapter and its projects, and Andrea Toth, Wikimedia Hungary Office Manager, talked briefly about Wikimedia Hungary. We then divided the participants into groups and gave them short case studies to consider, which involved improving cooperation between WMRS and WMHU. Representatives of the groups presented their creative solutions and then we officially finished the first Wikicamp 2014. We presented certificates to participants, and three of them joined Wikimedia Serbia. Maljkovic, Toth, and Ivana Madžarević, Project and Community Manager, each gave statements to reporter Milenko Radić, a Serbian journalist from a Hungarian radio station. Ivana Madžarević made a draft for Wikimedia Foundation blog in Serbian and English version. A video was made and uploaded to Commons.
  • Supporting volunteers from the Republic of Srpska (part of Bosnia and Herzegovina) - This project was originally conceived as a project with a goal to animate the community by organizing a photo contest in the Republic of Srpska. We contacted one Wikipedian from Doboj and three volunteers from Višegrad who were interested in the project. Since the time was passing and we didn’t hear from that Wikipedian, staff from WMRS and volunteers from Višegrad wrote a project proposal which was forwarded to the Wikimedia Foundation in order to obtain funds through the PEG program. After talking with the representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation, we realized that it’s better not to risk the success of the project but to invest resources in the training of volunteers by the end of the year, and after that volunteers will rewrite the project. Due to the transition period of WMRS and two job vacancies (therefore due to reduced human capacity) the workshops were postponed for the January 2015, when they were held. More information about the event can be found on this page on Wikipedia and on our blog. We want to animate people and get them involved in Wiki movement, so they can, at some point, establish community in the Republic of Srpska.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?

This program mostly had influence on the increase of participation of the new and existing volunteers and on the promotion of Wikimedia Serbia and its activities. Through organizing Wikicamp, we were able to motivate members of the community and involve them in our projects. The situation is similar with volunteers from Višegrad. At the conferences we presented successful programs and so enabled the global community to be introduced with our work and activities.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • Wikicamp:
    • communication with the representatives of the Wikimedia Hungary
    • agreement about the venues, the number of participants and cost sharing
    • creating a page on Wikipedia in Serbian and English language
    • announcing the call for participants
    • selection of applicants
    • booking the accommodation, transport and food
    • contacting participants
    • printing certificates and purchasing the materials for workshops
    • realization of the camp
    • post on Wikimedia Serbia blog after the end of the camp and on the Wikimedia Foundation blog
    • posting news in Education Newsletter
    • posting news on Wikinews
    • creating video record on Commons
    • presenting the project on CEE conference in Kiev
  • Supporting volunteers from the Republic of Srpska (part of Bosnia and Herzegovina)
    • communication with the volunteers from the Republic of Srpska and Wikipedian from Doboj
    • sending necessary links and introducing them with the projects of Wikimedia Serbia
    • writing project proposal - Trace of a soul
    • communication with representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation
    • coordination of activities related to the scheduling and maintening workshops
    • a two-day workshop was held in January 2015.
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • Wikicamp: Number of participants from Serbia has fulfilled the expectations. Even some of the participants became members of WMRS and turned to other projects. Everything was according to plan and there were no problems. We expected more participants from Hungary, which we could not have influence on. We believe that the summer holidays may have led to reduced attendance by volunteers from Hungary.
  • Supporting volunteers from the Republic of Srpska: In the realization of this project, we had encountered difficulties due to unresponsiveness of a volunteer from Doboj. We couldn’t carry out the training in 2014, but it was realized immediately in January, so volunteers can apply in 2015, with a similar project like last year. This time the organizers will be familiar with the work on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons as well as with other projects of WMRS.

Any additional details:


Program 7

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Community Support

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.

The purpose of this project was to increase visibility and community outreach through posting on the blog and websites and through the activities on social networks, which we’ve expected to result in an influx of new volunteers and partners. Travelling to places outside Belgrade aimed to help with strengthening and supporting the community in other parts of Serbia and enable us to reach out to volunteers in remote areas to help them be more engaged in activities of Wikimedia Serbia.

What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
  • Blog: 38 blog posts written and translated
  • Social networks:
    • Facebook:
      • Serbian Wikipedia: 401 posts, 455 new likes
      • Wikimedia Serbia: 202 posts, 706 new likes, 15 events
      • Other pages - Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Monuments, World War I - 100 years later, 1001 Arabic word
    • Twitter:
      • Wikimedia Serbia: 202 posts, 177 followers
    • LinkedIn:
      • Wikimedia Serbia: 5 posts, 13 new followers
  • All posts were announced at Wikipedia Community portal and posted on page Wikipedia:Live. Two events were organized at the Wikimedia Serbia office:

Darko Gajić, an out-of-town active Wikipedian, has visited Wikimedia Serbia, aiming to get more information about its community and projects. On that occasion, we have organized several meetings with GLAM institutions, in which he took part. Very pleased with the visit, Darko has shown the will and desire to keep editing Wikipedia. He is still very active in this field.

Furthermore, visit of two active Wikipedians to the office was organized. After getting informed about Wikimedia projects, they have expressed their interest in joining GLAM and EduWiki projects. They have participated in the debate “Gender and the Left”, where they spoke about representation of femle editors and gender gap on Wikipedia.

Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?

We have enabled the community to get informed about (as well as to participate in) Wikimedia Serbia events and happenings through active blog post writing, using of social networks and other communication channels. For interested members of the community regular meetings and debates were provided. Their further engagement and participation at the events is a clear sign that this is a good way to motivate the community to take part in Wikimedia Serbia events.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • Blog post writing (38 posts, 2 employees and 3 volunteers)
  • Social network pages and profiles updating (2 employees)
  • Websites and mailing lists (15 volunteers and 2 employees)
  • Organizing meetings with the volunteers
  • All of the events were created and posted on page Wikipedia:Live
  • All of the blog posts were posted on Wikipedia Community portal as well
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?

Everything went according to plan. Many portals transferred news from Wikimedia Serbia website and blog page, which was the aim (keeping community informed and active). Weak mailing list activity is still one of the challenges Wikimedia Serbia is facing.

Any additional details:


Program 8

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Creative Commons

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Creative Commons: Serbian public is not familiar with the concept of copyright or culture of free licenses. In the past, we have been successful in raising public awareness in this regard, which resulted in improving the quality of multimedia content related to Serbia in Wikimedia projects. The aim of this project is to continue with the popularization of free licenses culture in Serbia, organizing lectures and promotions Creative Commons in Belgrade and Serbia.
  • Wiki Loves Science is a continuation of the same project from 2012 and 2013, with the aim of promoting open standards and open access through lectures by experts and the public debate. We expect that this project will lead to the publication of at least ten blog posts creativecommons.org.rs and at least five events related to Creative Commons and Wiki Loves Science.
 
Tribune in Museum in Contemporary Arts in Belgrade
 
Creative Commons panel in National Library of Serbia
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
  • Creative Commons: There were 8 panels, 2 lectures and 1 panel during 2014 throughout Serbia. Venue and partners are:
    • Belgrade Youth Centre, Belgrade
    • National Library Bečej
    • National Museum of Kraljevo
    • National Library of Užice
    • Library "Vuk Karadžić", Prijepolje
    • Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade
    • Media center, Belgrade
    • Museum of Yugoslav History, Belgrade
    • Museum of Science and Technology, Belgrade
    • National Library of Serbia, Belgrade
    • University Library "Svetozar Marković", Belgrade

Lectures and panels were attended by 200 people in total. The number of media appearances is 27. All photos from the event can be seen here. The events were organized by the project leader, Nevenka Antić, two employees and two volunteers.

Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?

By raising awareness about copyright, Open Standards and Open Access, this project influenced quality — as well as quantity — of Serbia related content on Wikimedia projects.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • Creative Commons:
    • maintaining the website
    • preparation and organization of debate program
    • contacting institutions
    • contacting lecturers
    • preparation and printing the fliers
    • sending the announcements for the debate program
    • giving statements for the media
    • providing catering
    • booking and paying for the accommodation in towns outside of Belgrade
 
 
Ethnographic Institute SASA, Library
  • Wiki Loves Science:
    • maintaining the web pages for Wiki Loves Science
    • choosing the associates and negotiations with partners
    • creating a legal documentation and distribution to the partners
    • adequate cooperation with partners
    • providing help to the team members of WLS
    • creating, preparing and uploading photos to the photo gallery (descriptions, editing (Serbian-English), author’s upload, CC licenses and other data)
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?

Everything went according to plan. Good communication and cooperation with the partners significantly helped.

Any additional details:


Program 9

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World War I - 100 years later

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • World War I - 100 years later - the project was created as a commemoration of the beginning of World War I. Its goal was to increase the quality and quantity of content on Wikimedia projects related to World War I. The project was planned to last throughout 2014. The objectives were: at least three edit-a-thons as part of the project, with at least 10 participants in each of them and 40 new or improved articles as a result.
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
 
Edit-a-thon in National Library of Serbia
  • Edit-a-thon: An edit-a-thon was organized in the National Library of Serbia. The edit-a-thon was attended by 9 participants and 19 articles were created. Photos from this event can be seen in this category.
 
Photo released from Association of Descendants of Serbian Warriors 1912-1920
  • Cooperation: Wikimedia Serbia has cooperated with the Association of Descendants of Serbian Warriors 1912-1920. 10 posted photos can be seen in this category.
  • New Cooperation: Within the project Europeana 1914-1918, WMRS has been in contact with representatives from Europeana and Belgrade City Library. We arranged the cooperation for the next year. Namely, the project Europeana 1914-1918 aims to collect and digitize the heritage of World War I. In Serbia, they had been organized days of collecting family memories of World War I, titled "Memory mobilization". Days of collecting the heritage took place in Belgrade, Čačak and Novi Sad, and they were organized by the City Library. WMRS representatives held a meeting with representatives from Belgrade City Library and Europeana. We all agreed about the idea of organizing an edit-a-thon at the City Library with the World War I theme. Digitized material will be placed on Wikimedia Commons until the beginning of the event and it will be used for illustrating the articles.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • This project was expected to affect the increase of quality content on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. It began with an edit-a-thon and the release of photos. However, activities didn’t go as planned because of the prioritization.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • Edit-a-thon:
    • contacting the representatives of National Library of Serbia and agreeing with them on terms, venue and equipment
    • creating an event page on Wikipedia
    • posting blog post, announcement on Village Pump, mailing list and social networks
    • edit-a-thon
  • Cooperation:
    • contacting the Association of Descendants of Serbian Warriors 1912-1920
    • creating and sending the statement of compliance regarding releasing the photos to the partners
    • uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons
  • New cooperation:
    • contacting the organizers of the “Memory mobilization“
    • holding the meeting with organizers
    • establishing the communication with other coordinators from Europeana for suggestions and comments
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?

This project has not reached the expected results, mainly because of Wikimedia Serbia’s reduced human resources. Transition period through which WMRS has passed directly influenced the volunteers' and employees' focus on other, more important things, like the election of the Executive Director and the continuation of smooth running of the office and other projects.

As we have contacted many institutions in the past, whose cooperation would have helped us with this project, we realized that they already had similar projects with the same goal (commemoration of the beginning of World War I), and those institutions that were relevant and supposed to donate photos were not able to give them for free use until the end of their presentation about this project.

Any additional details:


Program 10

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Microgrants

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.

Some of the projects we wanted to implement in the following year were not large/detailed enough or were dependent on third parties, so they could not require a timeframe for implementation. Also, sometimes after contacting new people/organizations, there is a weak opportunity to implement a project that is smaller in scope, which would only cause delay from the beginning. The aim of this program is to find the funds on hand if and when such opportunities arise. We expect the launch of at least 3 projects that matched the description: one in the first half of the year and two in the second half, with at least five volunteers to take part in their implementation.

What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)

The following projects were funded Microgrants with planned objectives and timeframe:

 
Traditional craft
  • Traditional Crafts - This project was led by two volunteers aiming to show the beauty of old crafts through photographs and exhibitions. The entire project includes a tour of 20 destinations - craft shops that foster old-fashioned crafts (bindery, quilt shops, weaving shops, etc.), photographing, selection and choice of at least 500 photos for posting on Wikimedia Commons. Within the project plans were exhibitions in five towns in Serbia: Subotica, Belgrade, Zemun, Kruševac and Niš. The plan was to collect photos by the end of August and the beginning of September, and work on organizing exhibitions afterwards.
 
Workshop of editing Wikipedia in Kraljevo
  • Increasing capacity of Wikimedia Serbia in Kraljevo - This project is led by Bojana Minović, with the aim to promote Wikipedia and Wikimedia Serbia in Kraljevo, desiring the activities to result with activating the community in Kraljevo. Wikimedia Serbia would be presented to young people through workshops about editing Wikipedia. The goal was for young people to get informed about the importance of open access to knowledge on the Internet, as well as the awakening of their interest to contribute to this content themselves.
Video material from the project Hawk Eye
  • Hawk Eye - Diagnostic Sports Center Šabac- The activities were directed towards the improvement and development of sport, physical education and recreation. Special emphasis is placed on developing a system of "Eagle Eye," which would find its application in improving sports results, recovery of athletes, the prevention of injury and learning proper movement techniques. The main objective of the project is the collection of sports movement videos and placing them on Wikimedia Commons. Three volunteers were involved with the project. Collection of materials was planned for August and September and set up of multimedia files on Commons in October (continuing after the project).
 
Photo from Wiki Biodiversity project
  • Wiki Biodiversity - The main objective of the project is geo-referenced photographing of flora and fauna of the southeast and southwest of Serbia (municipalities of Trgovište, Bujanovac, Bosilegrad, Surdulica, Tutin and the city of Novi Pazar), with special emphasis on mammals, aquatic invertebrates and plants. Additional goals were photographing characteristic ecosystems, human settlements, geographical features and protected natural and cultural resources. Two multi-day off-road work tours were planned, each of them expected to collect photos of at least: one species of mammals, 5 photos of invertebrate larvae, 20 photos of plant species, one photo of a specific ecosystem, 10 photos of settlements and geographical features and 5 photos of protected goods.
 
Architecture for the neighbors
  • Communication point - Architecture for neighbors
    • Primary goals of the project:
      • Collection of material on a minimum of 30 residential buildings in the territory of Belgrade (five centers) which belong to the period of modernism between the two world wars in Belgrade, and are not under the protection.
      • Creating and setting in a public space just as much info panels that will inform users about the history of the building, the architect, the period and the most important characteristics of the facility.
      • Education and informing residents and visitors of the buildings about the basic concepts of residential architecture in Belgrade. (Primary users of mapped building: around 500).
      • One of the goals of such project was to make the material of this kind available in digital format. The idea was to get these photos under free licence and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. We aimed to get 10 photos per building. Logo of Wikimedia Serbia as well as QRpedia QR codes was to be on these info panels. Aside from photos and QR codes, it was planed to create 60 articles on Serbian Wikipedia regarding architects and buildings.
    • Secondary goals:
      • Building a platform for launching similar initiatives in the region.
      • Inviting citizens to an active approach to the processes of preserving the urban identity of Belgrade and cultural heritage which that identity is a part of.
      • Pointing out to the responsible institutions the potential value and need for the preservation of these buildings.
      • Contribution to the creation of a more dynamic cultural and touristic offer of Belgrade.
  • Education project in Jagodina - This project had the goal to promote digital competence of pupils of the “Joca Milosavljević” elementary school in Bagrdan, through the work of enrichment of the free knowledge base on the Internet. Specific goals were:
    • Affirmation of the cultural-historical heritage of Bagrdan and its environment through photography, description, and publishing on Wikimedia Commons
    • Education of a group of students of the “Joca Milosavljević” elementary school in Bagrdan in the field of digital literacy, through collecting knowledge and their publishing on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
    • The desired outcome was: at least five monuments in Bagrdan and the surrounding area presented on Wikipedia, two teachers of the “Joca Milosavljević” elementary school in Bagrdan trained in working on Wikipedia, five pupils participated in the research work, photography, and work presentation on Wikipedia.
Liquid Art
  • Liquid Art - Drina Biodiversity - The idea of the project was to showcase to the viewer the nature surrounding the river Drina in the best way possible through a series of videos. Myriad of plant and animal species were planned to be covered through a source-to-mouth exploration of the Drina river, with the help from a team of experts from the Faculty of Sciences, with whom their volunteers already collaborated very well.
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)

Wikimedia Serbia has announced a competition for grants on April 19, with deadline to submit the project idea until May 31. Project applicants had an extenuating circumstance since at the beginning they've sent just the idea, and the Committee for the grants would help with the creation of the project. In total 35 proposals arrived, out of which 12 were rejected since their objectives were inconsistent with the goals of Wikimedia Serbia. After three rounds of selection and holding of several meetings with the project leaders, seven proposals were selected for funding. Contracts were signed and the implementation of the projects had started.

Traditional Crafts

  • Planned locations were visited and documented with photographs.
  • Project Leaders were trained to edit Wikipedia and upload to Wikimedia Commons.
  • Photos are placed in this category.
  • Exhibition photos printing was ordered and paid.

Two volunteers participated in project organization, for organization of meetings and workshops Wikimedia Serbia employees were responsible.

The leaders of this project submitted project proposal for 2015, but the project was rejected.

Increasing capacity of Wikimedia Serbia in Kraljevo - In September, two workshops were held at the National Museum Kraljevo (Kraljevo edits Wikipedia) and in association Fenomena (Women editing Wikipedia). One of the workshops was topical, FemWiki workshop. Information about workshops were communicated by the LUFTING show. Both workshops were attended by 16 participants. Photos from the workshop can be found here.

Hawk Eye - Diagnostic Sports Center Šabac - As the result of this project, 72 photo and video files have been collected. Here you can see use of photo and video materials in the articles. Project involved six volunteers who had held internal workshops in order to instruct file upload on Wikimedia Commons. The workshop was attended by 10 participants.

The leaders of the project submitted a project proposal for 2015, but the project was rejected due to incompleteness of the application.

Wiki Biodiversity

  • Number of files placed on Wikimedia Commons is 958.
  • Number of articles created on Serbian Wikipedia is 5 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
  • Number of articles improved on Serbian Wikipedia is 37.
  • Number of Wikipedia articles created and improved in other languages is 214.
  • Number of Wikimedia Commons files, used in other projects is 84.
  • The project involved three volunteers.

Communication point - Architecture for neighbors

  • Total of 114 photographies was placed on Wikimedia Commons in this category.
  • Special training was held for project leaders at the Wikimedia Serbia office.
  • Two volunteers and one employee (training) participated in project organization
  • Panel print was ordered and paid for.

Edu project in Jagodina

  • Number of articles created and improved on Serbian Wikipedia: 1
  • Number of photographs placed on Wikimedia Commons: 12
  • Two teachers and 10 students were involved in the project.
  • Five workshops and four meetings of the project team were held.

The leaders of the project submitted a project proposal for 2015 (Wiki school - our school), which was accepted.

Liquid Art - Drina Biodiversity

  • Number of articles improved on Serbian Wikipedia: 21
  • Number of Wikipedia articles improved in other languages: 28
  • Number of photographs and video files placed on Wikimedia Commons: 47, in this category.
  • Usage of photos can be traced on this link.

The leaders of the project submitted a project proposal for 2015, but the project was rejected.

Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?

This type of projects has contributed to greater participation and increased the visibility of the organization by engaging people who have not been previously active in the Wikimedia community. Projects applicants proposed smaller programs that make gaining experience and better understanding of the broader Wikimedia movement and its goals easier.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • Call for proposals was written
  • Project promotion has started
  • Media coverage
  • Constant communication with the project submitters was carried out
  • Three rounds of selection were performed after completion of the competition

Grants Committee (grants collection), the Board (decision-making) and two employees (documentation and administration) have participated in the project.

If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?

Projects were implemented at the end, but we encountered difficulties in communication with the project leaders. Some of the project leaders could not handle well editing Wikipedia or uploading and categorization of Wikimedia Commons files, in some cases equipment was delayed and some have cancelled exhibitions due to heavy schedule of cultural centers so they were rescheduled for the next year. Microgrant projects were conceived as an incubator of ideas for the annual plan. This was successful as some of the leaders of the projects applied with new proposals.

Any additional details:


Program 11

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FemWiki

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.

FemWiki project was created with two objectives: to increase the number of women who edit Serbian Wikipedia and to increase the quality and quantity of articles on Wikipedia when it comes to gender issues, feminist terminology and biographies of women. This year, the goal was to get as many activists from feminist organizations from all over Serbia acquainted with Wikimedia Serbia and editing Wikipedia. It was essential that through FemWiki program they become aware of another "front" on which to fight for gender equality and that that issue expands in those circles. The idea was that we become relevant partner in their eyes, when it comes to activism on gender gap in Serbia. This would motivate them to edit Wikipedia, but also to spread the word about this topic and eventually become our associates in the future.

Expected metrics by the end of year:

  • Number of organizations we cooperate with: about 10
  • Number of new articles: about 50
  • Number of improved articles: about 20
  • Number of participants: about 50
  • Number of participants that remain on Wikipedia: about 10
  • The total number of workshops: between 15 and 20
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
 
FemWiki workshop in Kraljevo
 
FemWiki workshop in Haklab
  • Number of created, improved articles: 80 (50 articles were written on workshops and 30 during the competition. One participant wanted to contribute the project by adding the FemWiki template to her articles)
  • Number of participants: 52
  • Number of workshops: 19 in Belgrade, 3 out of Belgrade (Niš, Kraljevo, Kragujevac); a steady term for workshops was established in Haklab – Friday afternoon.
  • An overview of all activities was published on Wikimedia Serbia's Blog and also on Wikimedia Foundation’s Blog
  • Cooperation with similar organizations was established: ŽINDOK, Centar za marginu, Žene sa interneta, Fenomena (Kragujevac), Ženski prostor (Niš).
  • One competition was devoted to "women topics" that has already been mentioned.
  • The authors of “Dictionary of gender equality” were contacted and they allowed for the entire content of the Dictionary to be placed on Wikipedia would enlarge the content on Wikipedia by 102 entries.
  • Participation and presentation of the project on two events: Panel discussions organized by “Gender and the Left”: Redefinition of feminism: a challenge for stereotypes, simplification, prejudice (February) and Feminist biographies (April); Panel discussion on women and technology: BeFem – Feminist culture and action festival (December).
  • Participation on regional conference “Women Rock IT” in Sarajevo and Ada Camp in Berlin.
  • The idea of female wiki camp in Priština was spawned – The project was written and accepted.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?

FemWiki project can not be found in the annual plan for 2014, but Wikimedia Serbia recognized it as a strategically important project. Increase of participation (in this case particularly editors) was one of the strategic goals, but also an increase of quality of articles through increasing of content about female topics.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?

Activities on this project proceeded as planned. There have been some minor problems during the implementation of some workshops:

  • There were problems with internet connection on some workshops
  • Sometimes participants were not sufficiently active after the workshop or they felt insecure to post articles.

Any additional details:


Program 12

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Wikicopter

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Wikimedia projects have a large amount of media files (photos and videos), but they are mostly amateur or near amateur quality. Specifically, aerial photographs of Serbia are lacking or completely absent, since they typically require very expensive equipment. The objective of this program was to enable Wikimedians to make aerial photographs. The project should have been conducted firstly on the territory of Belgrade, and later as a part of the Photo Safari project throughout Serbia.
  • The plan is to create a free guide for building a quadricopter.
  • The plan is to build Wikicopter, which will be in the ownership of Wikimedia Serbia.
  • The plan is to make at least 4 photo tours with at least 400 photos in total, using the Wikicopter.
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)

All parts for Wikicopter are ordered. There were some delays regarding ordering parts, due to customs procedures. One of the ordered products has been even returned to the country of origin, but the problem was eventually solved. Because of these problems, activities of assembling the Wikicopter and organizing photo tours were not possible. Since the funds were spent, WMRS decided to continue with this project in 2015, the year in which the focus will be on collecting photo materials and uploading them on Wikimedia Commons. News of Wikicopter spread out in Haklab, whose community should be involved in assembling the copter and in photo tours.

Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?

This project was expected to increase the participation of those who would like to operate Wikicopter as well as to collect a large number of new, high-quality aerial photos to Wikimedia projects the likes of which don't yet exist. Due to the problems which are explained in the previous paragraph, the goals are not met.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • ordering parts for Wikicopter
  • dealing with problems regarding customs procedures
  • animating the community from Haklab
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • As explained, because of the problems with the customs, activities have been postponed for 2015.

Any additional details:


Lessons learned

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Lessons from the past

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A key objective of the funding is to enable the movement as a whole to understand how to achieve shared goals better and faster. An important way of doing this is to identify lessons learned and insights from entities who receive funds, and to share these lessons across the movement. Please answer the following questions in 1–2 paragraphs each.

1. What were your major accomplishments in the past year, and how did you help to achieve movement goals?

We had a lot of activities in the previous year, in the field of educational projects, which have produced a large amount of new content, but also a large amount of work. This has become too big for volunteer work, but it laid the foundation for a new position of the Education Program Manager, which was filled at the beginning of 2015, and for which election process took place in late 2014. Also, as a part of the Education program, we held the international and local conference last year, which had positive outcomes in the context of visibility of Wikimedia Serbia's Education program.

We also had success in projects that were aimed at generating photo and text content, where the existing users of Wikipedia, but also newcomers, thanks to the activities of Wikimedia Serbia, made a significant contribution to the Serbian Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Wiktionary was also significantly enriched with content, due to the increased activity of one of our projects.

2. What were your major setbacks in the past year (e.g., programs that were not successful)?

The biggest failures were Wikicopter and First World War – 100 years after projects. As stated in the sections related to these projects, there have been difficulties in their implementation.

As explained above, due to the delays and customs procedures, activities were postponed for the next year. In the first case, there were unforeseen delays in form of slow customs procedure for import of the assembling parts and in the second case, the project had no ambitious goals set and it was not possible to pay enough attention to it because of temporary circumstances in the organization.

Some of the microgrants have also failed, where the main problem was lack of understanding of some processes from volunteers who were working on those projects. If the call for microgrants had been placed earlier, more time would have been on disposal for their realization and possibly for better results.

3. What factors (organizational, environmental) enabled your success?

The unexpectedly large number of applications for microgrants has enabled us to find interesting projects within the selection, which we would not have realized otherwise. The reason for the large number of applications lies in the way the call for participation was placed and in the fact that we used the networks we have not been using before for spreading the call.

Thanks to well organized work and a great effort by the board, we were able to overcome the transitional period in the middle of the last year. Partially extenuating circumstance was the fact that that happened during the summer period, when activities are lower.

Previous experience and cooperation with many education institutions has affected the success of the EduWiki Conference, which has produced new cooperations, of which many have transferred to 2015.

4. What unanticipated challenges did you encounter and how did this affect what you were able to accomplish?

During the realization of this year's plan, there were a few unforeseen circumstances, which in a way have influenced our work. During May, great floods have disabled a good part of Serbia, which had a significant influence on certain plans. Some of the activities were delayed or altogether cancelled and even our office was non-functional for a few days.

Another problem was reduced office capacity due to the departure of our previous Executive Director. For more than two months, workload planned for two persons was a burden of one employee, which inevitably had influence on certain activities and forced us to focus on some activities at the expense of others. This means that the board also spent a lot of time for the selection of the new Executive Director.

5. What are the 2–3 most important lessons that other entities can learn from your experience? Consider learning from both the programmatic and institutional (what you have learned about professionalizing your entity, if you have done so) points of view.

Regular and orderly following of finances, for the chapters of our size, is of crucial importance, because things are quickly forgotten if they are not noted on time. Once a system and appropriate procedures are established, financial management and overview of income and expenses become much easier.

Since we have had three job seeking procedures (for all of the current three positions) within a bit more than one year, the conclusions that come out of our experience are the following: An ad should be worded in a way that it is clear and concrete; vacancy should be announced in relevant places to secure the variety and quality of applicants; enough time must be allocated for reviewing the CVs, selection and the interviews; at the end, a thoughtful decision has to be made, considering all the important aspects of the job position.

Microgrants are a special form of projects and special attention must be paid for them. In our case, most of the approved projects were realized by volunteers who had no previous contact with Wikipedia or Wikimedia, so it was necessary to introduce them to the entire ecosystem. The other problem was that these volunteers were not used to financial responsibility toward grant organizations. To eliminate the inconveniences, it is always necessary to have a contract that would clearly define the rights and obligations of both sides, so that inadequate spending of funds would not happen.

Lessons for the future

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The Wikimedia movement grows as each entity in the movement reflects and adapts its approaches to changing needs and contexts. The questions below encourage you to apply your thinking in the sections above of "how well have we done" and "what have we learned" to the development and execution of future organisational and program strategies. The questions below can be informed both by your own entities' learnings, as well as the learnings of other movement entities (e.g., adding a new program that appears to have caused significant impact in several other countries or communities).

1. What organisational or program strategies would you continue?

We will continue to organize microgrants, with the goal of gathering new ideas and new volunteers.

In the past period, the board was meeting on a regular basis and that proved to be a good way to run through the recent goings-on and to decide on burning issues. This strategy of frequent meeting (more than once a month on average) will be continued in the upcoming period.

Some of the programs that were interesting and successful during the past year we intend to continue in a similar form (e.g. Photo Safari, Wikipedia contests, project connected with gender gap, Wiktionary) because we think that they still have potential.

2. What might you change in organisational and program strategies in order to improve the effectiveness of your entity?

The most important thing that we are going to change is our Strategy document. The current Strategy is old and was extended twice and the development of the new Strategy is going to be published soon. The new strategy will help us to focus our activities within next few years.

According to discussions within the board, we have decided to cancel the Executive Director position and to open two new positions with half-time engagement: Office Manager and Communications Manager. In this way, the work that was done by the Executive Director will be roughly split into two parts, where the new employees will be able to better focus on their activities.

We will organize the Education program in a more professional way, because from 2015 we have one new employee on the position of Education Program Manager.

In the upcoming period, we will try to get closer to the Serbian Wikipedia community, since Wikipedia and Wikimedia have somewhat drifted apart in the past years. For that goal, we will renew the weekly meetings with the community members and will organize a conference for community members.

We have already established cooperation with one organization for gathering volunteers and we intend to use the full potential of this cooperation to gain fresh blood for working on projects and organization.

We have introduced Wiki Loves Earth competition last year, which we intend to continue in 2015, but Wiki Loves Monuments seems like an exhausted subject, so the fourth competition will not be held in 2015.

3. Please create at least one learning pattern from your entity's experiences this year and link to it here.

Stories of success and challenge

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Of all the accomplishments highlighted through this report, please share two detailed stories: one story of a success and one story of a challenge that your entity experienced over the past year in a few paragraphs each. Provide any details that might be helpful to others in the movement on the context, strategy, and impact of this initiative. We suggest you write this as you would tell a story to a friend or colleague. Please refrain from using bullet points or making a list, and rather focus on telling us about your organization's experience.

Case study: success

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The accredited program Application of online Wiki encyclopedia on Serbian language for teaching and learning is one of the major successes of Wikimedia Serbia this year. The WMRS Education program was recognized as a significant program that can be applied in schools in many ways.

Our visibility will enhance considering that Prosvetni pregled has devoted one part of its monthly issue in which WMRS projects and other actualities will be presented. This is an interesting story because a lot of effort was put into accreditation of the project but is at the same time a story of the challenges met by WMRS. More about this in the Challenges section.

Success stories are often the result of well realized program. We had situations when our partners have been approaching us themselves and asking for cooperation after they saw what we are doing. This situation happened after promotion of 1001 Arabic words, on which representatives of Faculty of Philology were present and showed their interest for development of Wiktionary in their department. Similar situation happened with GLAM project after the edit-a-thon organized in Homeland museum in Knjaževac. We were contacted by the representatives of Metallurgy and mining museum from Bor and they expressed their will to participate in organization of similar activities.

Case study: challenge

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There are a few challenges with which Wikimedia Serbia is meeting and is trying to overcome. One of the main problems is overcoming the gap between Wikimedians and Wikipedians. The news about events are placed on Village pump, sometimes over sitenotice, by direct calls to community meetings or edit-a-thons, to animate Wikipedians, but the response is still weak. We have started with regular meetings in our office in 2015 and hope that this will contribute to overcoming the gap. This way, we want to include Wikipedians in our projects. The members of the community will be able to better help the newcomers and to transfer the knowledge, for example within the Education program.

The approaching of a new kind of education to teachers can be considered as a challenge. It happens especially in smaller towns where teachers are used to one way of education and have not changed it for years, that learning editing Wikipedia and basic rules is more difficult for them. Our idea is to educate students but teachers recognize the possibilities of this project and are conducting themselves in their teaching. It has been shown that they have some resistance to change in the way of organizing teaching.

One of the major challenges was cancelling the already prepared and organized seminars within the Accredited program. The WMRS representatives have held a few meetings in Prosvetni pregled and created the list of professors and teachers with whom we have already cooperated, sent an invitation; but two days prior to the realization the seminars were cancelled because of austerity measures. That was an external factor on which WMRS couldn't have any influence. We have offered an option to take over this organization and its expenses but we still don't know the answer. Similar situation happened with QR codes because of the change in management, even though everything was ready and placed on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Floods, unstable political situation and transitional period through which WMRS has passed through were certainly problems with which the community had to fight and which lead to prolongation of some of the activities.

Additional learning

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1. What are some of the activities that are happening in your community that are not chapter-led? What are the most successful among these, and why?

As far as we know, there are no other activities within Serbian Wikipedia than the ones led by Wikimedia Serbia.

On the other side, what needs to be mentioned is that Kosovo, according to the Constitution of The Republic of Serbia is an integral part of it, so therefore Wikimedia Serbia also considers Kosovo and Metohija as a part of its jurisdiction. On the other side, for practical reasons, there were no activities that Wikimedia Serbia conducted directly on that territory. There are other organizations like FLOSSK, who among other things are promoting Wikipedia and its values on the Kosovo territory.

2. Provide any links to any media coverage, blog posts, more detailed reports, more detailed financial information that you haven't already, as well as at least one photograph or video that captures the impact your entity had this past year.
 

Compliance

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Is your organization compliant with the terms defined in the grant agreement?

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1. As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
  • There were no major deviations from submitted grant application. Some funds were relocated because of Wiki loves Earth and FemWiki projects which are in accordance with Wikimedia Foundation's mission, but besides that, there were no substantial financial or program changes regarding the Annual Grant.
2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
  • Yes
3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
  • Yes

Financial information

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1. Report any Grant funds that are unexpended fifteen (15) months after the Effective Date of the Grant Agreement. These funds must be returned to WMF or otherwise transferred or deployed as directed by WMF.
  • We suggest that all unexpended funds be deduced from the second installment of the current APG funding.
2. Any interest earned on the Grant funds by Grantee will be used by Grantee to support the Mission and Purposes as set out in this Grant Agreement. Please report any interest earned during the reporting period and cumulatively over the duration of the Grant and Grant Agreement.
  • There was no interest earned during the reporting period.

Signature

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Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.

FiliP ██ 23:15, 31 March 2015 (UTC)