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Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Shared Knowledge Annual Plan 2022

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statusFunded
Shared Knowledge Annual Plan 2022
The main objective of our proposal is to create a supportive environment for participants, which would enable anyone to freely join, collaborate and contribute to the creation of free content which will enrich the Wikimedia projects and ultimately lead to a sustainable community growth, a greater diversity in coverage and an increased amount of content created.
start date01 January 2022
end date31 December 2022
budget (local currency)38546 EUR
amount requested (USD)44536.24 USD
amount recommended (USD)37007.8
grant typeWikimedia Affiliate (chapter, thematic org., or user group)
funding regionCEECA
decision fiscal year2021-22
funding program roundRound 1
applicant and people related to proposalThe main people related to this proposal are:
  • Kiril Simeonovski
  • Ehrlich91
  • Инокентиј
  • Dandarmkd
  • Иван Ж
organization (if applicable)Shared Knowledge
Midpoint Report

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Applicant details

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Wikimedia username(s):

The main people related to this proposal are:
  • Kiril Simeonovski
  • Ehrlich91
  • Инокентиј
  • Dandarmkd
  • Иван Ж

Organization:

Shared Knowledge

Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?

Applied previously and did receive a grant

Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?

Yes

Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?

We have received grants on several occasions from the following non-wiki organisations:
  • Goethe Institute in Skopje
  • Government of the Republic of Macedonia

Organization details

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What is your organization or group's mission?

Shared Knowledge's mission, as described in Article 1 of its Constitution, is to further knowledge that should be free and available to everyone. The organisation aims to sustain community growth, increase content quality, improve content coverage, increase capacity development, and identity new forms of knowledge that will enrich the Wikimedia projects primarily on the territory of Macedonia and among speakers of the Macedonian language.

If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)

Our organisation currently maintains the following social media pages:

Grant proposal

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Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be a title for the Meta-Wiki page.

Shared Knowledge Annual Plan 2022

Where will this proposal be implemented?

North Macedonia

Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries? (optional)

Local

If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

What are the main challenges you are trying to solve and your proposed solution?

There are three main challenges that the programmes included in our annual plan try to solve: 1) content gaps and disproportional representation, 2) active participation in volunteer initiatives and 3) preservations of heritage and data.

Firstly, there are many places in Macedonia which are rich in cultural and natural heritage sites but are relatively obscure for the general public; the country is home to many notable people who made important contributions in different fields but remain unknown; and there are many important topics that are not available in the Macedonian language. In order to fill these content gaps, we have created a diverse Community programme, which consists of projects aimed at conducting on-site research at the poorly covered places, encouraging people to produce content on underrepresented topics and getting the Macedonian Wikipedia community involved in writing content.

Secondly, a rise in the popularity of active participation in volunteer initiatives amongst the youth in the Macedonian society has been evident in the past couple of years, which is is mostly done through the educational institutions and non-governmental organisations. However, the notion that the contributions to the Wikimedia projects are a positive example of a community service is not widespread. Our plan is to tackle this problem mostly through the Education & Science programme, which includes projects whose goal is to introduce the Wikimedia projects as a highly powerful tool in the process of learning and produce invaluable open educational resources, as well as partially through the Community programme, which foresees organising edit-a-thons in collaboration with external thematic organisations to get their members introduced with and trained to contribute to the Wikimedia projects.

Thirdly, the tangible heritage which the GLAM institutions in Macedonia dispose of is prone to damaging if not preserved or transformed into another form; in a similar way, the platforms which the government and government-controlled institutions use to publish data can often be subject to cyber attacks that may lead to data loss. We intend to mitigate these problems and raise awareness about their potential severity through our Partnerships programme, which includes a range of activities from promoting the heritage that needs to be preserved to conducting mass uploads of open government data into Wikidata for future use on Wikipedia.

What is the main objective of your proposal?

The main objective of our proposal is to create a supportive environment for participants, which would enable anyone to freely join, collaborate and contribute to the creation of free content which will enrich the Wikimedia projects and ultimately lead to a sustainable community growth, a greater diversity in coverage and an increased amount of content created.

Describe your main strategies to achieve this objective and the main activities you will be developing as part of these strategies.

Our annual plan consists of three programmes: Education & Science, Community and Partnerships.

1) Education & Science

This programme intends to reach out to educational institutions with the goal of introducing the Wikimedia projects in the curriculum, as well as attracting students and academic staff to contribute.

  • Education. We plan to hold workshops on the basics of Wikipedia for students and academic staff in secondary education and higher education so that they can start contributing to the project; additionally, we intend to organise a month-long editing contest for secondary-school students.
  • Science. This includes two related projects for producing free educational videos documenting scientific experiments in physics, chemistry and biology, as well as lectures with proofs of theorems and major results in mathematics and physics.

2) Community

This programme directly targets community members and potential new editors in order to increase community health and support sustainable community growth.

  • Editing challenges. These include editing days and editing weekends as writing actions on a pre-defined topic during a 24-hour period and a weekend, editing weeks and editing contests as writing actions of competitive nature, and edit-a-thons as in-person and online writing events held in collaboration with specialised organisations with the goal of filling the content gaps.
  • Expeditions. These are research activities aimed at visiting, photographing and documenting places (e.g. villages, natural sites, archaeological sites etc.) which are underrepresented on the Wikimedia projects.
  • Community support. This is a general designation for a wide range of projects which include projects and activities such as Wiki loves contests, micro-grants for photographers, instant editing trainings for newbies, and editing stands in shopping malls.

3) Partnerships

This program aims to extend partnerships with government institutions, non-government organisations and informal groups of people in order to ease access to cultural heritage and government data.

  • Cultural heritage. We plan to map, photograph and document little-known cultural heritage sites located in villages, as well as install plates with QR-pedia codes.
  • Open government data. We plan to partner with the State Statistical Office and the State Election Commission on obtaining census and electoral data that will be uploaded to Wikidata for future use across Wikipedia articles.

Please state if you will be carrying out any of these activities within your programs? Select all that apply.

Organizing Meet-up online, Organizing Meet-up offline, Workshops, Edit-A-Thons, Train-the-Trainer, Photowalk, Contest, Photo/Media campaign, Wiki Loves campaign, WikiTown, Conference/Event Organizing, Other, Media outreach campaign
Shared Knowledge has a years-long experience in conducting expeditionary activities, which aim to generate local content on underrepresented topics. The most prominent example of the expeditionary activities is the project known as Wikiexpeditions, which has resulted in visiting more than 700 villages around the country and producing over 10,000 authentic images from the previously unphotographed places since its inception in 2015.

Are you running any in-person events or activities?

Yes

Please state if your proposal aims to work on any of the identified content knowledge gaps?

Content Gender gap, Geography, Socioeconomic Status, Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial

Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or thematic focus.

Education, Culture, heritage or GLAM , Open Technology, Diversity, Advocacy, Human Rights, Public Policy, Climate Change and sustainability

Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select all categories that apply.

Gender Identity, Geographic , Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background

Please tell us more about your target participants.

Depending on the programme and specific activity, our target participants can be divided into the following groups:
  • Community members. This is a broad group of people which consists of editors, photographers and affiliate members who have either contributed to the Wikimedia projects or helped to implement our annual plans. Community members will be primarily targetted through our editing challenges and the micro-grants programme.
  • Students. These are the people who will be trained to edit Wikipedia in the educational institutions, as well as to use the Wikimedia projects as a useful source of knowledge.
  • Academic staff. These are the people who will be taught on the basics of Wikipedia in order to both contribute to the project and teach their students to edit Wikipedia.
  • Members of specialised organisations. These are the people who will have to be attracted to take part in the edit-a-thons and create content in their field of specialisation.
  • Photographers. These are people who dispose of or are interested to produce photographs which can be uploaded under free licence to Wikimedia Commons. They will be mostly targetted through the Wiki loves contests and the micro-grant programme.
  • Staff members at institutions. These are the people who are employed at the institutions which we collaborate with and help in the process of conducting our activities.
  • Interested participants. These are the people who do not belong to any of the aforementioned groups but show interest in the Wikimedia projects and would like to learn how to contribute. This group of people will be targetted through the instant editing trainings and the editing stands in the shopping malls.

Considering that all these groups of target participants have different need, we plan to develop different strategies for long-term retention.

  • Community members: frequent editing challenges on diverse topics.
  • Students: regular student assignments, student editing contests.
  • Academic staff: production of open educational resources, networking with academic staff from other countries.
  • Members of specialised organisations: recurrent edit-a-thons.
  • Photographers: regular Wiki loves contests, micro-grants, involvement in other projects.
  • Staff members at institutions: frequent communications, involvement in other projects.
  • Interested participants: frequent communication, invitation to community events.

Do you have plans to work with other Wikimedia communities, groups or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?

Yes

Please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.

We plan to work on implementing this annual plan primarily with the Macedonian Wikipedia community. For that purpose, all projects whose goal is to enrich the Macedonian Wikipedia and which target editors who are active there will be documented in separate project pages created on the Macedonian Wikipedia. Additionally, target editors will be notified about the projects through other communication channels such as emailing services and social media.

Some of our projects and activities, however, require collaboration with other Wikimedia communities and affiliates, who can learn more about our work and future plans on the Meta pages on our annual plans, reports and projects. All these pages are easily accessible from the landing page on the following link:

Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?

Yes

Please describe these partnerships.

We will collaborate with various non-Wikimedia partners on projects and activities included in all three programmes of our annual plan. Firstly, we will partner with the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University to hold educational workshops and produce free videos documenting scientific experiments and lectures with proofs. Secondly, we will partner with the National Youth Council of Macedonia on organising edit-a-thons. Thirdly, we will partner with Dr. Nikola Nezlobinski Museum on photographing and documenting their collection of valuable items, as well as with the State Statistical Office and the State Election Commission to obtain data on census and electoral results. Finally, we will maintain our long-term partnerships with the National & University Library “St. Clement of Ohrid” and the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?

This annual plan is part of a long-term continuous process of operating towards achieving the prioritsed goals outlined in our Strategic plan 2021-2025. The structure of our annual plan with the three programmes remains unchanged, and the projects and activities included in our plan have years-long successful implementation. Yet, a significant portion of our annual plan relies on innovation and research, thus containing novel projects or novelties incorporated in the long-term projects.

Of our continuously recurring projects, the educational programme and edit-a-thons have been carried out since 2014, editing contests and expeditions since 2015, editing days and photohunts since 2016, editing weekends since 2017 and editing weeks since 2020. Other recurring projects with small disruptions are the production of videos documenting scientific experiments and the introduction of QR-pedia.

In the light of our determination to follow our Strategic plan 2021-2025, this annual plan will successively be followed with another one. Those projects which will be evaluated as successful will probably be included in the next annual plan, while those that will fail to meet the expectations will be fully ceased, merged with other projects or substantially modified.

Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

Shared Knowledge has a small, but solid base of active participants in all of our various programmes, that we plan in this grant proposal.

Our core team are members of our Executive Board, who makes all of the decisions and follow-up projects. Additionally, in some of the projects our volunteer members of the Board decided to take an active role.

The Executive Board of Shared Knowledge consists of five members:

  • Kiril Simeonovski (Chair of the Executive Board)
  • Ehrlich91 (Treasurer)
  • Инокентиј
  • Bjankuloski06
  • M4r51n

Another significant group of people, active in many of our projects, especially in the Community, are Community members, who undertake volunteer roles in jury for editing competitions conducted on Macedonian Wikipedia, photographic competitions conducted on Wikimedia Commons and active members in our expeditionary projects. Such members are, P.Nedelkovski, Chnitke, Тиверополник, Nino Bogdanovski and Dean Lazarevski.

Shared Knowledge has a long-term relation with Faculty of Economics, where professor Goran Petreski (user: ГП), gives us an advice how to introduce academic staff into Wikipedia, along with their students, and we plan to deepen that into 2022.

During these past two years, we have a nice cooperation with photographer 44martin88, who sign up for many activities of Shared Knowledge with his skills as a photograph.

Apart of all of this groups, our two permanent employees Dandarmkd and Иван Ж are invaluable members in execution of all of our projects.

In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of three options that most apply.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Improve User Experience, Provide for Safety and Inclusion, Identify Topics for Impact, Innovate in Free Knowledge

Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here. (optional)      

Yes

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

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What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

As we stated earlier, our main challenges which we will try to solve are: 1) content gaps and disproportional representation, 2) active participation in volunteer initiatives and 3) preservations of heritage and data.

About first point, our team already have some evaluation presented on conferences. Our member Toni Ristovski (Ehrlich91) will talk once again about "Generating local content" on the upcoming Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021 on 6th of November, 2021. So far, we discover that Wikipedians can change even official list of churches across the country, as we discovered many churches that were nowhere mentioned. We are looking forward on next season with new discoveries through our expeditionary projects, along with continuation of the writing article about many missing themes on the Macedonian Wikipedia.

We hope that we will use a rise in the popularity of active participation in volunteer initiatives and that we will change public view about volunteerism in Macedonia. With that in mind, we hope that we will have bigger community in our country.

Shared Knowledge will work hard on preserving data which many GLAM institution in Macedonia possess them into digital form, and that these data will be open for general public on more accessible way than simple archiving. Therefore, we have few projects in our annual plan in order to preserve heritage and data about that heritage.

Core Metrics

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Enter a description of the metric and a number in the target field. If the metric does not apply to you, enter N/A for not applicable.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target
Number of participants In this number, Shared Knowledge includes all of the participants, including organizers.

Majority of these participants are in Community Programme (400 fo 709).

709
Number of editors In the numbers of editors, we include new and already active editors who undertakes participation in one of our projects along the whole period of the grant proposal for 2022. 509
Number of organizers In the number or organizers, Shared Knowledge includes people involvement into trainings, participants on expeditionary projects, people in juries after finishing of photographic contests, etc. 20
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target
Wikipedia Content generated on the Macedonian Wikipedia of all of our projects. 7547
Wikidata In this number, we include Wikidata items created during projects and editing challenges, along with Open Data Programm of Shared Knowledge, where we will work only on content in Wikidata. 27547
Wikimedia Commons Expected number of uploaded images on Wikimedia Commons. 5000
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A

If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

N/A

Additional Metrics

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Enter a description of the metric and a number in the target field. If the metric does not apply to you, enter N/A for not applicable.

Additional Metrics Description Target
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability N/A N/A
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors N/A N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees N/A N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications N/A N/A
Number of activities developed N/A N/A
Number of volunteer hours The number of hours spent by volunteers to support the organisational work. 18497
Uploaded photographs used in articles The number of distinct photographs used in articles. 3622
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A

What other information will you be collecting to learn about the impact of your work? (optional)

N/A

What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?

Metrics will be measured using the following techniques:
  • manual tools (e.g. on-site counting)
  • automated tools (e.g. Outreach Dashboard, GLAMorous, Quarry, Hashtag tool, Montage)

How do you hope to share these results so that others can learn from them?

Make a short presentation of the experience, Create a training workshop to show others what we learned, Share results on social media, Share results with our communities, Participate in one on one peer sharing session with other grantees, Develop learning material for other users, Share it on Meta-Wiki

Financial Proposal

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What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency. If you are thinking about a multi-year fund, please provide the amount for the first year.

38546 EUR

What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

44536.24 USD

Do you want to apply for multi-year funding?      

No

If you have calculated it, please provide an estimate of the year 2 or year 3 request.

N/A

Please share your budget for this proposal.  

Explained in the uploaded file immediately below.

What do you do to make sure there is a good management of funds?

Shared Knowledge has a years-long history of proper and efficient budgeting, and its work relies on three main practices which ensure good management of funds. Firstly, the organisation maintains a frequent and transparent financial reporting on a quarterly basis with all financial reports being publicly available. Secondly, all payments are approved through a co-signatory process with required signatures by the Chair of the Executive Board and the Treasurer upon the presentation of invoices or other financial proof by the Administration and Logistics Coordinator. Thirdly, purchases of goods and provision of services are agreed after collecting at least three different offers whose price-performance is thoroughly evaluated in order to make the optimal decision.

How will you contribute towards creating a supportive environment for participants using the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy?

Shared Knowledge acknowledges the importance of the Universal Code of Conduct and the Friendly Space Policy as cornerstones of the Wikimedia movement, which are vital in ensuring that people from different groups and with different backgrounds can safely participate and contribute. In this regard, we have adopted the Friendly Space Policy for all in-person and virtual events that we organise; additionally, we also emphasise the concepts of mutual respect, collegiability and mutual support, while we regularly warn that any instance of harassment and vandalism will be not tolerated and sanctioned. Considering that the Universal Code of Conduct was published during the course of this year, it will be a nice complementary policy which stipulates many of the concepts that we have previously applied in addition to Friendly Space Policy in order to build a healthier and more positive working environment.

Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.

Staffing plan or organogram:
Other public document(s):

Final Message

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By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes


Feedback

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