Grants:Project/Rapid/Wikipedia for Peace: Europride Vienna 2019/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Wikipedia for Peace: Europride Vienna 2019.
• You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
• You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Yes. Our event took place from 11 to 16 June 2019 in Vienna. We contributed lots of new LGBT+ content to Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons in 9 languages (German, Arabic, Farsi, Erzya, French, Serbian, English, Italian and Spanish). In some languages we wrote articles about basic concepts of LGBT+ issues that didn't exist yet, e.g. the article on "heterosexuality" in Erzya or on "non-binary" in Arabic. In this way, we ensured to bring more visibility to LGBT+ issues in different languages. The project was also an important meetup for members of the LGBT+ User Group and strengthened our sense of being active members of the User Group, some of us having taken part in an online meetup of the User Group for the first time and discussing the Wikimedia Strategy from an LGBT+ perspective. The project was internationally promoted, e.g. on Twitter, and showed that the Wikimedia movement has queer editors and activities around queer topics. We participated in the Europride parade as Wikimedians for the third year in a row.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
15 participants	13 participants, 6 remote participants	It was quite easy for us to find experienced participants from all over Europe and North Africa, as long as we could cover all expenses for them. It was more difficult to find participants who would pay their own travels. Two participants who would pay their own travels cancelled last minute, so we couldn't find other people to replace them. We had quite a lot of interest and contribution from remote participants.
100+ new and improved articles	119 new articles, 5 improved articles	Despite two participants missing, we contributed more content than expected. You can see the articles we created on our results page. In addition to the articles, we had participants focusing on Wikidata, creating and improving lots of items related to LGBT+ topics.
New and more activity from participants from Europe and North Africa in the Wikimedia LGBT+ user group	New and more activity from participants from Europe and North Africa in the Wikimedia LGBT+ user group	During the event, on June 13th, we as a whole group participated in the June 2019 online meetup of the LGBT+ User Group. The online meetup has never had so many participants before. Right after the meetup, we had a discussion around funding LGBT+ topics with a representative from the WMF, who was visiting Wikimedia Austria for a review that day. On June 14th, we had a session on LGBT+ topics in the Wikimedia Strategy process, which is being sent to the working groups for which we have feedback. Participants from the project stayed interested and e.g. already participated in the July 2019 online meetup of the user group.
Pictures from the event and from notable people at Europride uploaded to Wikimedia Commons	Commons:Category:Wikipedia for Peace Vienna Europride	We uploaded lots of pictures from the parade, from prominent European politicians and LGBT rights activists that we met or wrote about during the project. E.g. the articles for the activists en:Alex Jürgen or en:Dan Christian Ghattas now have images.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

• What worked well?

It was the first time that we organized an international queer editing event like this for more experienced Wikimedians and potential active members of the User Group. This proved to be very successful, it provided not only a space of creating more content, but created a closer alliance to the User Group, which will result in new projects around LGBT+ issues in the future. Spaces like the Strategy session or the talk about a potential employee for LGBT+ issues proved to be very worthwhile then.

EuroPride is a very interesting space to gather as well, as queer people and activists from all around the continent come together to politicize, celebrate and debate. It was a great opportunity to network and to meet activists. Wikimedia should be present there in the future as well.

• What did not work so well?

It was a struggle to finance the event with support from this Rapid Grant and Wikimedia Austria's small community budget, as a lot of the participants needed support in their travel costs as well as accommodation and food, because they otherwise couldn't have participated in the event.

We had two spontaneous cancellations and it was difficult to find replacement for the two.

The event was also quite a lot of work for the volunteer organiser.

• What would you do differently next time?

We would create a different concept around the event that could either work with a smaller budget (e.g. only participants from countries where travel costs to the venue are not very high) or we would apply for more funding, e.g. as part of a project or event grant.

We would promote the event even more to be sure to have people on a waiting list who could replace spontaneous cancellations.

The work load in future projects could hopefully be less, as the User Group is pushing for a person to be employed to support LGBT+ community project organisation in our movement.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

• Accommodation: 753,21 EUR
• Food: 268,49 EUR
• Travels: 578,28 EUR
• Visa: 178,40 EUR

Total: 1778,38 EUR (= 2000 USD)

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

No, we don't.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

One participant wrote a blog post about the project. During the project, we took over the very active Twitter account of the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group and posted a lot about the project.