Grants:Simple/Applications/Amical Wikimedia/2020/Midpoint report
- Application or grant stage: grant in progress
- Applicant or grantee: Amical Wikimedia
- Amount requested: 67.800,00 € (75.684,92 $)
- Amount granted: 67,800,00 EUR (77,154 USD)
- Funding period: 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020
- Application created: 20 October 2019
- Recommended application date: 1 November 2019
- Midpoint report due: 15 July 2020
- Final report due: 30 January 2021
Application
editBackground
editLink to these documents, for the upcoming funding period, only if you have them.
- Link to your organization's staffing plan, for the upcoming funding period. Staffing Plan 2020
- Link to your annual plan, for the upcoming funding period. Activities Plan 2020
- Link to your strategic plan, which includes the upcoming funding period. Strategic Plan 2019-24
Please add your grants metrics to this sheet. Note that requirements for shared metrics have changed for grants starting 1 January 2017 or later.
Please visit this worksheet to view global metrics targets and progress.
Full list of Amical Wikimedia metrics, segregated by activity
Programs
editPlease describe any changes to your programs for the upcoming funding period, including the addition of new programs or any programs you are no longer doing. Include your rationale for any major changes to your programs here.
Please use the templates provided to add information about each program you are planning for the upcoming funding period.
The organisation
Amical Wikimedia, also known as Amical, is one of the two thematic organisations in the Wikimedia movement. Instead of a territorial scope, ours is cultural: we promote Catalan language and culture. We are a community based, strategy-led organisation since we believe in the communities as the main force of the whole movement. Our main focus is to help people from our cultural scope but also from other groups, for example, we run our own writing challenges, but also try our best to help the other communities with translations or by being a test wiki (Flow, Visual editor, Content Translator...). We actively promote multilingualism as one of the key factors of our movement, that's why we've run several multilingual writing challenges (eg 288 challenge, CCC, Trace of soul). Community, diversity and multilingualism will keep being some of the core values of our program this year.
The 2020 proposal
Community
- Progress of our objectives
- A high touch approach: we have worked to keep in close contact with all of our members as well as the editors of the Wikimedia projects in the Catalan language who are not directly linked to the Amical.
- The youth group was implemented. At least two meetings were held (in April and May) and the group worked hard in the implementation of ViquiPAU (Access' Exams to the University Wikiproject: aimed to help students create content related with these exams).
- Many of the events that had been planned for the spring season were suspended or rescheduled due to the Covid-19 emergency. Nonetheless, we started a program of webinars (videoconferences) on Jitsi which had a great acceptance from both the general public and our own community.
- The monthly report does not seem to be useful enough, as a tool, to identify volunteers or groups of interest. This might be caused by the fact that it was not rolled out in a fully comprehensible manner, making it difficult to learn lessons from it in a straight forward way.
- We did a mapping of the geographic distribution of our members and a preliminary list of the interests of some our community members. This allowed us to identify a group of users highly involved in template optimization tasks. Another group was interested in the translation tool (translations in general) and a third one would be able to take part in the Small Wiki Toolkits initiative.
- We are in regular contact several departments of the Ministry of Culture of Andorra, but a visit scheduled for April had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We established contact with a group of Wikipedians from l'Alguer (Italy), who have an interest in the language and culture of Sardinia, with a view to organizing an event in autumn. In spite of the interest shown by the local officials and the local Wikipedia community, this plan did not come to fruition due to circumstances beyond our control.
- We are now approaching the last events in a series of workshops we have been offering to anyone wishing to drop in. Although they may soon come to an end, we could still keep the stable groups going stable, like ViquidonesUPF (WikiWomen at the UPF University). However, we need to rethink the format of the workshops. Likewise, Edit-a-thons must be overhauled in their format to make them more attractive and ensuring more effective results.
The kick start of videoconferences could help to turn around these kinds of activities and get more people to volunteer as activity leaders.
- Highlighted activities
-
Social meet to sharing how to work during the quarantine. -
The training webinars stand out for the diversity of the speakers and for their public acceptance. -
Creation of the youth group and meet-ups.
- Community program against its targeted metrics
| Objective | Description | Midpoint status | Final expected status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consolidate 12 very active members (leading more than 5 activities per year). | Five activities might sound unrealistic given the current circumstances. Even though, we have had enough members who have lead more than 2,5-ish activities during the period. | 60% |
60% |
| Get 3 new members or existing ones under 30 years old to increase their activity in Amical Wikimedia and ensure a generational handover. | Users Townie and Sorenike joined. Also the creation of a youth group. | 60% |
100% |
| Get at least 3 women members to join Amical Wikimedia. | User Unapeça | 33% |
33% |
| Bring together and provide basics insights to our members in the Balearic Islands and Andorra meeting face to face at least once; in order to create the nucleus of 2 active member hubs. | We envisaged doing this in the context of a couple of scheduled events in Andorra. Due to the pandemic, the events were canceled / postponed / rescheduled as on-line training activities, therefore we weren't able to hold face-to-face meetings.. | 50% |
50% |
| Hold personal or phone meetings and conversations with at least >50% of Amical Wikimedia's cohort. | There has been an interaction between partners that covers more than 50% of the community. | 60% |
100% |
| Facilitate at least 2 events aimed at the youngest segment of the community (under 25s). | We held an online meeting with young people in April and a second one in May. | 100% |
100% |
| One specific workshop for newcomers of Amical Wikimedia (our team, our ethics, our discourse, our how-to). | We held it in the framework of the series of webinars. More debates about the specifics of our ethics are prepared. | 60% |
100% |
Education
- Progress of our objectives
We started 2020 with various meetings with different educational centres, mainly with the University of Barcelona (UB), including one with a professor in charge of a biochemical Wikipedia project at UB, but also ESADE and the Centre of Studies of Catalan Sign Language.
In February we hosted a workshop with the International University of Catalonia.
Moreover, we signed a collaboration agreement with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and began meetings with the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
To achieve our first objective of bringing Wikipedia and their sister projects to secondary schools, we had a meeting with Associació Rosa Sensat, a teacher's association, and a workshop at a high school in the town of LLiçà de Vall. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, we organised an online edit-a-thon about the subjects of the university access exams in order to attract high school and college students to Wikipedia, which was well received and had 22 participants.
- A new edition of a course on digital strategy for cultural institutions was held at the UOC. A module of the course involved writing an article. Fifteen students, an overall feeling of satisfaction and good acquisition of the required knowledge and skills were the outcome of this event.
- The eduwiki projects that are already ongoing with no support (ESMUC, UB Biochemistry, UB counselling, UdL Art History, etc.)
- Took part in a conference on open educational resources (OER) at UAB, presenting several experiences and success stories, as well as offering the didactic and pedagogical advantages of using Wikipedia and its sister projects as an educational resource in the classroom.
- Wikiquote 2020
- There had been conversations with UB CRAI (Libraries) to offer training on Wikidata and to get the most out of his own catalogue of authorities.
- New contacts were made (ESADE, Blanquerna, Rosa Sensat Foundation, PAU Office, Open Institute of Catalonia, University of Lleida, etc.) to propose teaching wikiprojects, organize a wikimarathon, set up high-flying ViquiPAUs or offer training of teaching staff.
- We were in the early stages of doing a second phase of the project to introduce Catalan sign language content into the Wiktionary.
- A project for editing and improving content on local heritage was launched with the LLiçà de Vall institute.
- A new batch of teaching wikiproject had been scheduled in Andorra but was postponed due to the declaration of a pandemic.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, from March, our face-to-face activities were postponed or cancelled. This affected schools and colleges too, and for now (at the beginning of summer) it seems unrealistic to start or keep up communication with educational centres. Despite our current institutional situation, we should analyse what we should do in September.
- We have only a few new projects and not really diverse. It is necessary to have people willing to coach and do the follow-up, and they are not always there.
- It is necessary to persevere on the wikiprojects teaching in secondary education. At this educational level, it is even more vital to coach and mentor teachers before starting any work.
- All the education Wikiprojects carried out on Catalan Wikipedia are mapped and clear. So that future actions can be scheduled more easily, there should be more on the way.
- Highlighted activities
-
Open Education Week 2020 (5th of March). Fortunately it was right before the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic but also one of the last in-person activities. -
Round table in the Philosophy Faculty of the well-known Autonomous University of Barcelona. -
The Education Program is presented and duly explained to the professors. It includes talks about open sources for universities and much more.
- Education program against its targeted metrics
| Objective | Description | Midpoint status | Final expected status |
|---|---|---|---|
| At least 3 educational collaborations (wikiprojects or another) with secondary schools (teenager-oriented) | A wikiproject was started in the town LLiçà de Vall; Activities planned with two Andorran institutes were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. | 50% |
50% |
| Mantain 75% of the wikiprojects started in 2019 as a stabilisation and long-term preparedness for teachers (33 registered as a partnership with Amical during the academic year 2019) | 20 out of the 35 teaching projects carried out this year (57%) are new editions of projects held last year | 60% |
60% |
| At least one new official agreement with an educational institution | Agreement signed with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). | 100% |
100% |
| At least 3 university educational collaborations outside the area of Barcelona (preferably outside Catalonia) | Andorra was not materialized. There was a very promising project outlined with the Blanquerna University (about how to fight hate speech) that didn't come to fruition. | 25% |
25% |
GLAM & Sister projects
- Progress of our objectives
The year had a friendly start with the humble Asimov's birth centenary Wikiproject, in which 14 participants created 18 new articles related to the American writer. It was a good start to this year and preceded the very successful Wikiproject "one librarian, one reference" in the middle of January. This marvellous Wikiproject beat all expectations: 81 participants added more than 1,000 references and the Catalan version of this global event achieved the 5th position among all the language versions. Moreover, it was also a record for us, as the output more than doubled the result last year. This achievement can be seen as proof of the strong relationship between Amical and the Catalan libraries and cultural institutions. This busy month concluded with two classic Wikiprojects: Cinema, which happened during the Award Ceremony of the Academy of Cinematography of Catalonia, and the Flying pPint (punt volat) Wikiproject, which aimed to improve Wiktionary with words containing an interpunct.
A further highlight happened in March, with 3 parallel Edit-a-thons about women organised just before the International Women's Day on the 8th of March. These events took place in the Municipal Archives Building of Palafrugell, at the Technical University of Valencia in Alcoi, at the Valencian Library in Valencia, and also remotely (Women from L'Hospitalet edit-a-thon). This multi-event was a significant effort in order to simultaneously achieve several of our goals, for instance encouraging women to join Amical, collaborating with archives and fostering self-sustainability of GLAMwiki projects and initiatives. Another event with and about women was planned at the island of Menorca on the 14th of March. However, this one had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the mandatory confinement in Spain. From this point on, the GLAM activities became very limited and decreased a lot. Most of them, like both Edit-a-thons planned at the city museum in Manresa and at the public library in La Barceloneta, respectively, had to be cancelled.
Training was offered to library staff, both on the edition of wiki projects and to provide them with ideas and proposals how to use the wiki projects in the activities they usually carry out (training of Maresme library staff, library staff of the Valencian Country and staff of the Cartoteca de Catalunya).
Some of the activities since the start of the pandemic have been very successful (1Lib1ref, the Sant Jordi competition, the Quarantine wikiproject), others are activities that continue year after year thanks to the interest of the volunteers themselves (Cinema and Comics wikiprojects) or other driving forces (Night of the language in the digital world, the international day for girls and women in science). There have also been some projects that have been carried out without the direct participation of Amical (Edit-a-thon in the Ribera d'Ebre). We also took part in the remote working day "Intensiu digital" (17th June) organized by UB, where one of our volunteers presented the wikiproject on the Digital Memory of Catalonia.
Unfortunately, the sudden resignation of our staff member at the end of 2018 caused a big loss of contacts and know-how. Alex Hinojo had been working for Amical for about 9 years and his powerful commitment and activism obviously could not be replaced in the short or even medium term. Amical will still need many months in order to find a new way and achieve past levels of activity. He was especially committed to GLAM projects, and the strength and efforts of our volunteers cannot supply this loss.
Many activities or proposals that were outlined have been affected by the pandemic, which has led to their cancellation or rescheduling. This is the case of the edit-a-thons of Alboraia 2020, Women of Menorca, Barceloneta, ESMUC 2020, or LGTBI + terminology, the edit-a-thon on the heritage of Manresa at the Museum of Science and Technology of Manresa, the commemorative events of the year Carmelina Sánchez Cutillas organized together with the COBDCV and Wikimedia España, and the training session planned for the Jazz I Am festival. However, at the moment there are some events scheduled well in advance, such as the edit-a-thon on the occasion of the International Day of Cerebral Palsy.
The first phase of the "feminisms and identities" wikiproject has been carried out, which seeks to map the presence of women in the collections of art museums in Catalonia. All the women present in the catalogues of the participating museums are already on Wikidata. The edit-a-thon of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat is moving forward (with difficulties). However, it is unclear how the lockdown measures will affect it exactly.
Contacts were initiated with the Barcelona College of Nurses (free image bank), ICT points (offer training to technicians at ICT points and Omnia points), the ICAC (free content), and libraries of the prison services of the Generalitat de Catalunya (deploy Kiwix and Wikisource). The competitions La Càpsula del Temps (The Time Capsule) and Els tres dies d'or dels articles de qualitat (the three golden days of the featured articles) are underway and will last all year. They have been well received. The project "La veu és lliure" (voice is free) has been restarted.
It must also be noted the new situation of Amical. Esther Solé, who began working by Amical in July 2019, was recently dismissed. Less than one year in her position was not enough time for her to achieve a reversal point and to lead Amical to a better position. Now it is time for Amical to take its own time and think about the current situation and the future. Meanwhile, all the responsibility will completely lay on the hands of our volunteers.
Due to the previously described situation, it will probably not be realistic to strengthen our relationship with cultural institutions across the Catalan speaking territory in the next months, nor it will be increasing our visibility among the general population, as it was planned at the beginning of this period. Additionally, diversifying the set of appealing proposals of activities and initiatives with libraries or museums will be a tough task. Now is time to focus on stabilising Amical and to try to prevent a recession of all the activities and achievements accomplished in the recent past. Due to the institutional situation described above and the current pandemic crisis, if we achieved this goal, it could be considered a big success.
The survey to map editors and readers on sister projects hasn't been done yet. One of the challenges of the Time capsule project is contributing to sister projects such as Wikiquote. However, the uptake on this specific challenge has been very low, which shows how difficult it is for Wikipedians to edit in sister projects.
The outbreak of the pandemic forced us to cancel all the events scheduled for April, May and June. That was a significant backlash in the Land of Valencia.
- Highlighted activities
-
Right before the International Women's Day, an Edit-a-thon about women takes place at the Valencian Library to reduce the gender gap. -
Diverse and multilingual Edit-a-thon, in which articles in Spanish, Valencian and Aragonese language are created. -
1Lib1Ref was a huge success this year with unprecedented results. -
Another Edit-a-thon about women in March, one of them in the Mediterranean village Palafrugell. -
-
The Sant Jordi (Saint George) competition was another successful online event —it even got news coverage.
- GLAM & Culture program against its targeted metrics
| Objective | Description | Midpoint status | Final expected status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Detect and quantify stable or transitional community growth in the Catalan sister projects (current active users in Wikisource: 3-4; Wikiquote: 1; Wiktionary: 2-3; Wikibooks: 0; Wikinews: 0-1) | No survey has been done. However, the figures may remain stable or have slightly changed. | 0% |
0% |
| At least three projects focused on three sister projects, and three activities or events to promote these projects | "The Time machine" Wikiproject (aimed to update/add references to articles about commemoration days, jubilees, anniversaries, etc.) and "The voice is free" Wikiproject (aimed to record the voice of people with biography in Wikipedia). | 66% |
100% |
| Updated state of #bibliowikis document | It has not been done so far. | 0% |
50% |
| Updated document with renewed proposals for libraries and/or museums | It has not been done so far. | 0% |
50% |
| At least 4 self-organised GLAMwiki projects or events | The first Edit-a-thon in Ribera d'Ebre (february) and the 3 parallel feminist Edit-a-thons: in Palafrugell, Alcoi and Valencia (all them quite self-organised). | 100% |
100% |
| At least 2 projects involving archives from the Catalan speaking area | There were the first contacts with Andorra in order to do a Wikpiproject similar to the "Digital memory" one (aimed to use to all the pictures and multimedia documents stored in Commons). Done if we count it and the Viquiprojecte:Arxius valencians. | 50% |
50% |
| At least 2 projects involving content (pictures) donation | "The voice is free" Wikiproject (aimed to record the voices of people with biography in Wikipedia) and first contact with the National Archives in Andorra. | 50% |
50% |
| Establish alliances with at least 2 institutions that are based outside Catalan-speaking territories and have a scope which is aligned with Amical's mission or projects | It has not been done so far. | 0% |
0% |
Communication & Outreach
- Progress of our objectives
- Although we currently find ourselves on a point where we have to reimagine ourselves again, our communications strategy has proven successful, both in social media as in media coverage.
Activity in social media has increased and new profiles have been created for Amical and for Viquipèdia (Instagram). We were selected as a finalist for the Martí Gasull Roig prize in defence of the Catalan language. We successfully started a working line of internal communications with our Jitsi sessions. We also took part in the remote working day "Intensiu digital" (17th June) organized by UB, where one of our volunteers presented the wikiproject on the Digital Memory of Catalonia.
- We need to encourage more people to join our communication programme. The successes of the past will not be sustained in time if we're not able to maintain a healthy environment for everyone. The communications programme has been sustained by volunteers in a continued way. This has provided it with great resiliency to internal issues. With some volunteers having left their roles it will be a new challenge to maintain its successes.
Contacts have been made with institutions dedicated to the language and free knowledge both nationally and internationally (Office of the Generalitat de Catalunya in Alghero, Platforma per la Llengua, Gaming.cat, FemProcomuns, etc.) and we are expecting to forge closer relationships.
- Without interesting activities and projects, we could find that we have nothing to communicate. Being an online community, to hold online activities is no news for us or anybody, so the cancellation of activities because of the pandemic has been an important backlash.
- Amical website redesign is still at a very initial phase.
- We invested efforts in willing to engage a student as an intern during this year course but it has not been possible as we could not find an agreement with the university.
- Highlighted activities
-
During the quarantine, one of our members wrote three articles about multimedia content in wikiprojects in a youth-oriented digital media. It strengthens our line of work about community and youth in the Strategic planning of the entity. -
Do wikimedians dream about electric enciclopedias?. Àlex Hinojo wrote an article for the journal of language and law. -
Our twitter accounts have been receiving good feedback and increased their number of followers. -
The Valencian Library edit-a-thon received good media coverage.
- Communication & Outreach program against its targeted metrics
| Objective | Description | Midpoint status | Final expected status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Publish at least 12 relevant blog posts in one year. This includes blog posts about Wikimedia events or activities where community members or staff participated | Done. Although a decrease in activity is expected. | 100% |
100% |
| Increase our impact in Twitter up to 25K followers in @Viquipedia as one of the most relevant "influencer" accounts in Catalan | Currently, more than 26.700 followers. | 100% |
> 100% |
| Content and style redesign of Amical Wikimedia website | Probably, we will prioritise other kind of activities. | 0% |
50% |
| Definition and publication of a regular newsletter | It has been done, we will work on it more. | 60% |
> 100% |
| Evaluate the feasibility and establish a university student internship for some communication tasks | Community so far hasn't clearly agreed to do so, so it might be cancelled. | 0% |
50% |
| Attendance and presentation of our projects in 5 national or international events about Wikimedia, tech, digital advocacy, or free knowledge during the whole year | Covid made it unrealistic, even despite participation of our members in virtual events, like the Celtic Knot. | 20% |
60% |
Staff and contractors
editPlease describe any changes to your staffing plan for the upcoming funding period. These should include increases in staff or contractor hours, new staff positions, or staff positions you are removing. Include your rationale for any staffing changes here.
- Esther Solé i Martí (user ESM) was the project coordinator for Amical from the second semester of 2019 onwards. During April 2020, the Staff Commission noticed several issues in her activity. After a month of internal debate, the Board decided (by 4 votes in favour and 2 against) to dismiss her at the beginning of May. An agreement between her and the Board is pending.
For each new staff or contractor position, please use the template provided to add information about each new staff or contractor you are planning for the upcoming funding period (or to describe significant increases in hours or changes in job descriptions for existing staff). You are not required to provide this information for existing staff where no changes are required.
Budget and resource plan
editLink to a detailed budget for the upcoming funding period. This budget should include all of your organizations expenses. Please specify which expenses will be covered from your APG.