Application or grant stage: in progress

Applicant or grantee: Wikimedia Eesti

Amount requested: 63.037,20 EUR

Amount granted: 63,037 EUR

Funding period: 1 January 2021 - 31 December 2021

Midpoint report due: 15 July 2021

Final report due: 30 January 2021

Application

Background

Annual Plan

This year we're expecting to continue working in the same general direction as in 2020 (or rather, as in the 2020 plan before a lot of it got hit by COVID). See the program descriptions below for more info on our approach. The main change we're hoping for is an increase in staff positions from 1.5 to 2.0 FTE in order to hire an organizational manager (see staffing plan below), which we already requested last year but was denied because of limited funding availability. Citing from the 2020 proposal:

As a chapter, the main problem we found last year was that with our current structure, there's a lot of pressure placed on the board to actually be an active part of everything the chapter does day to day. This limits the ability of the board to act as a strategic / supervisory board, making it into more of a many-headed [organizational manager]. Our main objective for this year (apart from the per-program objectives described below) is to move more of our [management] (...) day-to-day tasks onto funded employee positions, freeing the board to concentrate on activities more appropriate for a board of volunteers while creating a clearer, more consistent day to day working structure for the employees.

Budget Plan

Proposed Budget 2020-2021


Programme 1: Education
Item	EUR	Notes
International Wiki Science Competition	3.000,00€	of which 2.000,00 € sponsor funding
Copyright teaching for schools	1.000,00€
Education projects	1.000,00€
Total	5.000,00 €	of which WMF funding: 3.000,00 €

Programme 2: GLAM
Item	EUR	Notes
Wikidata tool and documentation development	1.000,00€
GLAM projects	1.000,00€
International GLAM cooperation	600,00€
Photo-expeditions	800,00€
Total	3.400,00 €

Programme 3: Open Culture and Outreach
Item	EUR	Notes
Competitions	5.700,00 €	of which 4.000,00 € sponsor funding
Finno-Ugric cooperation	1000,00 €	Support/training for smaller Finno-Ugric wiki communities
Total	6.700,00 €	of which WMF funding: 2.700,00 €

Community support
Item	EUR	Notes
Meetings and events	2200,00 €
Community awards	700 €	Wikipedian of the month, photographer of the year, etc.
Total	2.900,00 €

Staffing Expenses
Item	EUR	Notes
Organizational Manager	10.276,80 €	0.5 FTE, including social tax
Project Manager (Education)	10.276,80 €	0.5 FTE, including social tax
Project Manager (GLAM)	10.276,80 €	0.5 FTE, including social tax
Communication/Outreach Manager	10.276,80 €	0.5 FTE, including social tax
Total	41.107,20 €

Other Operational Expenses
Item	EUR	Notes
Office rent	1.920,00 €
Accounting	1.860,00 €
Transportation	4.470,00 €	including potential Wikimania travel
Other costs	1.680,00 €	equipment, gifts/swag and general operational costs
Total	9.930,00 €
Total BUDGET	69.037,20 €	of which WMF funding: 63.037,20 €

Staffing Plan

Job title: Organizational Manager
- Who is filling this role?: Either Ivo Kruusamägi (vacating the Project Manager for Education position) or a new candidate we will start looking for once the funding is confirmed.
- Brief description: The Organizational Manager is in charge of running the day to day affairs of the chapter. They oversee the work of the other employees, helping them implement the general directions suggested by the board of directors. Additionally, they deal with minor but important day to day organizational issues (organizing transport, making small purchases, ensuring bills are paid on time, etc.). They report directly to the Board of Directors.
- Indication of FTE and duration of work: 0.5 FTE, permanent contract (as mandated by Estonian law).

Job title: Project Manager (Education)
- Who is filling this role?: Either Ivo Kruusamägi, who has been in the role (or similar ones) since its inception, or a new candidate we will start looking for once the funding is confirmed.
- Brief description: The Project Manager for Education is in charge of finding opportunities for cooperation with educational institutions and running the projects that develop from those opportunities. They are also expected to cooperate with the Communication/Outreach Manager to more generally promote open culture and the Wikimedia projects to educational institutions. They report to the Organizational Manager on day to day duties, and to the chapter members via weekly update meetings in Slack.
- Indication of FTE and duration of work: 0.5 FTE, permanent contract (as mandated by Estonian law).

Job title: Project Manager (GLAM)
- Who is filling this role?: Ivo Kruusamägi, who has been in the role (or similar ones) since its inception.
- Brief description: The Project Manager for GLAM is in charge of finding opportunities for cooperation with GLAM institutions and running the projects that develop from those opportunities. They are also expected to cooperate with the Communication/Outreach Manager to more generally promote open culture and the Wikimedia projects to GLAM institutions. They report to the Organizational Manager on day to day duties, and to the chapter members via weekly update meetings in Slack.
- Indication of FTE and duration of work: 0.5 FTE, permanent contract (as mandated by Estonian law).

Job title: Communication/Outreach Manager
- Who is filling this role?: Kristel Birgit Potsepp, who has been in the role since early 2020.
- Brief description: The Communication/Outreach Manager is in charge of the chapter's internal and external communication. They run the chapter's blog and social media pages, help organize and promote events, and make sure the chapter members and the general public are kept up to date on the chapter's activities and on anything interesting happening in the Estonian Wikiverse. They also help the project managers promote their projects as needed. They report to the Organizational Manager on day to day duties, and to the chapter members via weekly update meetings in Slack.
- Indication of FTE and duration of work: 0.5 FTE, permanent contract (as mandated by Estonian law).

Strategic plan

We have had general strategic goals for a couple years (available in Estonian on our site) but we haven't been able to turn them into a specific strategic plan yet (see above for the limitations of a day-to-day managing board). We expect to be able to work on this once the board is not on charge of directing all the activities.

Introduction

Wikimedia Eesti was founded in 2010 and since then has been promoting open culture and Wikimedia projects in Estonia, working with everyone from educational and GLAM institutions to the Academy of Sciences of Estonia and the President of the Republic.

In these 10 years we've worked on plenty of activities we're very proud of. One example is the Miljon+ project, in which we collaborated with the main universities in the country to include Wikipedia article writing in their curricula with the goal of eventually reaching a million Wikipedia articles in Estonian. The Estonian Wikipedia is now the biggest one in the Baltics, with well over 200000 articles (one of the top Wikipedias in the world in both number of articles and editors per capita) and by now thousands of university students have written at least one Wikipedia article and this is considered standard practice. Another example is our international Wiki Science Competition, improving the scientific imagery in Commons since 2011. In general, images are one of our strengths, with Estonian-related content making up 2% of featured images in Wikimedia Commons (not bad for such a small country, we'd say).

Our vision for the future of the Estonian society is that as big as possible a part of it should be involved in the sharing of free knowledge, and that Wikimedia-related projects should become the place where most of this sharing takes place. All of our programs are designed to lead to this vision, be it by introducing open culture, free knowledge and the Wikimedia projects to more people, by improving the content available, or by working to make the Estonian legal and institutional environment more welcoming to the ideas of free open culture.

Programs

Education

Our goal with this program is to ensure that Wikimedia projects are useful for Estonian educational institutions and students, and that they also work to improve the projects in return, creating a loop that leads to ever-improving benefits to both the Estonian education system and Wikimedia. In following our central vision, we aspire to reach every level of the system, to ensure the involvement with Wikimedia and free knowledge is not limited to a one-off exercise or course for the students, but becomes a natural part of their education. We aim to make it better understood that working on the Estonian Wikipedia enables significant and meaningful learning while contributing to community and outreach tasks, and that Wikipedia (both its English and Estonian versions) is also a great resource for CLIL.

By collaborating with educational institutions, we can ensure students are introduced to the Wikimedia projects in a deeper way than just “searching for something on Wikipedia”, that they understand they too can help improve the content for others, and that they learn how exactly to do it. Our past efforts have already led to many courses in Estonian universities including at least one exercise where students write or improve an article in the Estonian Wikipedia that is connected with their area of expertise, and we have a strong partnership with the University of Tartu. Maintaining our presence in higher education and expanding to other levels of education (ideally through work with the Ministry of Education) are our main plans for this program.

Program Objectives

Introduce new cooperation projects with at least three (3) new educational institutions, preferably outside higher education
Make sure educational use of Wikimedia projects is not painful by providing support to teachers and answering any doubts they send in a maximum of two (2) working days (or as fast as possible if it requires us to do extra research).
Collect at least 12.000 images and videos on scientific topics through the Wiki Science Competition (and work with local organizers to see that it gets promoted in their national educational institutions)

Planned activities

Working with schools to introduce Wikimedia projects to students
Supporting teachers and (if needed) students with their Wikimedia problems
Hosting the Wiki Science Competition
Putting together teaching materials on copyright and open culture

Why are we doing this?

We want to work towards a future where every scientific article, research project and even university thesis written in Estonia leaves a trace in the Estonian Wikipedia, even if it’s only one sentence. The Estonian Wikipedia is especially important in this regard because the danger of English becoming the main language of academia remains strong in Estonia, and a lack of quality scientific content in the Estonian Wikipedia and in Estonian in general means students get used to defaulting to English content for most of their searches already before they start higher education.

Additionally, we want to make sure Estonians understand the collaborative system behind Wikimedia projects; reaching them through educational institutions is the easiest way to ensure all sorts of people are aware of the projects and the system, including those who wouldn’t necessarily think about contributing without these tasks but might still enjoy it.

Program metrics and targets

Number of new educational institutions working with Wikimedia projects: 3
Number of content pages created or improved by students: 500
Number of images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons during the Wiki Science Competition: 12.000

GLAM

Our goal with this program is to take advantage of the wealth of quality content and data owned or maintained by Estonian GLAM institutions, and make it available to the public through Wikimedia projects. In return, we will do our best to give back to the GLAM institutions both by making their collections more visible and by figuring out ways our systems can be used to help more directly. We intend to link GLAM content more broadly into our everyday activities: use it to engage more volunteers, involve the local communities, help make it available for education, etc.

We have had contacts with GLAM institutions for a long time, and in 2018 we started two large scale cooperation programs with museums. One of them, with the Estonian Museum of Natural History, was completed in 2019. By then we had already seen other museums show interest in cooperating, and in 2020 we engaged several more of them with small projects to give them a taste of the Wikimedia world. We want to keep expanding the number of museums we work with by looking into new types of cooperation projects including rephotography, digitization and virtual exhibitions.

Program Objectives

Introduce new cooperation projects with at least ten (10) new institutions.
Arrange at least ten (10) photo-expeditions
Collect at least 1000 images via content partnerships.

Planned activities

Working with GLAM institutions to make more of their data and content publicly available
Improving and expanding our set of Wikidata tools to import Estonian GLAM data
Organizing photo-expeditions to GLAM institutions to help digitize materials
Working with our Latvian and Nordic neighbors on common GLAM activities

Why are we doing this?

There’s obviously a huge amount of knowledge available through GLAM institutions, produced and curated by experts in their relevant fields. By making as much of this content as possible available under free licenses in Wikimedia projects, we expect to see an increase in both the amount and the quality of the coverage of Estonian-related topics not only in Estonian projects, but also globally, as such making Estonian culture and the efforts of our GLAM institutions more visible to the world and even to our own Estonian users. Additionally, GLAM institutions can be very important allies in our efforts to improve open and free knowledge in Estonia, and forging strong partnerships is definitely in our interest.

Program metrics and targets

Number of new institutions working with Wikimedia projects: 10
Number of media files created during photo-expeditions: 1.000
Number of images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in relation to content partnerships: 1.000

Open culture and outreach

Our goal with this program is to promote open culture in Estonia in the form of public events, meetings, opinion pieces, and active policy formation. This encompasses awareness building and collaboration with organisations and institutions that relate to the culture and information society. Of course, we aim to specifically promote the Wikimedia projects as the main repository for the culture that is being made open, but we think it's important for people to understand open culture in general and not only specifically understand Wikipedia.

We need to work on two levels for this goal. On one side, we need to help the wider Estonian community understand what open culture is, what they can do with it and why it matters. In this area we have made heavy use of media appearances (for example with appearances on state TV and multiple radio channels and newspapers explaining both how Wikipedia itself works and how people can help improve it). We plan to continue doing this and also to work on more direct actions, like making the work of authors entering the public domain more available to the community. On the other side, we need to use our experience in the field to get into the public discourse at a higher level, trying to have an influence on political and legal decisions that might either strengthen or endanger open culture. This we have done through the media, but also in collaboration with cultural institutions and information society organisations like Open Knowledge, Internet Society, the Free Software Foundation, UNESCO, the Open Government Partnership and their relevant local branches, and sometimes by directly getting in touch with politicians and parties and presenting our concerns or suggestions to them.

Finally, as one of the strongest Wikimedia chapters in the Finno-Ugric world, we also aim to promote the Wikimedia projects and open culture in smaller Finno-Ugric communities.

Program Objectives

Participate in at least five (5) meetings or consultations with representatives of stakeholders or policymakers.
Get our activities and/or Wikimedia projects featured in the media at least five (5) times.
Organize at least two (2) Wikipedia competitions and two (2) Commons competitions for Estonian Wikimedians.

Planned activities

Participating in public discussion about open culture
Promoting open culture to the public and recruiting new Wikimedians
Organizing competitions to engage both existing and new Wikimedians
Helping digitize public domain content (see also GLAM)
Helping to train Wikipedians for smaller Finno-Ugric communities

Why are we doing this?

Our aim is to make as large a part of our culture as possible available to everyone, both through the Wikimedia projects specifically and by ensuring that the legal and social environment in Estonia is favorable to the growth of open culture (and open data, open technologies, open source, open government and other similar concerns). For that, two things are important: one is making sure Wikimedia Eesti is recognised as an expert in these topics, so that we are invited to be part of the discussions where we can influence national developments. The other is that the Estonian Wikimedia community grows, and its members are happy and remain committed to the movement's goals.

Program metrics and targets

Number of meetings and consultations participated in: 5
Number of media features of Wikimedia-related material: 5
Number of content pages improved or created during competitions: 1.000
Number of pictures and videos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons during competitions: 1.000

Grant Metrics Reporting

Metrics, targets and results at the grants metrics worksheet.

Needs Request

Requests for programmatic support

With the international Wiki Science Competition, we could always use some support in one or more of the following tasks:

getting some sponsors for the international event (does the WMF have any existing contacts with companies that might be interested to sponsor?)
developing better banners (the fundraising team might be good with those?)
providing some coverage for the competition (by writing about it on any foundation communication channels that seem relevant, be it blogs, mailing lists or social media profiles)

Midterm report

Program Progress

The office of Wikimedia Estonia in Tartu as a part of the Sofa Office (door no. 7)

In January we hired Käbi Laan as office manager (0.5 FTE) and in spring we moved into a new office space that suits our needs better. We have slowly grown the subscriber base of the Wikipedia newsletter that we started in 2020 and it is now almost 100.

On June 12th we had a general meeting. There will be one more on July 18th (where we expect to choose some new board members for the chapter) as part of the Wikipedia summer days in Estonia that we are organizing.

Education program

We have hired a new education project manager, Pille Priks (0.5 FTE), who started working on July 1st.

We've been working with partners at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and the Tallinn University of Technology to develop “timelines of world history” that could be used in education.

We have also started developing a project in collaboration with Integratsiooni Sihtasutus (Integration Foundation) dedicated to high school students in Ida-Viru County. The idea of the project is to introduce Estonian Wikipedia in the form of a photography competition to students from Ida-Virumaa which is a region with the highest % of Russian minority in Estonia. The project is also dedicated to integrate students with Russian speaking backgrounds to Estonian cultural space, hence the collaboration with Integratsiooni Sihtasutus. We plan to start the project itself in the upcoming Fall, but the preparations started already in March.

We are offering internships to students from universities. This year we had a Sociology intern from the University of Tartu who conducted a user survey in the Estonian Wikipedia.

GLAM program

One of the paintings by Tiit Pääsuke that is now in Wikimedia Commons. "Kris & Kris I" (2016)

As a part of our long-term cooperation with Tartu Art Museum we now have a set of audio files of visual descriptions of Estonian paintings in Wikimedia Commons. Ten of them already existed before (on the museum website) but are now more widely distributed thanks to this cooperation, and five were created as part of this initiative. We also got some paintings from Tiit Pääsuke and assembled a virtual exhibition on the topic mixing together the visuals and descriptions of them. This was our first project that targeted blind or visually impaired people and we hope that it will inspire future collaborations.

We got our hand at the first 360° panoramas at the end of 2019. In 2020 the main focus was on 360° panoramas of vocational schools in Estonia and in 2021 we have our first sets of 360° panoramas of various museums. How does that look like:

Rakvere Castle and Vallimägi
Rakvere castle interior
View to the Estonian Aviation Museum
Cockpit of F-4 Phantom II
Estonian Mining Museum visitor center
Estonian Mining Museum