Grants talk:Project/Chinmayisk/Community toolkit for Greater Diversity/Midpoint

Report accepted

Dear Chinmayisk and Rohini,

It was a pleasure to read this report. I appreciate how thoughtfully you are moving forward with the execution of this project and enjoyed reading your reflections about your experience. I am approving your report now, with the following comments:

• I enjoyed reading the conclusions of your literature review, and I see how these principles are shaping your approach to designing this project. The effort you are making to be self-aware about privilege, and also your willingness to acknowledge that you may not be able to see the limits of that self-awareness, contributes something so meaningful to yoru project. I really appreciate the pains you take to find writers who have the "vantage point to knowledge, which cannot be shared by everyone, especially the privileged" as worded in your literature review conclusion, and how you leave the door open for further learning as you go along, recognizing the potential for yet unidentified blind spots. I imagine modeling this orientation will in and of itself be a power part of your trainings.
• I would be interested in seeing something added to your literature review that explains your reasoning about how you approached your literature review -- what questions were you exploring and how did you select literature to address it, what answers did you find and what still remains unclear?
• Are there any slides or notes from your presentation at Wikimania? I didn't see any linked on your presentation summary on the Wikimania site, so I thought I'd ask here. I would enjoy reading further if there is documentation. [Chinmayi said this documentation will be released at a later date in a bundle with the modules].
• What kind of presence will the completed modules have online? [In our call, Chinmayi said that Maria Cruz is going to help with creation of online module, so people can access it from the website and take the training there. They will also document methodology for offline training in case people want to replicate it. They will talk to people who attend the training about growing the trainer community to extend the reach of this knowledge. They are framing this as a peer-learning training, in which trainees as well as trainers have knowledge to share.]
• I love that you are bringing in art as a learning pathway in your training. I hope you will create as much photo-documentation as you can!

A couple of additional reminders, in the wake of our call:

• Contact me before releasing the modules publicly if you'd like to do a debriefing beforehand with our Support and Safety Team in preparation for any possible backlash.
• Let me know when your modules are ready for review. I can offer comments myself and, if you wish, share with the Community Resources staff to see if any of them want to offer comments as well.

I am notifying our grants administrator that this midpoint has been accepted.

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 15:46, 30 August 2018 (UTC)