Representatives of the organizations gathered at the VI Iberoamerican Wikimedia Meeting Iberoconf 2019 in Santiago from February 8th to 10th, 2019, wish to communicate to the Group of Roles and Responsibilities of the Wikimedia Strategy, the Wikimedia Foundation, its Board of Trustees and our global movement in general the following reflections:
Iberocoop was founded in 2011 with the goal of strengthening the Wikimedia community in Ibero America, through the creation and development of local organizations. Ten years later, we have 9 chapters in the region; in addition to that, the creation of a new affiliation model, the user groups, with simpler requirements and processes, removed some of the barriers that prevented many local groups from organizing into a Wikimedia organization, enabling 5 more groups to form.
This is a result that must be celebrated, but we must not be complacent. If we want to reach every person in the world, we need to go further in strengthening local groups, enabling them to get the resources they need and grow, working together and expanding our reach to the areas that we are not covering yet.
At the same time, the growth of the last few years has highlighted some challenges of the current model, including an unbalance between rights and requirements, and the creation of new groups being sometimes originated as result of personal conflicts rather than the willingness to contribute to the global movement. The 2030 Strategy Process gives us the chance to finally discuss and tackle these issues, something that has been delayed for years.
To the Iberocoop members: make a following activity of this document six months and one year after being published.
