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Wikimedia CEE Hub/Grant proposal 2025

< Wikimedia CEE Hub

Note: This is an overview of the grant proposal for Year 3 of the Wikimedia CEE Hub which will be implemented during 2025. This version includes some of the feedback, that we received from the CEE communities at the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024. Please feel free to share this page on your local wiki and translate this page into your language so that others might also form an opinion on what the CEE Hub should do in 2025!

You can endorse the grant proposal commenting the grant proposal below. Also, you can leave your feedback on the talk page or you can contact User:BKlen-CEEhub and User:TRistovski-CEEhub directly.

The project will be carried out according to the following plan, divided into work packages described below. To understand outputs and impact better, please check out this document.

Comparison Year 2 and Year 3

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Compared to the year 2 of the CEE hub project implementation we plan to introduce some changes related to the activities that we have already been implementing:

  • More focus on learning about and using of external funds
  • Offering more structured support for the local organisers of the CEEM who are in charge of organising the CEE meeting
  • Coordination of regular meetings and cooperation with other Wikimedia hubs
  • More focus on reaching out to community members who did not get a chance to be involved before and who do not know what CEE hub is (via Village pumps)
  • Changes related to Microgrants: higher max amounts (up to 700 EUR) and extending  this support to the neighbouring Central Asian communities too
  • Evaluation of the pilot community building process that was introduced during the year 2 of the CEE hub project and which was dedicated to 3 CEE communities: we will analyse and evaluate the process and outputs that were achieved

Apart from this, we plan to introduce 2 new packages: Development of intra-regional educational cooperation and CEE Hub incubator programme (for more information read the explanation below).

Packages

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Administrative support

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Administrative support of the CEE communities and individuals: the CEE Hub is here to support communities and individuals in order to decrease their administrative burden. We will continue providing support in these areas:

  • Collecting information about grant administration and discussing issues with the WMF.
  • Supporting individuals and communities in writing grant applications (WMF and/or other funds) by offering consultations and guiding them through the process of writing applications.
  • Taking part and coordination of submitting one externally funded project application per year with several CEE affiliates being applicants.
  • Coordination of efforts related to acquiring external funding with the WMF and Wikimedia Europe.
  • Supporting CEE communities in the implementation of their activities: supporting organising events, design of materials or design of work processes. This support is provided online but ideally, CEE Hub staff would make 1-3 visits per year to less developed communities and support them during the organisation/implementation of a local event/project.

Programmatic support

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Programmatic support of the CEE communities and individuals: The CEE Hub is here to support communities and enable their program related development. We will continue providing support in these areas:

  • Enabling and supporting participation of smaller communities in regional/global projects by informing them, helping them to organise and offering step by step guidance through the process. Based on the outcomes of the survey and communication with communities, we will decide which two contests/campaigns will be at focus during the Y3.  Our support for smaller communities is still needed as they lack both skills and resources to launch and manage campaigns (especially for the first time) on their own. In addition to this, we will continue our support for the CEE Spring Campaign which, although it is widely spread and loved in the CEE, needs both a reevaluation and a systematic introduction of innovations, for which we will have preparatory meetings at the beginning of November. This early planning of activities and improvements will enable us to inform local coordinators about changes and offer them support when needed.
  • Leading the remodelling of the CEEM related processes while continuing  supporting the local organisers of the annual CEE Meeting (CEEM). The CEE Hub representatives facilitated the CEEM bidding process for the past two years and they were also part of the CEEM program committee to ensure a smooth running of the process and to provide support to the local organisers. We have realised that relying on the local organisers for complex operations and situations doesn't always work and centralising key features of the meeting in the CEE Hub would ensure a certain quality level (especially related to overseeing the scholarships/delegates selection process, implementing innovation into program structure and making sure that appropriate venue is chosen).
During Y3, we would like to make an evaluation of the CEEM program planning and if there is a consensus about possible improvements and changes - we would like to facilitate the implementation of these innovations during both 2025 and 2026.
We plan to prepare a conference checklist to enable local organisers easier navigation of all what has to be checked and prepared before the conference. Also, one CEE hub representative will be tasked with on site visit in the months preceding the conference to additionally support local organisers.
Also, together with local organisers we will review and discuss the model for choosing delegates, ensuring that processes for the selection of delegates are fair and transparent.
During Year 3 and 4 we also plan on supporting and guiding the 2025 and 2026 CEEM host in preparation of the conference grant application (including budget).
  • One important part of programmatic support during Year 3 will be mapping and facilitation of the adoption of technical tools/innovations and features (volunteer tools and those developed by WMF). CEE Hub will continue its work on  adjusting the catalogue which was part of the Year 2 CEE Hub project. Based on the results of the survey done in August 2023, during the Y3 we plan to focus on:
    • Tool discovery improvements (e.g. featured tools);
    • We will contact the participants of the survey to understand their needs and what they would like to see improved;
    • Help maintain technical Village pumps in the CEE languages.

Communication

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Support related to communication in the CEE region: the CEE Hub is here to support regional communication processes, enable information flow and maintain information channels. We will continue providing support in these areas:

  • Updating CEE communication channels as well as enabling easy access to information: we are managing CEE social networks, we are coordinating and curating publication of the CEE Newsletter and hub staff is organising monthly open office hours. We are also curating CEE mailing lists. During this year we plan to restructure open office hours and make them (more) focused on relevant/ongoing events and issues.
  • We are organising CEE Catch up sessions in cooperation with the WMF staff; 4 sessions per year will be organised. Decisions about the topics will be made based on suggestions and demand from the CEE communities/individuals and depending on the current global developments that need to be shared with the CEE communities. The goal of these sessions is knowledge sharing and enabling the information flow between wider global initiatives and interested people in the CEE communities.
During this year we plan to restructure the format of the meeting; we will publish in advance what exactly will be covered, giving people a chance to interact with us and ask questions/demand changes before the session. In this way, we will enable communities to have more influence in co-creating the sessions.
  • Enabling continuous capacity development of volunteers, affiliates and communities by preparing training materials, organising learning sessions and, when needed, writing guidelines. During each year the focus will be on creating learning materials  that cover 2-3 topics. These are the topics that we would like to cover:
    • General onboarding and useful information about the Wikimedia global context. This information is useful and needed for new affiliate staff and volunteers.
    • Board Members onboarding. Some of the topics that would be covered are: the conflict of interest, volunteer management, employee management.
    • Information for new affiliate communication staff - global and regional context
    • Information for new affiliate education staff - global and regional context
    • Information for new GLAM employees - global and regional context
    • Information for new Communication employees - global and regional context
  • CEE Hub staff will receive training on the topic of UCoC and CEE Hub will be able to support other CEE communities in establishing additional (custom made and context based) processes for their communities that build on the UCoC.
  • Cooperation with other hubs in order to enable relevant information exchange with the CEE region but also to support others who are part of the Movement and who want to learn from our work and our results/mistakes. This also includes conducting regular meetings and helping build a peer-to-peer network of hubs that is effective in keeping each other accountable and improving each other’s work by creating a safe space where people working on hub projects can exchange ideas, challenges and quandaries.

Governance

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Continuation of defining the CEE Hub governance model and organisation format: We are aiming to formalise the governance model further by investigating the possibility of introducing a membership system for the CEE Hub. This will be the main focus of Year 3 and would also provide the benefit of adding some structure to the CEE region and who is a member of it.

Questions remain concerning how this would fit into a wider Wikimedia context, but the superficial changes to the WMF affiliate system and the WMF’s refusal to ratify the Movement Charter show that there is no viable alternative to a self-organised membership system for the next few years.

Youth

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Supporting further development of the CEE Youth group: during 2023 the CEE Hub initiated the creation of the CEE Youth group. The group currently consists of more than 40 CEE youth members who are mostly younger than 26 and who plan to work together, support each other, and learn from each other. Although the initial plan was to guide and steer the group, that proved to be beyond our capabilities and capacity as we work with limited resources.

What we managed to accomplish during the past year and a half is to establish regular meetings of the group, engage few group members to write youth related grant applications with us, encourage the group to organise game nights and support the group members when presenting their work during international events (CEE meeting in Tbilisi in 2023, CEE meeting in Istanbul in 2024, Wikimania 2024 in Katowice). We offered 2 knowledge-exchange study visits (to attend the youth camp to Armenia and a youth-senior cooperation event in Czechia) to the group members but this opportunity was not taken up by the group members.

The CEE hub would like to continue supporting the group and the main goals of the group would be: supporting members in their outreach and recruitment of new young Wikimedians in their local contexts, enabling networking and knowledge sharing between youth in the region (and the world) and being a platform that enables our CEE youth to be heard and take part in conversations.

For the following two years we are proposing these activities of the group:

  • CEE hub supporting the organisation of the Youth conference that is planned to take place in Czechia in spring 2025: CEE hub will be involved in program creation, selection of scholarship recipients and support during the event in Prague  (this activity depends on the approval of the conference grant proposal which WMCZ submitted to the WMF’s conference grants)
  • Organising bi-monthly meetings (preparing the agenda and supporting the meeting)
  • Preparing, in collaboration with the group, the internal CEE youth governance model
  • In collaboration with the group members, mapping of all CEE youth related activities in the CEE region
  • Supporting the youth group section that wants to focus on social media: preparing a social channels strategy

Microgrants

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Continuation of the CEE Hub Microgrants (MG) programme: Based on our experience gained during the implementation of the Micro Grants program during 2024 we would like to continue with this way of supporting the CEE communities and neighbouring communities. Suggested new maximum amounts for MG would be 700 EUR. The budget for Microgrants would be 12000 per year. This activity will continue being implemented in close cooperation with the WMF and CEE WM Affiliates funded by the WMF to avoid double financing and to make sure globally banned people do not receive funds.  CEE Hub Incubator programme (if approved as a work package, see number 9) will be a way to progress microgrants when they are successful and when initiatives initiated by microgrants become more mature.

Community building

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Evaluation of the community building process: This working package is focused on the evaluation of the methods and outcomes of the capacity and community building efforts that were implemented during 2024. We focused on the capacity building of 4 communities and based on the outcomes, the strategy for the CEE hubs further support of smaller communities will be created.

Intra-regional educational cooperation

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Development of intra-regional educational cooperation: In this year we want to focus on better understanding the efforts and activities that the CEE communities are implementing  in the field of education. We want to discover areas of common interest and overlapping work. Also, we want to encourage the CEE communities to share their experiences and knowledge and to work, when that makes sense, on joint (intra regional) projects.

  1. Setting up CEE Hub Education working group
  2. Developing and implementing the survey to better understand current situation in the region; analysing the results
  3. Collaboration with the education UG / WikiEd  
  4. Defining core topics and tasks of this working group

Incubator programme

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CEE Hub incubator programme: This work package is to be used for opportunities that we have not foreseen, like possible research needs, bigger inter-regional cooperation projects and further development of successful microgrant projects.

Project management

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Project management: Transferring project activities into Asana (PM tool). Monitoring if all planned project activities are developing according to the initial plan. Organising regular staff coordination meetings (on weekly basis) and bi-weekly coordination meetings with the CEE Hub SC members and members of the wider CEE Hub group. Coordination of execution (logistics and financial management) with the fiscal sponsor. Making sure that budget is spent according to the plan and managing budget reallocation (if needed). Having monthly coordination meetings with the WMF staff. Organising two in person/hybrid SC meetings per year. Writing a final project report. Creating and sending out the CEE Hub satisfaction survey to the communities, individuals and affiliates in order to gather feedback about the performance and relevance of the CEE hub’s support. Depending on the results (of the survey and other feedback), outcomes and developments the decision about the follow-up grant will be made. If this decision is positive, a new grant proposal has to be prepared and written in cooperation and after holding consultations with the CEE communities.

Endorsements

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  • Format: Signatures on behalf of a community affiliate should contain the name of the affiliate that the signatory represents, name of the signatory and username in parentheses. ::Example: Wikimedia Transdanubia, Firstname Lastname (Username)

Wikimedia community affiliates

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Wikimedia community members

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