Community Development/Community Calls

Community Calls

The Wikimedia Foundation's Community Development team will be hosting a series of community calls to share our team's work and what we do at the Wikimedia Foundation. Our five-person Community Development team is responsible for developing accessible opportunities for volunteers to develop critical capacities and leadership skills for movement sustainability and growth.

The purpose of the community call is to provide a space for volunteers to meet the Community Development team and learn our teams approach to capacity building in the movement. These calls are also a shared space for all volunteers to learn or speak about projects related to capacity building & leadership development in the Wikimedia community.

The calls are open to all community members (whether volunteers, affiliate members and staff, or WMF staff)in the movement who would like to discuss and engage in capacity building conversations and connect with the Community Development team.

Join our second community call

• Topic: Meet the Community Development Team
• When: May [Date to be determined], 2022
• Time: 15:00-16:00 UTC
• Where: Zoom

First community call

• Topic: Meet the Community Development Team
• When: February 23, 2022
• Time: 15:00-16:00 UTC
• Where: Zoom

For this first call, we would like to invite community members who are actively working on capacity building or leadership development in their local communities to share their work.

Call Structure and Schedule

Each call will be 60 minutes in length and scheduled every other month between February and June 2022. We will be rotating between different time zones for each call to ensure accessibility and timezone equity.

There will be one session topic per call to help facilitate conversations and share different aspects of capacity building within the movement.

Call	Date	Session Topic
1	February 23rd, 2022 at 15:00 UTC - 16:00 UTC Zoom Link:	Meet the Community Development Team at the Wikimedia Foundation Meet the team at the Wikimedia Foundation who are working to ensure that capacity building in the movement is accessible and open to everyone. Learn about how our team is approaching capacity building in the movement.
2	May 2022 Zoom Link:	Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and Capacity Building Learn how Community Development and volunteers are working to prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion in movement capacity building.
3	June 2022 Zoom Link:	Leadership Development in the Movement Learn how the Community Development team is supporting the Movement Strategy and the Skill and Leadership Development Recommendation

How to Participate

Join the second call: To attend a call, please use the zoom link here on the scheduled time and day.

Sign ups for the second call will close on April 18th

Those who show interest in speaking without signing up prior to the call will not be able to speak during the call but are still encouraged to join.

Although the primary language of the call is English, we are committed to providing simultaneous translation to the best of our ability.

Friendly Space Policy

The Friendly Space policy will apply to this call and all participants will be required to agree to adhere to the policy at the beginning of each call. We do not tolerate any form of online harassment and discrimination. Please write to [email protected] with any questions or concerns.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What are community calls?

A: A community call is a meeting, held online, that invites people to gather at a specific time each week or month. They're recurring and open to anyone who wishes to join.

Q: Will the community calls be recorded?

A: No, these calls will not be recorded. However, we will have one of our team members who will be taking notes. Summary of the call will be posted on our community call page for those who would like to read on what took place.

Q: I would like to speak at a call but would like to discuss my experience/topic/project before I sign up. How can I contact you?

A: If you would like to talk to a member of the Community Development team, please email us at [email protected].

Community Call Summaries

In February of this year, the Community Development team ran its first community call.The purpose of the call was to provide a warm, welcoming, and informative space for Wikimedians across the movement to meet the Community Development team in real time. The call was also a space to let community members who contribute to capacity building present and share their work in the call. The team welcomed three speakers from two communities; User: NANöR from Arabic Wikipedia, and Jan-Bart de Vreede – Chair, Wikimedia Netherlands & Nikki Zeuner – Senior Adviser Global Partnerships, Wikimedia Germany. Below is a summary of their presentations for learning more about their work.

Participation: The call had a total of 31 participants from the community who dialed in from Uganda, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany, Argentina, India, Netherlands, the Philippines, South Africa, Belgium, the United States, and Ireland.

Presentation 1: Introducing the Capacity Exchange, by Jan-Bart de Vreede – Chair, Wikimedia Netherlands & Nikki Zeuner – Senior Adviser Global Partnerships

• One of the initiatives of the Wikimedia European Affiliates Cooperation is the Capacity Exchange, which originates in the Movement Strategy Recommendations. The goal of the Capacity Exchange is to enable Wikimedians worldwide to offer and find people, organizations, services and resources. The presentation focuses on the challenges of capacity building within the Wikimedia Movement and how a group of volunteers think we can make a start in helping solve some of these challenges.

Presentation 2: Creative Ideas Beyond Article Editing by User: NANöR - Arabic Wikipedia

• After four months of being part of the user group, User:NANöR started to think of moving away from editing articles to explore the Wikimedia Movement. They created the workshop “New Levantine members”. They started exploring user boxes where each of the participants created user boxes to get to know each other and develop templates. They also worked on translating images within Wikimedia Commons using tools like Inkscape. Through this, they developed a graphic poster for Wikipedia's 20th Anniversary. Within this workshop, they had a group discussion on the universal code of conduct and they left feedback regardless of the fact that they were newcomers.

After the presentations, the Community Development (CD) team provided time for participants to have questions and answers (Q&A). To keep the conversations anonymous, below are summarized comments and questions from the participants:

• “Mentorship development is an essential program we should include in our strategy. This would be a strong foundation for leadership development in the community”
  • CD Response: “agree that this is very important." Participant adds: "this benefits both the mentor and mentee, something we'd love to add through the capacity exchange”
• Question to presenter 1: capacity exchange meets Recommendation six, and what about the 10 principles? -- looking for clarity.
  • Response from CapEx presenters: Prioritizing people-centeredness, subsidiarity and self-management, but overall in line with all ten principles.
• Question to Community Development Team (CD): Developing Learning Days, was this a pilot or something that is continuous? When we had WikiIndaba, we had thought about Learning Days-- is this something that can easily be done other times?
  • CD Response: "We've had to pause due to the pandemic, but we plan to resume/keep the Leadership Development portfolio open. If you are looking to include Learning Days in an online conference, we can at least help you plan. Once in-person meetings are back, this will be standard at Wikimania and at regional conferences.
• Question to presenter 2: Any others outside Wiki of the Levant that you've collaborated with?
  • Response: Yes, in other regional affiliates.

The Community Development team wants our community calls to be a safe and welcoming environment for all Wikimedians across the movement. Our next community call will take place in April. Please see the main page on Meta for more information. We look forward to meeting more Wikimedians to connect and have future conversations with.