Hello Sridhar ji,

It's great to hear that you're working on making your Wikimedia projects sustainable through turning it into an extracurricular organization, which are much needed in South Asia. I started a similar extracurricular Wikimedia organized group at my college three years ago with 11th and 12th-grade students, and it has now expanded to cover most of the aspects of the Wikimedia movement. I'm also helping leaders establish extracurricular Wikimedia clubs in and outside south, including a few in India.

I'm sharing my suggestions publicly here so that they are accessible to anyone who may find them useful, and I can also reference them from the public archive in the future.
  1. If you have a dedicated group of contributors who are currently active and displaying leadership potential, it's a good time to establish the club. However, if you don't have such a group, consider waiting a few years to engage and nurture students, transforming them into Wikimedia activists. They will become the initial core group to kickstart the entire endeavor.
  2. You'll have to run a recruitment campaign every year when a new batch comes to your institution or a new batch gets matured enough to join your organization, this is a must - your organization can't survive without it. I find extra curricular wikimedia activities extremely interesting since we are mining talent from the core flow of a nation's human resources. You're sitting on an unending flow of human resources and it's up to you how much of the opportunity you can use. India is now the world's most populated country. My country, Bangladesh, is also one of the world's most densely populated country. These huge population is a wealth for wikimedia outreach activists like us, and the best starting points are the educational institutions. 
  3. Don't force any student to do anything. If any student shows dedication for onwiki contribution, that's the best thing. But if they don't, it's your duty to find their passion and integrate that into wikimedia. For example, if anyone loves to sing, record a folk song and upload it to commons. Same goes for musicians. If anyone wants to be a leader in real life, make them wikimedia organizers. If they love coding, send them to wikimedia tech. If anyone wants to work on human rights, hold their hands and guide them to wiki for human rights campaign. Believe me or not, wikimedia has space for literally everyone. Even if someone doesn't contribute in a visible way, but keeps attending the spaces, welcome them. I often use the term "Wikimedia activist" when I train high schoolers. This is because, I believe that wikimedia is a real mission, to ensure free knowledge for each and every person on the planet and anyone supporting our goal can join us, even if they don't contribute in a visible way and just stay as a silent supporter. And you never know where your young introvert student will reach in the future and how they can help you. Opportunities often come from very unexpected places.   
  4. Don't micromanage, build shared and sustainable leadership in your organization. Try to be in the backstage and let the young people arrange everything. They will learn to organize themselves. Once they're somewhat matured and have a few organizing experiences, bring them to specialized wikimedia spaces focused on skill and leadership development, these spaces may include Let's Connect, Organizers' Lab, CIS TtT and so on. These spaces will bring professional and structured knowledge packed in a single compact pouch. To collect the same amount of professional knowledge, you may need several years of hard work. Inspire them to build strong network in and outside wikimedia, tell them to join conferences and meetups. 
  5. This is important. If your school is a legally recognized entity to accept local and foreign non-profit donations, it's okay. But if it's not, start the process asap. You'll need donations to sustain your organization. Aim for non wmf funds also (but don't forget your responsibility to hold wmf accountable for the millions of USD donations they raise showing our valuable work)
  6. Build a strong alumni base, let your people spread around the world and nourish the relation. It can make a miracle.
  7. Teach them about the whole wikimedia ecosystem - from how wikipedia content guidelines ensure the authenticity of the encyclopedia despite being a crowdsourced project, to how wmf collects funds and distributes it; from how wikimedia devs work behind the scenes, to how the ecosystem is being more and more relevant to the non-wikimedia world. Onwiki editing will ofc be one of the major part of their activism but it shouldn't be the only one, teach them to be an activist. Don't let them fall for editcountitis, but teach them to be proud of the impact they are having in the real world. 
  8. You may disagree with me on this point, but I have seen that when any wikimedia leader spread the idea that you are only to give to wikimedia and you can't take anything, that harms the sustainability of that initiative. No relation, partnership or collaboration can sustain without mutual benefit. Not necessary that your students will get money in return; building leadership, communication, management skills and having a global professional network is also something that your students can receive in return to their commitment to wikimedia. 
These are just a few learnings that I learnt in the hard way from my last few years of experience. Our cultural context is very similar but I also acknowledge that what worked well in my context, may not and will not perform well there. You'll have to test and learn (Evaluate, Iterate, Adapt - as our MS2030 says, which has been, unfortunately made orphan) by yourself in several cycles and document your best practices somewhere. 

You can ofc mail me anytime for any question, I'm just one message away.

I have intentions to build a global active network of these extra curricular wikimedia organizations, where we'll share our learnings, advocate for ourselves and work together for a shared future. Let's see what we can do.

Best,
Mrb Rafi


On Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 9:57 PM Bukola James <bukolajames2017@gmail.com> wrote:
Also do well to be part of this showcase coming up on the 2nd of October with details below:

EduWiki Knowledge Showcases are designed as a community support space to provide an inclusive and equitable community gathering platform for members of the Wikimedia and Education User Group and EduWiki practitioners across the globe. 

 This plan revolves around Global Open Meetings hosted by affiliates within the movement with support from the Wikipedia + Education User Group members. 

The goal is to foster a sense of belonging and connectivity and inspire diversity within education programs. 

These meetings will focus on sharing accomplishments, expert talks, interactive discussions, Q&A, and networking. 

They will be organized periodically and rotated through different time zones. They will be providing a space for thematic programs that are successful in different regions to share the stories with our global community members.  

Our aim with the EduWiki Knowledge Showcase is to support the Wikimedia community to make an impact in the education sector and innovate new ideas.

 Details_Timezone Equity_ 

The meetings will be rotated across time zones to accommodate global participants. 
We particularly want to include diverse and unheard voices. 
We will provide scheduling tools to determine meeting times based on participant preferences. 

Accessibility Considerations 

We will provide a paid platform like Zoom Premium or Meet Premium to the hosts to let the meeting happen without disruptions. 
If required, limited interpretation support will be provided based on the request from the participants. 

In our commitment to ensuring accessibility, interpretation services are offered to cater to non-English speakers, making the conversations genuinely global and multilingual. 
 
Our meeting
Our first meeting will be on Monday, October 2, at 9 a.m. UTC (10:00 a.m. WAT) and will be themed around WikiCamps.

Our speakers include:

Susanna Mkrtchyan, Wikimedia Armenia  Natasha Nedanoska, GLAM Macedonia • Nebojša Ratković, Wikimedia Serbia • User:Vyolltsa, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group 

Join us on October 2, 9 a.m. UTC (10:00 a.m. Nigerian time), 

on Zoom https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/86877668952?pwd=ZG9seXcwV3VYVXRobGRDcWZYR1NyQT09


 If you need interpretation support from English to another language, please reach out to _Sailesh Patnaik at WMF to request it: spatnaik@wikimedia.org_

Regards,
Bukola James

On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 4:44 PM Tasha Bergson-Michelson <tbergsonmichelson@castilleja.org> wrote:
You can also email me at tbergsonmichelson@castilleja.org.

Edit with students and have sometimes had a club.

On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 7:43 AM Maxwell Beganim <mbeganimgh@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello SRIDHARAN ,

Kindly email me on mbeganimgh@gmail.com. 

I am ready to share best practices with you from experience working with senior high schools.

I look forward to hearing from you.


Regards ,

Maxwell Beganim

On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 at 14:38, SRIDHAR G <reegansri33@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all, I'm SRIDHAR G from Tamil Wikipedia. I'm a Teacher. In my school I have been proofreading with my students since 2019. I want to create an Education wiki club in our school. Kindly share your views on "What are the procedure to create a club". Thanks and Regards.
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