Hi all,

During March we will be running an Inspire Campaign to proactively source and support new projects aimed at addressing Wikimedia’s gender gap: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gender_gap_campaign

Our goals are two-fold:

1. Experiment with running scalable themed campaigns in IdeaLab to incubate more initiatives aimed at having a focused collective impact.

2. Proactively support community initiatives aimed at increasing gender diversity in contributors to, and content of, Wikimedia projects.

Why are we piloting with a gender gap theme? A variety of initiatives are needed to increase diversity and reduce systemic bias on Wikimedia projects, but so far these haven’t emerged organically at scale. Without taking time to focus together on increasing gender diversity in our content and contributors, this trend is likely to continue. WMF’s Individual Engagement Grants and Project and Event Grants could support such initiatives, and we're interested to learn how specifically inviting proposals in this area can have an impact.

March is WikiWomen’s History Month, and it’s a great time to focus extra attention and energy together on addressing the gender gap.

We need your help! We’re looking for volunteers to join our team in the following roles:

1. Community organizers:  Spread the the word about the campaign to your local communities, maintain a friendly space in IdeaLab, facilitate development of ideas and project teams. (March)

2. Translators: Translate campaign content and gender gap resources into your language. This is a global campaign, so all languages are welcome. Some languages we’d particularly like to be able to support include: Spanish, Arabic, Malayalam, Telugu, and Ukrainian. (February and March)

3. Funding committee: Facilitate development of ideas to grant proposals, support idea-creators to improve proposals, greenlight projects for funding via either Individual Engagement Grants or Project & Event Grants. (March and April)

If you’re interested in any of the above roles, please signup under “Participants” on the planning page or email Siko or Alex by February 10th.  

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gender_gap_campaign#Get_involved

Warm regards,
The Inspire Team

--
Siko Bouterse
Head of Individual Grants
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

sbouterse@wikimedia.org

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