Hello Wikimedians,

On March 4th, the Community Engagement team initiated the first “Inspire Campaign”, a drive to foster and support new ideas to improve gender diversity on Wikimedia projects. The organizers set a goal of having 100 proposals by the end of March; this was met in the first week, and the total now stands at 220 ideas, with a few more days more to go!  The campaign has brought in 492 participants to the process so far, nearly hitting its target of 500 participants.

While discussion about gender has been active, the environment has largely remained friendly and productive. The Inspire team would like to especially thank the Meta community and its admins for helping to keep the process positive and running smoothly. Discussion has been further aided by a friendly spaces guideline for participants, which most everyone involved has respectfully followed.[1]

However, the campaign is far from done.

The next step is developing and supporting viable ideas to become real initiatives. We need your help, whether in the form of an endorsement for a strong idea, or constructive suggestions on a proposal that needs more work.  Feedback from community members is key to helping an idea evolve, and incorporating past learning and knowledge is very important for the future success of these proposals.  

You can explore ideas by category[2] or through a ‘leaderboard’ of the most endorsed ideas[3].  And a list of ideas that have already expanded into grant proposals can be seen here[4]. We hope to see you over at the IdeaLab, and, remember, there are still a few days to help create actionable ideas before March 31st!

If funding is needed to implement your idea, be sure to expand your idea into a grant proposal before the campaign ends March 31st. Funding decisions will be made by April 30th.