stipends aren't meant to cover every cost for the volunteer, its an acknowledgement that as volunteers we do incur costs we can always choose not to contribute. $200 a month yeah thats nice when your in the US, EU or AU for other less well off countries it does make a difference for them.  It'd be unfair to offer a stipend to be varied between countries because it'd encourage and entrench bias, and inequity across the movement.  

On Tue, 29 Mar 2022 at 19:44, Lane Chance <zinkloss@gmail.com> wrote:

It's worth highlighting the stipend (presumably intended for otherwise
unpaid volunteers who are not full-time employees of the WMF). It's
$200 for "each 2 months" and covers costs of "childcare, internet,
transportation and other costs that make volunteering possible".

The commitment is to give *5 hours a week* for a 1 year period, so
$100/month is approximately $5 an hour in costs. A rock bottom rate
for a babysitter in the USA would be $10/hour. If you need to travel
to a quiet workspace, like a friendly and entirely free library or
Uni, to do the work or find a cubical to join a Zoom meeting, then the
cost of transport is likely to again going to start at $10 and if you
need to buy a take-away to replace time preparing an evening meal
that's going to be $20 for something basic. Some countries in Europe
have government-supported childcare, but even these may not be free
but subsidized.

It would be interesting to see more analysis of how volunteer stipends
are normalised if these are becoming more common in WMF grants and
project funding, and how they are intended to vary based on the
standard cost of living in different countries, additional real-life
receipted costs or what other circumstances will justify increasing
the non-receipted stipend. If this has been done behind the scenes by
the WMF, it would be useful to publish it to inform future projects.

Lane

On Mon, 28 Mar 2022 at 21:09, Cassie Casares <ccasares@wikimedia.org> wrote:
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