Hi all,
Today marks 1000 days of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Over the past few months Wikimedia Ukraine has engaged in a comprehensive strategy process with the community. Our goal has been to determine the organization’s role during the war. We’ve also looked at how we can continue to be useful in supporting the community and developing free knowledge in Ukrainian and about Ukraine.
As a result, Wikimedia Ukraine’s board recently approved Wikimedia Ukraine’s strategic plan for 2025-2026, as well as a more detailed annual plan for 2025.
Conversations with the community reaffirmed that Wikimedia Ukraine is on the right track and gave approval to continue the work we’re doing. We believe right now there’s particular value in: * supporting initiatives to combat disinformation; * communicating about Ukraine at the international level, improving coverage of Ukraine in other languages; * promoting protection of Ukrainian cultural and natural heritage, particularly through major photo contests Wiki Loves Monuments & Wiki Loves Earth; * facilitating support to Ukrainian community members in crisis situations; * continuing to develop free knowledge in Ukraine more broadly.
The strategy process also helped define a few areas that deserve more focus in 2025-2026 compared to now: * developing and implementing a comprehensive GLAM strategy; * doing more systematic work to attract underrepresented groups of editors (women, senior citizens, neurodiverse people etc.); * building on our initial success advancing Crimean Tatar Wikipedia, a smaller language edition of an indigenous people of Ukraine, to make its development sustainable; * developing and implementing a system of support for experienced volunteers of Ukrainian Wikipedia (administrators and patrollers); * catching up with communication trends by investing more resources in video creation; * investing more resources in advocating for the use of free licenses in Ukraine; * improving training, onboarding and offboarding practices of key volunteers, improving the process of transferring institutional memory.
You can read our full strategic plan here: https://ua.wikimedia.org/?curid=9900
And the annual plan for 2025: https://ua.wikimedia.org/?curid=10012
For more insights into our current work, here’s a selection of five Diff stories from this and past year: 1) Wikimedia Ukraine’s work in 2023, in 10 projects — https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/02/01/wikimedia-ukraines-work-in-2023-in-10-... 2) War destroys monuments: the toll of Russian invasion of Ukraine in a Wiki Loves Monuments special category — https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/04/05/war-destroys-monuments-the-toll-of-rus... 3) Wikipedia as a shelter for minority languages and culture, or why we organized marathons on Crimean Tatar Wikipedia — https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/09/19/wikipedia-as-a-shelter-for-minority-la... 4) 700 Ukrainian educators passed a course about Wikipedia, more to come — https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/06/28/700-ukrainian-educators-passed-a-cours... 5) What we learned holding a series of webinars on disinformation for the Ukrainian community — https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/11/28/what-we-learned-holding-a-series-of-we...
Best Regards Anton Protsiuk Programs Coordinator at Wikimedia Ukraine