Hi everyone,

many Wikimedia organizations have their own programs or initiatives dedicated to volunteer/community support as well as their respective people in charge of this key activity. We have people who are primarily active themselves but who primarily support and help others, the volunteers in the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement, being active.

Whereas other fields of action such as Education and GLAM have a longer tradition of systematic international exchange, the project of a global volunteer supporters network got going at the Volunteer Support pre-conference at Wikimania 2014 in London. This pre-conference brought a first focused discussion between volunteer supporters worldwide and the people there decided to maintain a steady discussion to learn and share, inspire and help each other.

We’re glad to announce the news:

We have finally set up a page on Meta about “Volunteer Support” in order to create the basis for the future collaboration in our field of activity. Please have a look at it:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Supporters_Network

Furthermore we’re announcing the launch of the volunteer-supporters mailing-list. For the moment it’s a private safe space mailing-list, corresponding to what we collectively decided in August during the discussion at the end of the pre-conference. This is for people whose main aim is not doing stuff but supporting and helping others, volunteers, to do it.

Make sure to subscribe here:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/volunteer-supporters

This network and mailing list is meant to:

-

Learn from each other, share experiences, problems and lessons learned -

Learn how to avoid redundancies and be efficient -

Share best practices -

Establish a forum where volunteer supporters can speak open in an international environment -

Create a safe space for people involved -

Learn from each other on how to achieve the most impact -

Inspire each other with new ideas -

Bring perspectives from a broad range of volunteer supporters from all over the world working with communities in very different ways

We’re very much looking forward to exchange ideas, experiences, failures and best-practices and can’t wait to establish our network within the Wikimedia Movement.

Raimund Liebert (WMAT)

Muriel Staub (WMCH) Dirk Franke (WMDE)