It's recently become clear to us, having met with chapter organizers and talked with various members of the community, that the role of the newly formed Chapters Committee is still not well-understood (or well-known). Here's an overview:

The Chapters Committee [1] is a Wikimedia committee [2] created on 15 January 2006 to coordinate Wikimedia Foundation efforts regarding local chapters. Its duties include: * Facilitating the creation of Wikimedia chapters [3], acting in an advisory capacity and responsible for granting final approval of bylaws, etc. * Acting as the Foundation's point of contact for chapters, and the line of communication with chapters from within the Foundation. * Negotiating agreements between the Foundation and chapters, as for fundraising, sponsorship, and trademark use. * Coordinating interchapter communication. * Generally acting on behalf of the Foundation to serve its interests in chapter matters.

A more complete overview of the work of the Chapters committee can be found here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee/Scope_and_area_of_delegati...

The committee consists of five members: * Nathan Carter (m:User:Cartman02au) * Łukasz Garczewski (m:User:TOR) * Austin Hair (m:User:Austin) - vice chair * Delphine Ménard (m:User:Notafish) - chair * Hari Prasad Nadig (en:User:HPN)

And two advisers: * Arne Klempert (m:User:Akl) * Andrew Lih (en:User:Fuzheado)

In a word or in a hundred, if you don't know what a chapter is, if you want to create a chapter, if you wonder what a chapter can do, if you want to get in touch with a chapter, do not hesitate to contact us, either on IRC in #wikimedia-chapters or by mailing chaptercommittee-l AT wikimedia PUNTO org. English is preferred, so that all of us understand, but we get by in Spanish, French, German, Polish, Kannada, Italian, Hindi, Sanskrit, Chinese...and I think that's it.

Thank you,

Delphine for the Chapters Committee

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_committees [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters

PS. Could the translator-l addressees translate/forward this message to their language list? Thank you!