Invitation for affiliates to take part in conversations around peer support networks - Wikimedia-Medicine

17 Sep 2021

Dear members of the Wiki Project Med,

We are writing to invite you to be a part of a new project that the
Wikimedia Foundation Trust & Safety Team is hoping to create. This project
aims to maintain and expand peer-support networks within the Wikimedia
communities, improve the working atmosphere on our projects, and to help in
the fight against harassment.

As a Foundation, we believe that your participation and opinion is
important as it will enable us to gain diverse perspectives and new
information. This is because your affiliate has professional knowledge
about health related issues, including mental health. Therefore, we are
looking for your input.

For a project that aims to connect volunteers in a way that they can
support each other, your knowledge, skills and experience will be highly
appreciated. For more information on the project, please visit our Meta page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Peer_Support_Networks_within_the_Wikimedia_Movement>
.

To tap into that expertise that you already have, we are organizing Focus
group meetings as a next step. In those meetings we hope to learn about
already existing networks, ideas on how volunteers could connect more and
better and what support they would need to do so. There will be meetings
that are suited to different time zones, each meeting will last two hours.
Feel free to sign up for the meeting that is most comfortable for you.

Focus group meetings for affiliate leaders or staff will be held on the
days and times listed below:

4 October 2021, 19:00 - 21:00 UTC

8 October 2021, 7:30 - 9:30 UTC

25 October 2021, 15:00 - 17:00 UTC

Focus groups for individual contributors will meet at these times:

1 October 2021, 7:30 - 9:30 UTC

15 October 2021, 15:00 - 17:00 UTC

22 October 2021, 19:00 - 21:00 UTC

Please feel free to encourage members of other communities to reach out to
us if you believe that this project will be of interest to them

Do let us know if you are available to participate in one of the  meetings
listed above and we will send out invites to you. If you are interested and
are unavailble in the above listed times, let us know and we will look for
ways to connect.

Please be aware that Trust & Safety will also reach out soon with a similar
offer to talk about training around the UCoC. Feel free to concentrate on
the issue that is most important to you, but of course you are also very
welcome to take part in both discussions. We are aware that capacity is
limited and will highly value any kind of participation!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best,

Christel Steigenberger (she/her)

Senior Trust and Safety Specialist

Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>