Namaste to Fellow-Wikimedians of India,
Greetings. I hope everything is well with you.
Elections to fill 4 community seats in Wikimedia Foundation's board of
Trustees is going to happen during 4-17 of August 2021. I am happy to
announce my candidature for the Wikimedia Foundation's Board Elections.
Here is my candidacy page for the same:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Candida…
.
In my Wikimedia experience, I am involved in improving content, working
towards community growth, planning and executing projects, and movement
governance. I have played several roles and contributed to several
activities within Indian Wikimedia movement. Contributing to Telugu
Wikipedia as one of the admins and active user, Working as Community
Advocate for CIS-A2K (Until August 2019), Taking part in Movement strategy
process as member of Community Health working group, Co-organising
conferences, Planning and rolling out projects are some of them. I am
currently working as Community Manager at Quora
<https://te.quora.com/profile/Pavan-Santhosh-Surampudi> where I work
involves building and managing Quora’s Telugu community across the world as
my day job. My activities, associations, & contributions in movement
allowed me to interact and collaborate with many of you earlier.
My work in community building, governance, and partnerships in a country
like India with diverse opportunities entangled with complex issues helped
me to have a unique experience and insights that will be helpful for me in
my work as a Board member. Working with several Wikimedia Community members
from India, helped me to understand South Asian communities, along with the
larger global south, lacking in terms of resources, support and awareness
which is hindering global diversity and growth.
As our communities have great opportunities to work with, this is infact
resulting in a great opportunity cost. The Wikimedia movement has a great
potential to make a lasting impact on even more people where current
government and societal structures are neglecting and keeping them away
from the availability of knowledge. Current issues like less diversity,
centralized power, harassment and lack of adoption to rapidly growing
technological aspects are hindering the Wikimedia movement's progress in
this direction.
We, as a movement, can change this by empowering stakeholders (like
Affiliates, Wikimedians, etc.,), investing in leadership and skill
development, making boards more accessible to community members and other such
steps
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Candidates/Pavan_Santhosh_Surampudi>.
I am strongly motivated to contribute to these important aspects by serving
as a board member to Wikimedia Foundation.
I request you to support my candidature. I am happy to answer any questions
you have. Please connect me through my email id <pavansanthosh.s(a)gmail.com>
or meta-wiki user talk page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Pavan_santhosh.s>.
Thank you,
Pavan Santhosh Surampudi.
User:Pavan santhosh.s