Hi,

Let me take the focus of discussions back to the report/s where it all started.

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 4:58 PM, Hisham <hisham@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Mar 7, 2012, at 1:38 PM, Pradeep Mohandas wrote:
>
>
> In retrospect, I also understand the need for seperating the Foundation
> activities as well. I think it is best to either go for total seperation of
> community, chapter and Office or have general statements.
>
>
> The work that India Program is doing is integrally embedded in community
> building.  This means we work directly with interested community members
> across the world and with the Chapter.   I don't think a total separation is
> either practical or advisable.  We should obviously avoid taking the option
> of "general statements" - and we need to find a suitable island in between.

I was going through the report and also saw another page here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Outreach_Programs/Outreach_Sessions/Feb
that gives listing of outreach sessions by IP.

Another page by chapter also shows outreach reports. It is on the main
page of wiki.

IP and Chapter are having more or less similar functions. They do
similar outreach efforts and have same people in some functions.

Somehow, the reports from IP as well has chapter has about 9 entries
each for outreach program and only 2 are common !!

One of them is the now famous NITT academy and the other one is GNUnify.
I was surprised to see only the English academy entry in GNUnify that
was conducted by Ashwin and helped by IEP volunteers. The Marathi
academy conducted at the same lab immediately after the lunch break is
not mentioned at all. Also surprising was the entry where Moksh was
involved. Possibly, it was supported by some IP person.

General observation is that the report from IP shows the listing where
only the IP, IEP people were involved and the chapter report mentions
otherwise.

This clearly means that there is a disconnect. I dont see any of the
IEP/IP people joining the Pune community activities (except a few). In
fact, one of the outreach session (mentioned in the report) by the IEP
was not even mentioned on any of the lists.

Possibly, there is some polarisation somewhere and personally I feel
that it could be in favour of IP; simply because volunteers become
paid activists there.

Lets take a very much possible theoretical case(like the NITT, where
volunteers had bad experiences) where a volunteer goes for conducting
an academy and is not treated well and has bad facilities of
lodging/boarding/travel etc. And for the same academy, a person from
IP is also going and flies to/from the place and lives in a nice
hotel. In such case, where and how to compare the voluntary work v/s
paid staff work? The volunteer has spent his time and resouces for
hardly anything but the staff is being paid for the same activity as
part of the job.

Ashwin has hinted about evaluating voluntary efforts. Is there any
method to do it?

Community members are same for both- chapter as well as IP. However,
chapter is answerable to the community even when all the community
members are not necessarily chapter members. (just a technical point.
not to be emphasised), Whereas IP may not have any binding on anything
and still get all kind of funds from WMF.  And also hire people from
the community for doing the same work people were earlier doing
voluntarily. Also remember that chapter and the community members do
their work voluntarily and not get paid for it.

Well, just to clarify, I am not saying that community members, IP
staff and IEP volunteers are not doing work. They are really doing
fantastic work and that must to be appreciated. However, all those
efforts/work has to be taken in various perspectives mentioned in this
thread.

Best regards
-Sudhanwa


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