Dear Wikimedians,
As part of its ongoing program to support Wikimedians in India during the COVID 19 pandemic, CIS-A2K has organised 'Awareness/orientation session on Mental health and pandemic.
This online session is open to all Wikimedians in India to understand more about mental health concerns that are prevalent at the present time, due to pandemic-related anxiety, stress and trauma. This interactive session would ideally aim to:
create awareness and sensitisation about mental health in general
deliberate on the variety of issues faced by people at this particular time
demystify/address any misgivings/stigma related to mental health issues and counselling/therapy/treatment
and encourage people to avail counselling services in case they feel the need for the same.
The details of the session are as follows -
Date: Saturday, 12 June 2021
Time: 4 to 6 pm (IST)
Expert: Dr. Anand Nadkarni, Psychiatrist and founder of IPH
- More about Dr. Anand Nadkarni - http://iphpune.org/wp/about-me/
- LinkedIn profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anand-nadkarni-41a290129/?originalSubdomain=in
- Videos on Avahan channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/AVAHANIPH/videos
Registration link - https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUkf-GgrzsiHNN88GTyKAwpSdP82FAI6lCi
We kindly request you to book your time slot for this important session, register on the above link and promote the event in your communities as well.
Stay safe, with best wishes,
Jayanta Nath
Hello all,
We hope that you are doing well. We wanted to inform you that A2K has started an internet support program for the Wikimedians in India from 1 June 2021. This will continue till 31 August 2021. It is a part of Project Tiger, this time we have begun with the internet support, writing contest and other things that will follow afterwards.
You can visit the event page ink: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internet_support_for_Wikimedians_in_India
You may also see the FAQ section: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internet_support_for_Wikimedians_in_India#F…
For reviewing the applications, there is a committee that will make decisions for the applications. After the committee's response, support will be provided. For more information please visit the event page (linked above). Before applying, please read the criteria and the application procedure. Please go through the page and apply if you find you are eligible for applying. Please also share this information with others as well.
Stay safe, stay connected,
Thanks & Regards,
Jayanta
Dear Sanskrit Wikimedians,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is organizing a call for
feedback about community selection processes
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…>[1]
between February 1 and March 14. While the Wikimedia Foundation and the
movement have grown about five times in the past ten years, the Board’s
structure and processes have remained basically the same. As the Board is
designed today, we have a problem of capacity, performance, and lack of
representation of the movement’s diversity. Direct elections tend to favor
candidates from the leading language communities, regardless of how
relevant their skills and experience might be in serving as a Board member,
or contributing to the ability of the Board to perform its specific
responsibilities. It is also a fact that the current processes have favored
volunteers from North America and Western Europe. As a matter of fact,
there had only been one member who served on the Board, from South Asia, in
more than fifteen years of history.
In the upcoming months, we need to renew three community seats and appoint
three more community members in the new seats. This call for feedback is to
see what processes can we all collaboratively design to promote and choose
candidates that represent our movement and are prepared with the
experience, skills, and insight to perform as trustees? In this regard, it
would be good to have a community discussion to discuss the proposed ideas
and share our thoughts, give feedback and contribute to the process. To
discuss this, you are invited to a community meeting that is being
organized on March 12 from 8 pm to 10 pm, and the meeting link to join is
https://meet.google.com/umc-attq-kdt. You can add this meeting to your
Google Calendar by clicking here
<https://calendar.google.com/event?action=TEMPLATE&tmeid=MDNqcjRwaWxtZThnMXB…>[2].
Please ping me if you have any questions.
Thank you,
Krishna Chaitanya
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
[2]
https://calendar.google.com/event?action=TEMPLATE&tmeid=MDNqcjRwaWxtZThnMXB…
*(long email incoming)*
Dear Sanskrit Wikimedians,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is organizing a call for
feedback about community selection processes between February 1 and March
14. Below you will find the problem statement and various ideas from the
Board to address it. We are offering multiple channels for questions and
feedback. With the help of a team of community facilitators, we are
organizing multiple conversations with multiple groups in multiple
languages.
During this call for feedback we publish weekly reports and we draft the
final report that will be delivered to the Board. With the help of this
report, the Board will approve the next steps to organize the selection of
six community seats in the upcoming months. Three of these seats are due
for renewal and three are new, recently approved.
*Participate in this call for feedback and help us form a more diverse and
better performing Board of Trustees!*
*Problems:* While the Wikimedia Foundation and the movement have grown
about five times in the past ten years, the Board’s structure and processes
have remained basically the same. As the Board is designed today, we have a
problem of capacity, performance, and lack of representation of the
movement’s diversity. This problem was identified in the Board’s 2019
governance review, along with recommendations for how to address it.
To solve the problem of capacity, we have agreed to increase the Board size
to a maximum of 16 trustees (it was 10). Regarding performance and
diversity, we have approved criteria to evaluate new Board candidates. What
is missing is a process to promote community candidates that represent the
diversity of our movement and have the skills and experience to perform
well on the Board of a complex global organization.
Our current processes to select individual volunteer and affiliate seats
have some limitations. Direct elections tend to favor candidates from the
leading language communities, regardless of how relevant their skills and
experience might be in serving as a Board member, or contributing to the
ability of the Board to perform its specific responsibilities. It is also a
fact that the current processes have favored volunteers from North America
and Western Europe. Meanwhile, our movement has grown larger and more
complex, our technical and strategic needs have increased, and we have new
and more difficult policy challenges around the globe. As well, our
Movement Strategy recommendations urge us to increase our diversity and
promote perspectives from other regions and other social backgrounds.
In the upcoming months, we need to renew three community seats and appoint
three more community members in the new seats. What process can we all
design to promote and choose candidates that represent our movement and are
prepared with the experience, skills, and insight to perform as trustees?
*Ideas:* The Board has discussed several ideas to overcome the problems
mentioned above. Some of these ideas could be taken and combined, and some
discarded. Other ideas coming from the call for feedback could be
considered as well. The ideas are:
1. *Ranked voting system*. Complete the move to a single transferable
vote system, already used to appoint affiliate-selected seats, which is
designed to best capture voters’ preferences.
2. *Quotas*. Explore the possibility of introducing quotas to ensure
certain types of diversity in the Board (details about these quotas to be
discussed in this call for feedback).
3. *Call for types of skills and experiences*. When the Board makes a
new call for candidates, they would specify types of skills and experiences
especially sought.
4. *Vetting of candidates*. Potential candidates would be assessed using
the Trustee Evaluation Form and would be confirmed or not as eligible
candidates.
5. *Board-delegated selection committee*. The community would nominate
candidates that this committee would assess and rank using the Trustee
Evaluation Form. This committee would have community elected members and
Board appointed members.
6. *Community-elected selection committee*. The community would directly
elect the committee members. The committee would assess and rank candidates
using the Trustee Evaluation Form.
7. *Election of confirmed candidates.* The community would vote for
community nominated candidates that have been assessed and ranked using the
Trustee Evaluation Form. The Board would appoint the most voted candidates.
8. *Direct appointment of confirmed candidates*. After the selection
committee produces a ranked list of community nominated candidates, the
Board would appoint the top-ranked candidates directly.
*Call for feedback:* The call for feedback[1] runs from February 1 until
the end of March 14. We are looking for a broad representation of opinions.
We are interested in the reasoning and the feelings behind your opinions.
In a conversation like this one, details are important. We want to support
good conversations where everyone can share and learn from others. We want
to hear from those who understand Wikimedia governance well and are already
active in movement conversations. We also want to hear from people who do
not usually contribute to discussions. Especially those who are active in
their own roles, topics, languages or regions, but usually not in, say, a
call for feedback on Meta.
You can participate by joining the Telegram chat group[2], and giving
feedback on any of the talk pages on Meta-Wiki. We are welcoming the
organisation of conversations in any language and in any channel. If you
want us to organize a conversation or a meeting for your wiki project or
your affiliate, please write to me. I will also reach out to communities
and affiliates to soon have focused group discussions.
An office hour[3] is also happening tomorrow from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm
(IST) to discuss this topic. Access link will be available 15 minutes
before the scheduled time. In case you are not able to make it, please
don't worry, there will be more discussions and meetings in the next few
weeks.
Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
[2] https://t.me/wmboardgovernancechat
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call…
Hello all,
It's only 6 days left for Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 (WMWM) submissions
to be closed. we have received quite a good responses. Please show your
interest and take a step ahead for the submission if you have any plan or
idea. Please do hurry up and submit your submission before 24-01-2021. For
more information, you can visit here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions>.
If you need any sort of help or if you have a concern about your
submissions please feel free to reach out to me or any A2K member.
Thanks & Best Regards
Nitesh Gill
Hello Wikimedians,
CIS-A2K is glad to announce Train the Trainer programme 2020 (TTT 2020)
from 28 February - 1 March 2020. This is the 7th iteration of this
programme. We are grateful to all the community members, resource persons
for their consistent enthusiasm to participate and support. We expect this
to continue as before.
Please see the event page for more details here -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Train_the_Trainer_Program/20…
The important dates are as follows -
- Main event: 28, 29 Feb & 1 Mar (Participants are expected to reach
before 5 pm on 27 February i.e. Day 0)
- Last date of registration - 5 February 2020
Please share this information widely among the Wikimedians.
Thanks and Regards,
*ANANTH SUBRAY P V*
Programme Associate
Access to Knowledge program <https://cis-india.org/a2k/cis-a2k>
The Centre for Internet & Society
+91-9739811664
Hello everyone,
Greeting's from CIS-A2K, Hardware support applications
(Chromebooks/Internet Stipends) for Project Tiger 2.0 was opened on 25
August 2019 and the deadline to apply is 14 September 2019. If you are
interested in applying, please visit the support[1] page on meta.
The Project Tiger 2.0, Article writing contest will be happening from
October 2019. Google has given a list of articles, which can be created as
part of the article writing contest. The list suggested by Google can be
seen here[2]. We request the community to have a look at the list suggested
by few community members can be seen here[3] if you would like to add more
topics please add those before 28 September 2019.
If you have any queries please let us know.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia…
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia…
[3].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Growing_Local_Language_Content_on_Wikipedia…
Thanks and Regards,
*ANANTH SUBRAY P V*
Programme Associate
Access to Knowledge program <https://cis-india.org/a2k/cis-a2k>
The Centre for Internet & Society
+91-9739811664