Stay Safe Stay Connected: Session III: Neighbourhood Community Solidarity

The session was cancelled/postponed. This blog post is retained for historical reference.

Background

Stay Safe Stay Connected (S3C) is a lightweight interaction zone created for Wikimedians where Wikimedians can meet and talk to each other. This is an effort to try to ensure community solidarity. In April–May 2021 several South-East Asian countries, including India faced the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people and Wikimedians have been affected or have suffered a loss. For more than a year no in-person event could take place in these regions. The lockdowns, and lack of personal meet and greet made the pandemic even more difficult. In this situation the space was created to “stay connected”, and of course we want all Wikimedians to “Stay safe”.

The first session of S3C took place on 22 May 2021. In this session Asaf Bartov was the primary guest. Asaf is a familiar name for the Wikimedians in India, and he has been associated with different Wikimedia projects (including Wikidata) over the years. He has mentored many Wikimedians in Asia and India. Around 34 Wikimedians across different communities participated in the first session of the program.

The second session was conducted on 5 June 2021 focused on Indic Wikisource communities and their work. 33 Wikisource editors attended the meeting. We did not have a special guest in this session, however we invited Vigneron, French Wikisource editor, and Sam Wilson, English Wikisource editor to attend the session and share about their community activities.

Neighbourhood Community Solidarity

The third session of Stay Safe, Stay Connected will take place on Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm UTC (Bangladesh time: 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm, India time: 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm, Nepal time: 7:15 pm to 8:45 pm, Pakistan time: 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm, Sri Lanka time: 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm). In this session, we are inviting Wikimedians across borders to remotely attend. There are different Wikimedia projects where Wikimedians across the neighbourhood countries work and collaborate together. For example Bengali Wikimedia projects are edited by editors from Bangladesh and India, Urdu Wikipedia gets contribution from editors of Pakistan and India, editors from both Sri Lanka and India contribute to Tamil Wikimedia projects, there are editors in both Nepal and India contributing to Nepali, Maithili projects etc.

Wikimedians from the mentioned countries and from any other country are invited to participate. In the session the participants can—

• share about the projects and exciting events they are doing in the countries;
• learn what is going on in other regions in the neighbourhood;
• there is a possibility to think or discuss past cross-border collaboration or collaborative projects;
• possibly discuss any point of tension among the Wikimedia projects

We believe that it is really important to be kind and caring to each other. There are geopolitical, cultural or other tensions which often turn into disputes and we get into fight with our neighbours. On the Wikimedia world thankfully we have seen a lot of good collaborations that helped to improve educational content and free knowledge on the world wide web. We think we must continue this friendly atmosphere. That’s why this particular session will make an effort to go beyond a particular country and ensure neighbourhood community solidarity.

Asaf Bartov has kindly agreed to facilitate the meeting. If you are interested to learn about some of the best works being done in the South-East Asian countries you are welcome to participate. Please see the event page here, and please register here before 20 June 2021.