Implementing the 2nd Round of Movement Charter Conversation in the Igbo Wikimedians Community

To ensure equity in decision making is the premise on which the 2nd Round of Movement Charter Conversation was consolidated and implemented in the Igbo Wikimedians Community. Spurred from the need to engage and enlighten the community members (both old and new) on the Movement Strategy Initiative of Equity in Decision Making, the Movement Charter Ambassadors for Igbo Community embarked on a collective effort to inform, discuss and collate feedback concerning the proposed 4 latest drafts so as to actualize an inclusive documentation where everyone’s opinion is taking into consideration. This project was supported and funded by the Movement Charter Ambassador Program Grant.

The MS Initiative No. 4 states that:

Our Movement is composed of communities, individuals, and organizations from all over the world. By sharing accountability and responsibility as well as ensuring equitable opportunities for participation in decision-making and resource allocation, we will empower and represent all Movement stakeholders and have mechanisms to ensure all decisions that affect them are legitimate.

And we can achieve the goal of this Initiative when almost if not every member of the Movement understand the affairs of WMF, its governance and also know when and how to add their voices in the Global space. Inspired by the need to create an inclusive community that understands the Movement’s governance and what Movement Charter entails, a 2-days online conversation on Movement Charter and the 4 latest drafts (Roles and Responsibilities, Global Council, Hubs and Glossary) was carried out and followed up by open questions regarding Fund Dissemination, Structure, Membership, and whether there should be a limit to how many hubs an affiliate can join, spurring different reactions from the participants. Through the conversation, participants were able to understand, increase their voices, share their opinions and add their feedback.

The Implementation Team

The team of Movement Charter Ambassadors that implemented the 2nd Round of the Igbo Wikimedians Community Movement Charter Conversation include:

Iwuala Lucy: An experienced Wikimedian who is passionate about contributing to free knowledge dissemination and documentation. She also uses the Wiki Projects as a means for advocating for the digitization and preservation of indigenous languages and sees the Igbo Wikipedia as a useful tool through which she could achieve this cause. She is the Project Lead.

Peace Chinwendu (Akwugo): A linguist and passionate about contributing to free and open knowledge projects. With a keen interest on improving language and Women Visibility, giving her an edge to see the Wiktionary as a tool to promote and preserve the indigenous languages. She has organized several projects to encourage knowledge Equity and knowledge as a Service of which the project Deepening Community Engagement on movement Strategy Implementation in the Igbo Community is one of them. She is responsible for the project documentation.

Onwuka Glory: An experienced Wikimedian – joined the movement in 2021 as a volunteer. Her passion for free knowledge accessibility led her to join and identify with groups such as: Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, Igbo Wikimedia User Group and Open Foundation West Africa. She is the project Communication manager.

Activities:

The project encompasses other activities which includes:

• Planning and Strategizing Session by the MC Ambassadors: Series of meeting was held by the Ambassadors plan and ensure the smooth implementation of the project.
• Translation: involves the translation of over 40 pages of the Movement Charter pages to Igbo language.
• Publicity and Community Awareness: Publicity via community communication channels was done so as to inform the members of the Igbo Wikimedians Community and also sending out of Special Invite and reminders to the community Stakeholders so as to garner their support and contribution during the sessions.
• Creating video tutorial: An on-screen video tutorial was created and made available as one of the resources that would help members of the community to navigate on the meta translation tool.
• Presentations Slides: Movement Charter Conversation and Feedback was also made available.
• Pre-Event survey: This was created and used so as to gauge and understand their level if know Movement Charter by presenting them with questions like:

Challenges and way forward:

Network instability has always been a problem which limits the productivity of Wikimedians in this part of this world and this was one of the major challenges we faced during the Conversation hour as so many participants could not join the sessions. We had the challenge of fixing the conversation at an hour that would be convenient for everyone. However, based on the responses received, we were able to allot a specific time that accommodated more people, even though not everyone.

Snippets into the Pre-Event and Post-Event Survey

With the pre and post event survey, we were able to gauge the participant’s reaction and retention of the topic of discussion as captured below:

Outcome and Impact

With over 20 online attendees, the conversation was held for 2 days and its outcome saw to a wider audience reach and many members of the Igbo Wikimedians Community were enlightened on the topic of Equity in Decision Making and the 4 latest Drafts of the Movement Charter and this garnered quite a good number of feedback on the open questions asked. The level of participants awareness and understanding towards the topic of the conversation was determine using the Pre-Event and Post-Event survey. The summary of findings from the pre and post-event survey were shown in charts as captured in the snippets above.

A summary of the outcome is shown using the implementation plan – Logic Model capture below and uploaded on the Wikimedia Commons.

Gallery

Snippets of Online Session for Movement Charter Igbo Community Conversation (Day 1 & 2)