Launching a new strategic cycle at Wikimedia in Brazil

Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB), a Wikimedia affiliate in Brazil, has launched its strategic participatory process for 2026-2028. This strategic process involves the whole membership, which will develop a general direction for strengthening open-knowledge communities in Brazil and Portuguese-speaking countries and for improving open-licensed content in Wikimedia projects. Our collective goal is to support our broader community in Brazil in becoming the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of open knowledge. In this post we share the objectives and details of this ongoing process.

The first step in WMB’s renewed strategic process has been the release of a Theory of Change (ToC), in early November 2024. In its presentation written by volunteer members who have joined collaborative writing groups, this document “outlines the expected impact of Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) on the open knowledge communities and society at large” and remains “our normative framework, which prescribes our intentional actions to consolidate the Wikimedia Movement in Brazil”. The online version of the ToC has four tabs: a presentation, a preamble with a preliminary assessment of WMB’s 2023-2025 strategic cycle, a main tab with the document itself, and a detailed research methodology. A WMB member, Thais Morata outlined the deliberative process that led to the 2024 Theory of Change in a previous diff post.

The 2024 ToC emphasizes that “Wiki Movimento Brasil must work to promote the conditions for social empowerment, according to the contexts of each region and community, throughout the Brazilian territory”. This connects to the concept of a “localized strategy,” which involves adapting to diverse realities, ensuring autonomy and effectiveness in local actions, as well as establishing a coordination and communication infrastructure that fosters a shared identity. This approach relates to the unique context in which Wikimedia must grow in Brazil: a vast, diverse, and unequal country.

The Theory of Change serves as a qualitative learning framework for assessing progress according to a set of objectives for Wikimedia in Brazil. These objectives are: 

• Facilitate contact and ensure collaboration between synergistic partner entities and related projects in support of open knowledge;
• Act with equity across the entire territory, considering the economic, social, and technological inequalities of Brazil;
• Promote the autonomous and sustainable formation of local groups and build a shared Wikimedia experience in the country;
• Work on the consolidation and institutionalization of partnerships with underrepresented communities in Portuguese-speaking countries, with affiliates from the Global South, and re-center Wikimedia on peripheral realities;
• Plan and promote practices and strategies that ensure the long-term economic and community sustainability of WMB as a coordination hub and autonomous promoter of networks in support of free knowledge;
• Contribute to the improvement of open technologies and consolidate the digital infrastructure for public interest according to regional realities and needs;
• Position Wikimedia in Brazil in relation to digital transformations and internet governance in support of information integrity, epistemic justice, and free knowledge.

Context

The new strategic cycle WMB has launched will include a Learning Report on the 2023-2025 cycle, a Strategic Process Report on the 2023-2025 cycle, a Capacity Analysis for 2026-2028 and the 2026-2028 Strategic Planning. These documents will be progressively developed in 2025, with this new theory of change serving as a reference point.

The Brazilian Wikimedia community conference, WikiCon Brasil 2025, will be one of many opportunities for Wikimedia’s broader community and partners in Brazil to co-create WMB’s strategic planning. The focus of the conference will be on empowering Wikimedia’s collaborative, open model and fostering a deeper understanding of the key challenges within the current internet governance framework.

A visual version of WMB’s ToC will be published in the coming months. Artistically, it will be inspired by street activist José Datrino, the Prophet of Kindness. His written messages, which adorn pillars in the degraded areas of downtown Rio de Janeiro, are a creative intervention in social structures, infusing hope and fostering the blossoming of new talents.

WMB’s strategic process is informed by the methodology that led to the writing and deliberation on the 2023-2025 strategic plan and the 2021 Theory of Change. This methodology has been described in a previous diff post.