Wikidata:WikidataCon 2021/Latin America and Caribbean grants/The idea
Why are we doing this?
One of the goals of WikidataCon 2021 is to highlight the various challenges that the Wikidata ecosystem faces in its growth and how we can solve them together collaboratively. The organization team also wants to raise awareness of the problems encountered by communities in the Global South and marginalized communities in the Global North so they can join Wikidata both in content and contributors.
To start thinking and addressing obstacles underrepresented communities might face joining our conversations around a sustainable future for Wikidata --the conference main theme this year--, the WikidataCon 2021 organization team has put forward the following activities:
- This grant program to empower local communities in Latin American and the Caribbean – extended to non-regional groups that work in/with Latin America and Caribbean communities – about Wikidata through capacity building;
- A pre-conference with a series of discussions focusing on a Latin America GLAM, universities and open knowledge organizations audience with the Goethe-Institut São Paulo;
- A series of conversations with Global South and marginalized communities of the North (plus good allies!) under the scope of the Reimagining Wikidata from the margins project.
Our goal with the grant program is to empower Global South communities to actively participate in WikidataCon 2021 and in the Wikidata community.
Why Latin America and the Caribbean?
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced wikimedians to be creative and flexible on how to plan and organize international conferences; nevertheless, we are still figuring out as a movement how to support participation in online events for building an equitable environment for us all. Our allocation of resources have changed as well: instead of planning for scholarships that once included air travel and booking hotels, for example, we are trying to support meaningful participation of people in different countries from the safeness of their homes. Thus, we need to understand what their needs are and how can we use our resources to support diverse people to engage in our movement.
Due to the lack of resources to support all the Affiliates in the Global South or those that are still marginalized in the Wikimedia movement, we chose to focus on this particular region for this experimental grant in the Wikimedia movement. Hopefully, this model will be improved and expanded in the future to better serve the needs of Global South communities in general.
Another reason for choosing this region is that WikidataCon 2021 was initially planned to occur both in Berlin, Germany, and in São Paulo, Brazil. As the organization team decided that it would not be possible to hold onsite events, we have agreed that due Wiki Movimento Brasil's familiarity to the Latin America and the Caribbean social context plus timezones, it would be more appropriate to start there.