MonthlyReport-July2020
In July, the focus of the project team was on getting a non-profit status for our group. An important milestone was achieved: we formed an association and got the non-profit status! Secondly, our talks with professors in several universities for implementing Wikipedia Education Program in their courses have started. And lastly, we have made two online meetings related with the project goal of increasing the communication among the editor community.
Getting non-profit status
We filed with the Department of Associations within the Ministry of the Interior and got a non profit status for a new association called Dijital Bilgi Derneği (Digital Knowledge Association), based in Istanbul. Seven user group members from 3 different cities of Turkey became the founder members. The process was slowed down a little bit because of the travel restrictions due to Covid-19 pandemic. However, we finally got our non-profit status officialy in July 13, 2020.
Establishment of the association and getting the non-profit association status was required those steps:
- Drafting of certificate of incorporation
- Search for volunteers to become a member of the association.
- Searching office place (required for providing address to he Ministery of the Interior)
- Making rental contact
- Preperation of the documents related to members.
- Submitting the documents to Department of Associations.
- Getting the approved documents from the Department of Associations
- Meeting of the temporary board members on July 16th to take decisions on getting a tax number, openning of the bank account, getting donations abroad.
Education Programs
During July, we didn't have any education program; but the work for preperation for the new semestre has begun. A list of academicians who would implement the program was compiled and we begun to contact them. We found out that the uncertainity on the next semestre continues; whether the students will go back to the schools, the classes will be made online or in class is not certain. This make it difficult for professors to prepeare a syllabus. Although most professors contacted approached the suggestion of incorporating Wikimedia projects into their courses positively, they needed some time to think and plan that and requested to talk again in August or right before the school opens.
Editor community meetings
One of our project goals is "increasing the communcation between local editors living in the same cities and communication with the global community." We can not make in-person social meetups as planned, but we continued organizing regular online meetings in every two weeks on Tuesday nights. Those meetings are open to active members of the editor community of all Wikimedia project as well as the new comers. In July, we made meetings on 8th, and 28th. The first meeting had 8 participants and it was in the format of informal chat and information-sharing (meeting notes *). The second meeting had 16 participants and we had 1 hour wikidata introduction presentation by a community member (meeting notes*). We have recorded and shared the presentation video on Commmons and Youtube.
*in Turkish
