 To the session, thanks for waiting. I have a mistake on the hour. So Monica's here, but she's here. And I'm just only the moderator of this session, that it's called the Challenges in the Volunteer Committees. As you know, our movement since their inception is built about voluntary committees that are usually doing tasks that relies on their skills, their free time, volunteer time. So I went first to introduce Ana Torres Adel, who is the Executive Director of Wikimedia Argentina. Thank you. Next, Monica Bonilla, who is the Executive Director of Wikimedia Colombia. And Boch Bostria, who is the lead of this great conference. Great, great conference. They are members also of in the past and actually part of many volunteer committees. So yeah, this is a reflection about some situations that we are facing as volunteers, and in addition, as a person who are leading efforts, who are not exactly always in the route that we want, of course. But this is a dialogue. If you want to share feelings, concerns that you have, the MIG is open. But I will give first a round of questions to our panelists. And Monica will talk in Spanish, so I can translate you if you want. OK, the first question, Ana, if you want to start, is from your personal experience, what has it been like to serve in a volunteer committee? What's your experience serving in a committee? OK, I'm wearing two hats today because I'm also a paystaff in Wikimedia Argentina, but I've been lucky enough to also be part of different committees in the movement. I think that we are later, we are going to talk about the challenges. There are many, but on the good side of being part of committees, I think that for me, the biggest thing that has given to me being part of committees, volunteer committees in this movement is the connections. I mean, I think that when you belong to a committee, you connect with other peers beyond your country and beyond the region. And it allows you to understand what others are doing in different parts of the world, even though time zones sometimes are challenging. But yes, in my personal experience, the biggest experience that I had was with the strategy committees. I've been part of the strategy process or I was part of the strategy process for almost four years. And again, this idea of connecting with others, knowing others from around the movement, I think it's the best thing I... Yeah, it came out from the committees for me. I don't know, I pass it too. Sure. Always I see books at night when it's my morning, so that's very challenging, but... Yeah, really the challenge of the time zone because not just with the Wikimanias Steering Committee, also with the other committees that I have, I think I could not count the number of heads aware from movement strategy, regional grants committees, Wikimanias Steering Committee, core organizing team, ECAP team. So it's a hard balance because if you are really engaged with people, you have to make sure that you see their time zone, their commitments. If they are handling another commitment on their affiliate or within their volunteer roles, of course, their day jobs as well, family. So it's a complex process, but for instance, for ECAP alone, I think on the fifth or sixth meeting, we're able to perfect the time zone already because we have to balance the people from Myanmar with the people from New Zealand. So it's a large time zone, but if in case there's a panelist like Anna, who is in Argentina, so that added another complexity in the equation. And Monika, what can you share us about this? Well, yes, the volunteer committees are a challenge, I think, in any scenario. However, I think it's a space where we really as a movement give voice to many perspectives to be able to build together according to the needs, to the interests, according to the same goals that the events have. The most recent experience we have since Colombia in relation to the volunteer committees was precisely the experience of Iberocon 2023, where we had, I don't know, four different committees with people. Difficult in relation to the issue of decision-making, but in the end, when we build together, it's much closer to what we really need and it doesn't go in a single direction, but it's multi-directional to the constructions we have there. What is it? Let me see if I can translate that. She said that, yeah, the committees might have some challenges, but they also, how to say they're good, like, yeah. I mean, what you can get from them are a good experience and the best experience or the last experience that they had was Iberocon 2023, where he worked for committees and some of the challenges are mainly around decision-making. When you have a committee with volunteers that they bring different perspectives, the decision-making processes might be challenging, but they also make the event stronger, right? So I think I summarise it well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, yeah. I'm looking at the Spanish just speaking. I'm talking about the common force that are ensured by the composition of many persons of the movement. What do you think about the composition? We are granting equity in the composition of the bodies of the movement. Actually, what can you say about it? Oh, gosh. This is a very difficult question. I think that my answer is no. I mean, I'm not sure that we are getting there yet. I think that belonging to a committee depends on a lot of things. And as the societies are built today, women are still, I don't know, having two or three works, not many free time. Yeah, good. Yeah, it makes more sense. And no many free time. I mean, taking care of the kids, taking care of the house. I mean, we have seen it a lot in the pandemic. Yes, I don't, I mean, the pandemic, of course, has hit us, everybody, but not equally. I think that we have been hit more right. So I think that we still have a lot of work to do regarding rich inequality in committees. I think that at least this question is on the agenda. And maybe some years ago, it wasn't even on the agenda. So I'm happy to see that we are questioning and opening these kind of discussions. But we have to do things about it. I remember when we, some women of the movement asked for quotas that it was like unknown. I mean, I remember it was a huge pushback. No, no, quotas, no, because it goes against democracy. I remember that. There's a lot of experiences around the world where quotas, in fact, have, I don't know, half strength in the democracies, right? So I think that there's a lot of things that need to be addressed regarding this issue. And we are not yet there. So my answer is no. OK, so for the steering committee of Wikimedia, actually, I was only brought into the steering committee in the middle of the pandemic. Because they are looking for a person who is best, who would describe on the next toast. But unexpectedly, when it was moved from Bangkok to Singapore, the question of visas came into the picture. And the best person who could explain that are those who are struggling in applying for visas. So the only best person who could explain that is either me or Ivan. Sometimes even it's not present. Sorry. So that adds complexity, because the rest of the composition of the steering committee are technically are from the OECD countries, or those who are also in the global north. So we are already exploring that possibility to review the composition of the Wikimedia steering committee, to have voices from other communities, and also subject matter experts in their respected fields in decision making in the future of Wikimedia, which happened a few minutes ago. Another thing that I would like to also mention is why you now see there's original grant committees. Because what you see right now is, let's say, a grant application from Argentina cannot be reviewed a person from Indonesia. They don't know the context or how they operate. So that's why the composition of the ones giving grants is coming from global to original setup. So that's how we see right now. But for the other committees, so probably we could explore and collaborate with the other committees, like AFCOM and other committees, and how we could do that shape up. For ECAP, it's quite complex. We have a tense discussion already last Tuesday. But applying the... We are Asians, and we have in... And also from the Pacific, so we use logic and math on determining the composition of the diversity of the council that we're trying to do. Thank you. Well, I'm also going to talk about the Latin American and Caribbean program committee. And in relation to this, I think the composition should also integrate issues like gender equity, participation, and the decision making of resources. There's another topic that I think is very important and is to know the local conditions. So for the Colombian case, someone who evaluates the proposals or the requirements of Colombia should have a lot closer to what we do, to our identities. And well, I think the Latin American and Caribbean committee has been changing, and we've seen changes that are just a bit aligned with this. And another topic that I also think is very important in relation to how the processes should be improved is the issue of revisions. But for these revisions, I think it's important that there should be so many people who know and who are historical in the movement as new people as well. Well, for the same reason, as to be able to have various perspectives without leaving aside and without surpassing some of the two points. Monique is saying that in her experience, the committees in Latin America and the Caribbean area is now turning to join people that are not exactly from the region or that are not people who know the local context of the countries that are being evaluated by the committees. So she's suggesting that maybe the actual composition of the committees need to involve more people, better people and local people that can know the reality of the countries that will have grants deployed by the Wikimedia Foundation, I think. Okay, thank you for your experience. And I think in our movement, the composition of actual, actually the composition of the committees is our movement in general is characterized by a high standards of transparency and accountability. We are committed with that. Do you think that the current model or the current composition or the mechanism or the committee of the committees are ensuring accountability and transparency? You mean that committees like the regional committees, for example? Okay, I'm gonna focus on that because she already brought it here. No. I'm the Mrs. No today. No, I think that we are, I mean, I think that the strategy, the 30-20 strategy brought us a lot of information about which movement we want to see in the future, right? It was a strategy just to remember everybody who's here that might not be involved in the process. I think that was a strategy that involved a lot of communities around the movement that was done in a very collaborative way. Of course we missed voices and of course we could have done it better because all processes could be done better, right? I mean, there's nothing perfect. But at the end, I think that we had some recommendations that were agreed by a lot of people in the movement on ratify blah, blah, blah. And one of the principles that was on those recommendations was the decentralization principle, which we have heard a lot. But I think that we are confused, we are confused, I don't know what the word, but yeah, the idea of regionalization and decentralization is not the same, right? I think that what is happening today with these committees in particular is of course that we can be a foundation trying to apply these recommendations and I don't know, making sure that, yeah, that there are more people in our local context that know what, I mean, that evaluate our processes and evaluate our grants, but it's a top-down process. I mean, in the recommendation, I think it was very clear said that everything that affects the community should be asked to the communities. I think that maybe it could have take us longer to decide which kind of process we wanted to have in Latin America or in the rest of the world, because for me, not all solutions fit everybody, everywhere, but what we have now is a process that was set up by the Wikimedia Foundation that affect us directly to us with people volunteering committees which I respect a lot. I respect a lot the work that the volunteers do, but at least in Latin America, at some point has been a little bit challenging as well. How we connect with this committee, how can we know each other in those committees hasn't been easy. So for me was a little bit disappointed because I was a little bit disappointed because I think we had a very unique opportunity to really start doing things differently. Again, building from bottom up and my fear is that by regionalizing, we are thinking that we are really decentralizing. And for me are really different things. So that's my perspective. Um, the matter of reporting to the community versus keeping it for the community, it's a really complex process, especially if it involves legal constraints. For instance, if we throw out an announcement or particular information prematurely, and it will be more difficult to retract it if you found a possible legal repercussion or if there is a, the information is still need to be verified. So it's best that it is a calculated risk. If it is already ready, that the information is no longer at risk or it is already have sufficient information backed by data. And by all means we have to report it to the community. There's nothing for us to be, to be held such information within the committee level. Yeah, that's what I foresee for now. We are very open and transparent in giving reports, but just give us enough time when it will be released, if it is ready. Well, in relation to transparency, we have a tool in the movement, which is META, which allows us to know in detail the issue of resources, the decision making. I think it's not totally, or it's not completely transparent, the whole process, but many changes have been made and I think we should keep insisting on the exercise of being able to visualize what we are doing. So, again, I return to the case of Iberoconf. We, from Wikimedia Colombia, just as an exercise of telling other people and being transparent in how decisions were made regarding AVEC, or resources. And it's not just a message for the communities that we were there, but also for the foundation, because it's necessary and our movement is open, collaborative and transparent, and under transparency, it is built on basis. Now, I think we should also invest a lot in the issue of documentation of processes, of retroalimentation, of having spare parts of retroalimentation, and well, this of retroalimentation has not been given as a whole, because, well, it's time for resources to be remembered by people, but I also wanted to highlight that I was in the corridor and I heard that they were talking about having published the list of AVEC people that have been received for Wikimedia, for this Wikimedia, and also the arguments to give AVEC, and I think that's also an exercise of transparency, and we should continue to replicate this type of practice. Monica is saying that actually META has a lot of details about the processes that the grants are given, that you can find many details, but it's not sufficient about the processes actually. Secondly, she said that she was part of the organization or was the main organization of Iberocon, the Regional Conference of Iberocon Initiative, and in that sense, the report that she made and her team made was not for the communities involved in the process or the conference, was for the foundation, also for the movement, that is public, the report about how the scholarships was decided, how the resources was chosen, or the decision-making process of the conference, of the General Conference. And third, it was that she heard in the corridors people talking about the publication or the publishing of the full list of the persons who received the scholarship to attend Wikimedia this time, and also the criteria and the reasons why that person received a scholarship, and she insists that the practice need to be replicated and need to be repeated year by year, right? Okay, so yeah, we are in a tricky conversation when we talk about transparency because every country, every region have a different historical trajectory or a different understanding of transparency means, no? But talking about changes, I heard that it's not sufficient, the actual compositions of the volunteer committees. I don't know if I heard well, Anna, but maybe there's a sort of intervention of the Wikimedia Foundation in the mechanisms of the committees. That's a very hard, big word. No, what I would say is that, again, back to my words, I think that we had a unique opportunity to build, I mean, this is, I mean, it's happening, right? We have the Movement Charter Committee working, and probably we will know better what's the Global Council and how it works, and yes, and this Movement Charter Committee is a community committee, are volunteers, right? I think that what I feel is that when distributing the funds in the regions, I think that we missed an opportunity. That's my feeling today, like, I think that we had the chance to build something more bottom-up and finally has been more top-down. And I was a little bit disappointed by that, not because of the people who is on the committee and not because of the response or how they evaluated, not the processes. Of course, every region is different. I'm talking on behalf of my experience in the Latin American region, but because I feel that we missed this opportunity to, okay, sit down together and say, okay, how we want the movement to distribute the funds from now on? How, I mean, through what mechanisms, through what processes? I understand that we needed, once we had the recommendation, we need to implement those recommendations, but it took us four years to build the strategy. I think that we could have waited, I don't know, one more year or half a year to discuss this that was very important and is directly affecting the communities at the local level. I think that, again, bringing the recommendations and the values and the recommendation, this idea of subsidiarity, that is also a very strange word in a lot of languages, but it means taking into account the communities that are directly affected by a decision. I think that we missed the opportunity to build something involving more actively the communities. I know that the grants department have done a great job. They work a lot on, I mean, they created, like, design sessions where I was there, so the intention was there, but I think that we missed a little bit more, yeah, again, the opportunity to build something more bottom-up, and more, yeah, I don't know how to say that would address better the needs of the communities. That's my feeling, because what we have now is, again, it's great, but for those who have been around the movement for a long time, it reminds me a lot of the FDC. I mean, it's kind of, right? We replicated the same committee, but, of course, much better, because now I can speak Spanish, I can write it in Spanish, they evaluate me in Spanish, so that's amazing. That's something I couldn't do 10 years ago. It was impossible. It was an idea that it was not even on the table, right? So I think that we have advanced a lot, but, yes, I don't think we are yet there to, at least in that particular committee, I'm not talking to the rest of the committees in the movement, but for the regional committees, I think that we could have done it better. That's my perspective. Probably in the Wikimanias steering committees somewhat loose compared to that that I have experienced with the regional grant committees. So sometimes it's hard to toggle my mind from one committee to another. Yeah, the regional grant committees is somewhat complex, but what we do in ECEAP, we are trying to engage also with the other regional grant committees our best practices so that everything is synced together because we have regional grant committees. There's local context on everyone, but we need to make sure that we have a unified process. Like, for instance, we need a proper feedback mechanism so that we ensure that the grantee will be able to get a very good grant rather than we just do a binary selection disapprove in terms of while we are in the Wikimanias steering committee, they are actually allowed ECEAP to decide on the fate of Singapore because basically, for transparency reasons, this is the first time that I will tell publicly that the steering committee, when Bangkok backed out, we actually have directly consulted with the steering committee what will be the next step and they allowed us some freedom on what will be the determination. And we used the ECEAP virtual meeting and surveyed all our countries and they all agreed to host Wikimanias if in case it was decided in their country, except Hong Kong, because they were in a turmoil at that time. But what we did is we did like somewhat an Olympic bid already that we have two or three rounds of selection. We base it on hard data, like how many percent this particular group is at risk if it is in this country, how many percent at risk this country will do if it is in the visa process. So after that, it ends up with the final number. Okay, we got this country to select Wikimania and then it was forwarded to the steering committee. We just give, sorry, I'm toggling from ECEAP to steering committee, but from an ECEAP perspective, we want some formality from the steering committee if they accede to our decision and they have agreed to overwhelmingly to agree to get Singapore. So in future conferences, we try to apply that, but of course it depends on the local context. So we cannot force a certain region like Latin America to do the same process as ours. So it really depends on the local community or the local grouping if what will be the best suit on their side. Well, we talked about retroalimentation and also the issue of resources, but transparency and account retention are not the only ones, but we should also have, and in the case of committees, if they are working or not, if we have had many advances, the language, the documentation, when, I remember what we did from Wikimedia Colombia with the first Grants request, we didn't know who they were evaluating or what the parameters were and now we already know the group of people. I'm not sure we have the clarity of all the parameters that are taken into account for the evaluation of the requests and I think that is necessary. But we also have to talk about governance, how decisions are taken, what is the logic, if they are the interests of the communities or if we are aligned with the communities or not with the interests of the foundation and the issue of how resources are distributed. And I think there is a situation of distrust in the decision-making and then it would be very good to have space to be able to talk with the foundation and build and ask and receive feedback but also meet with the committees that evaluate the proposals we make. For the case, for example, of Wikimedia Colombia, we have also made programs to request grants where we have integrated the voices of the volunteers in the country. And this is very significant and today we talked a lot about the issue of indicators and I think that is also very important that building a community is much more difficult than creating articles in Wikimedia. And that should also be integrated and it is not very clear yet but I think we should have space to at least so that the committee works much better. Monica said that she recognizes all the things that has changed in the last years about language about the decision-making process that is more open maybe but it's not sufficient because we need to have more clarity about how the decision is taken inside the committees and the composition of the committees and be more clear about the decision-making process is not the same that transparency and accountability is not the same but we need also more... what did you say? Talk about governance, have a discussion about governance inside the volunteer committees. So we are approaching now to the lunch we have I think space for two questions of interventions because we have seven minutes so if you want to... the microphone is over there. My question is about governance my question is for everyone but especially for Monica what can we do to make it possible to speak your own language especially when you don't speak English in a volunteer committee of governance which are the good practices in English now so my question is for all but especially for Monica what we can do to ensure that you can speak your own language especially if you don't speak specifically English to participate in the committees for global governance of the movement what could be the good practices? Thank you. I can go first I think that is a very difficult question and we don't have an answer but I would say that you need political commitment for it it's a commitment as well and we need political commitment and resources when you have a political commitment it's like when you create a policy in a government you need to resource that policy to make it happen I think that is what we need in the movement I think that again I'm old enough in this movement to have gone through I don't know conference where English was the only language only speaking English and now we are advancing again reporting in your own language for me was a huge change for Wikimedia Argentina and also for me because nobody knew but I did three kinds of reports in Spanish then I had to translate it in English and then translate it to code because it was a matter so for me it was like one month reporting just to submit it but I think it's we need a political commitment we need a yeah I don't know who to ask in the foundation because of the board of trustees not even the executives in the foundation should be from the board of trustees to say okay from now onboarding ongoing I don't know at least the eight main languages or everybody could speak in their own languages and for that you need resources that's my feeling I mean I look at how the general assembly of the United Nations happens it's a you have like 100 translators behind the Congress woman and men translating what is said everybody is more intelligent in their own language and more intelligent in Spanish I can promise to all you I mean by far more smart in Spanish so I think it's again ask I mean volunteers and community keep asking I think again we have advanced a lot but as for this political commitment and resource that political commitment no sorry I'm always looking at the time I also have to apply my hat as lead organizer I also already see Roxy there so a quick answer we send a bill of materials or requirements to the foundation we need this we need that we need a translator we need not just a translator to live translate we also need a translator to translate documents we don't want it to a burden to a purely volunteer and then that's it and then Anna already said it well I think we're to speak in Spanish in my case it's a political decision also and then I think we also need understand that it will take us much more time resources and efforts because also the issue of communication is an inclusion and then because we continue having spaces of discussion in English but then we are also here present speaking Spanish and being as we are a multilingual movement and we also need to reflect a little more about this Monica said that the willing of talking Spanish is a political decision by her and using your own language is also a political decision and we have actually more needs about inclusion because talking your own language is a sort of inclusion that it's very important to consider and we need to work in that so thank you so much for your time thank you for your opinions thanks everyone for being here the conversation continues in the lunch of course especially thanks to botch that is in the middle of a storm he is talking here with us thank you so much Anna Monica botch thank you