 Hi everyone. So it's 5.33. I think we will start with the youth session. So we have some speaker online, also some speaker in the room. Frances, if you can hear me, can you say something? So we ensure that we can get you. Please say it again. Can you please try again, Frances? Can you hear me, Frances? Yes, sorry, I'm doing two things at the same time. Tell me. Okay, we can get you now. Perfect. The floor is yours. Please go ahead. Okay, the floor is mine. Well, hello everyone. So far so long, I believe that we are like a bunch of people. By a bunch, I mean a number of people that are at least more than one. And well, apparently we are coming back from the group picture and apparently there is not a big, there is not a big audience here. So as you know, this is a half an hour that we have to talk about experiences on young Wikimedians. And we are waiting also to our key speakers to be here so we can hear them. So basically what we will be doing here is some kind of mixed session. As you know, we previously had a meetup, a roundup session to talk about topics. And we will continue that meetup. We will do an informal session, but we will of course get into the topics that were originally planned. So I'm inviting to our on-site speakers to please show up on the screen because unfortunately I can't see them to be on the front line of the session. So we can speak with them. And in the meanwhile, what we are going to do is to talk a little bit about Wikibibrans. I will introduce ourselves. My name is Francesc Ford. I'm from Valencia. And here also in the virtual room we have Ophemia Wando who is from Southeast Nigeria. And she's the founder of Wikibibrans. This started a couple of years ago when we were on the biggest moment of the virtual events. And we had an idea to have or I must say that she had an idea of having a meeting of young Wikimedians to talk about ourselves, our situations. So, well, I should speak in second person because I believe I'm not longer that young. But you know how it is to be a young Wikimedian as I once was. And what we chart the topics or the issues that you can face. And this is how an initiative was born. This initiative has been running for two years now. We have done plenty of activities. We remind you that right now we have two running activities. One is the International Yautei Campaign where we invite to create articles and also to celebrate our community by recognizing those Wikimedians who are important to us. We can create an article and share it on social networks and ping our pal or that person that we want to recognize because of their work. And also we have a campaign running since yesterday and that will be up the 30th of September about cosplay. You know cosplay is that is that activity that urban culture that is about people who disguise themselves as cartoon characters. We know that Dodie who was the person who inspired that idea, I met him in the at a wiki conference. He is here. He will have his session about the topic. And also we know that in the very same model that you are there. There is a comics convention. We invite you to go there to take pictures because that way you can participate in our contest. So we have prepared three awards of €300 each. And I believe that this is a good opportunity to share urban culture in Wikimedia by having fun and by expanding also the kind of topics that Wikimedia activities have. With that introduction being made, I believe that we can go now to, as I said before, this format will be some kind of mixtures of their own table and the you know the meet up and the originally designed session. I will open the mic to some of the people that we've able to meet during those now years that we have been working on wiki vibrance. And the thing is that unfortunately I can't see your faces those who are on site. Even can you please say hello? And otherwise that's not a problem because in our virtual room here we have a Romeo. You might know him. He's from South Sudan. He has been a very active Wikimedia in the last lately. So I will open the mic and I will say hello Romeo. How are you? Hello, Princess. How are you? I'm doing amazing. If you're doing amazing, then everyone here is doing amazing. And well, I believe that the thing is that we should we could now let you introduce yourself, know who you are and what did you came here to do? Very good. My name is Romeo and I come from the Wikimedia community as a group here in South Sudan. And actually I have come here to be able to share a challenge that reasoned deeply to deeply with many of us. The challenge of sustaining motivation and fostering long-term engagement among its actually youth contributors, which I am one of them. So I'm going to share about my personal experience and the support of the Wikimedia and so I've been with me and to be able to recognize the significance of this challenge and how we can be able to address it. And yeah, very excited to be able to be part of this. Great, Romeo. Nice to have you here. I see that we have more of our folks here. We have also Nada Alfarra. So Nada, nice to see you. And please let you, well, I will let you introduce yourself. Hi, Nada. Can you hear us? Can you hear me? Yes, of course. Okay. This is a weird session and setup, but it's fine. My name is Nada Alfarra. I'm from Palestine and I'm also known under a Wikimedia name, Nada Karimi-22. And I'm a member of the Leadership Development Working Group. I'm still organizing sessions, editing sessions. And I'm here to talk about the struggles I faced in the movement like any other youth. And it's not easy to be young in the movement and to be a newcomer and to be identified as the newbie or the one who likes experience or the one who needs guidance and the one who needs micromanagement. And no, you don't need micromanagement, but you need guidance. And I hope you enjoy our session. Thanks, Nada. And last but not the least, we have also here August. Hello, August. Can you turn on your mic and share a little bit of yourself to the audience? Hello, everyone. My name is August. I am from Indonesia. So I am from Wikimedia, Indonesia. What is the challenge that I have is just actually I just want to make a clarification based on Indonesian standard. I'm not young anymore after 25. So in Indonesia, when we are after 25, we are aspiring. So for today, I'm not young. Maybe yesterday I was still young because my birthday was today. So the challenge for being a young person is like you have no voice. Every young person always to be the person that was voiceless. Like I said, you are too young. You have no clarification or something like that. When I started editing in Wikipedia, everyone kind of explained this like your article was taken down because you just knew karma. You doesn't know anything. You doesn't know the rule. But the person in there doesn't give us any reminder or something. They just take it down. It's just like we need to know everything about the Wikipedia. So that's why after I've done become the administrator, I take the change that I angry with the person was taking the article that they deleted when they deleted the newcomers. So if you deleted every article that comes, so who you wanted, who you wanted to continue your step yourself, you're going to die someday. So I hope that everyone feels that we are young. We have a voice. So please continue this step and I hope you can continue this. Don't take mine of them. Sometimes they will go. Thank you. Thanks, Agus, for both your introduction and for going to the point, which is of course the struggles. The barriers that the Wikipedia movement has, this is something that we know because it has been widely spoken. Many barriers, especially when it comes to all the gender biases that we have had. But there is also barriers that affect to young people. Now that we have here one of the people that we have on site, we will switch to our friend here in the remote room. So Romeo, how do you feel about, I mean, what has been your experience? There are barriers for young people and their participation into the movement. Sorry, I didn't get you very well. Could you repeat that a little bit? Yes, I was asking you specifically for the barriers that you feel that exist in the, if you feel that there have been barriers in the Wikimedia movement and the participation of young people. Yeah. So thank you so much. From my end, I would love to speak this from my perspective and of course also the people that I've been able to train. The barrier that I've been able to see so much is actually been the issue around nurturing long-term engagement. So we have this kind of curve that starts on a very high note for every new Wikimedia. So just like me, when I started to do Wikimedia-related programs, I was very, very, very excited that I came with a lot of energy in the beginning. And my energy reached a point whereby I began experiencing things around burnout, juggling time constraints, shifting priorities as well. And these whole things were not able to sustain my energy to continue on. So there was a point at which I was able to face my burnout, actually not even burnout, but actually I reached a point whereby I could no longer sustain my engagement because of a few other problems that probably even our colleague who has an amazing birthday today mentioned, things connected to your article being deleted, things containing to IP blocking, things containing to young people being able to juggle within commitments, you know, others in school, others at work place. I live in a community here in South Sudan where almost everyone is busy. So that situation whereby I cannot or anybody cannot be able to juggle or be able to sustain that excitement they get in the first time of coming to the Wikimedia community is a very, very huge challenge that I've been able to see within myself, but also within the people that I've trained and stuff. But I guess as we continue the conversation, we're going to see some of the things on how we're able to fix this. But yes, concerning the barrier, yes, that's a barrier I've been able to see very evident that affected me and some of the people that I've also been able to deal with within my community. Yes, Francis. Cool, Romeo, thanks for sharing your experience and to finalize with this very first somehow introductory part of the talk, we will go to Nada, who is on site. Hello, Nada, can you hear us? And please, can you share, you previously talked about being leveled as somebody who needed guidance, who needed help. Can you perhaps explain a little more deeper, which has been your experience as a young Wikimedean? I actually needed guidance, but I also, I got this from Wikimedean friends, but not from the affiliate, I used to be a member of that affiliate. The lack of guidance I had had jeopardized my presence. They had a job application for a coordinator. I applied for that job, did the tasks, but I didn't know that there is a relationship between another applicant and one of the hiring committee members. So I ended up with not getting the job and I didn't know much about this until later. But what is good about Wikimedia that it always, it always gave you more. It gives you friends, it gives you experience, skills that you would never gain if you haven't been a member of this movement. And this is what guide me to the leadership development working group where I really got the support or the community that I strive to be in. So I remember when I first joined Wikimedia, I spent about four months not knowing what people are doing, what they are talking about, what's the affiliates, what's the movement, what's the community, etc. And no one actually, and this is the thing that we focused on our leadership development work about which is how to bus on knowledge, how to let people know the challenges that you went through and how to overcome them, how to document the knowledge that you gained through years. And this actually helped me a lot. I'm better now, I'm at my first Wikimedia and I hope I gain more knowledge and this is my story and my struggle and it will not be the last one because it's life eventually. Thank you. Thanks, Nada. It has been a very insightful, insightful testimony. All of you have pointed at things because all of you had difficulties but you also somehow there are some solutions. There are people who became admin, there are people who got involved into committees, Romy also talked about the burnout. We have now 10 minutes left, I don't know if we can get a little bit more. I can't see the people in the room if they can send me some signs. But as I said before, we want this to make a mix between a meeting and a session that originally we had. So this is an open question for anyone. So anyone who has an answer can raise their hand if they are on site or will probably hear because I will see them. And my question, which is open, is okay. There are struggles for young people but there are also supporting networks for young people. Or if that question seems a little bit weird, we can also translate it as which strategies have newbies or young people or newcomers, whatever, to deal with the difficulties that they face as Wikimedia editors or part of the Wikimedia community. I don't know if anyone has any idea. Okay, I see a rice hand outside. So go ahead. Someone gave me the mic. Thank you. So my name is Mathilde and I'm an education project manager at Wikimedia France. And I'm engaging kids, like mostly teachers, with their kids on Wikimedia. Because it's way easier for them to navigate through it because the editors, they are way younger. And I don't know if any of you in this room knows about Wikimedia by raising your hands. Okay, good. For those who don't know anything about Wikimedia, it's pretty much the same as Wikimedia but for kids and teenagers. And it seems to be more welcoming for newbies, basically. However, it's not really connected to the movement yet, but we're working on it. And so it's more of a zone for people to practice, like to edit. That's pretty much it. Wikimedia, V-I-K-I-D-I-A. Here you go. Merci beaucoup. All right, there is anyone else who wants to speak. I will give you some time. I see Ben with the mic. In the meanwhile, I say that it's a very interesting experience. So we have Rafi. Okay, Rafi, go ahead. Hi, everyone. Okay, so I lead a team of young Wikimedians here in my country. And I also train them. Okay, so the story is not shared that what we are doing, what AFI leaders and what are these movements, what is this movement that we are doing on Wikiaeditors. So I myself have prepared a training program where at the very first I teach them the on Wikiaediting. I introduce them to Wikipedia and editing. And then another training program, a little bit advanced, where I tell them what is the fundings in the movement, what is the Wikimedia Foundation, and what are the affiliate structures, how it works, and a lot. So there are some structures what they are really helpful to train newcomers. And newcomers also find them helpful. Like the Wikipedia adventure, I use it a lot. And the newcomers really enjoy it. Like the trainers don't need to like need so much headache to like teach them all the basics of the Wikipedia editing. And there are very few tours in Wikidata and some other process, but they are so much spread, they are not like put together. And the Wikilearn platform seems to be very potential, but there's not that much like, how do I say advanced course, like very much helpful course that can be completely focused on newcomers, so you take immediate yet. So we are planning to work on that now. So what I can say is for the newcomers or the youths, there isn't enough resources yet, but the Wikipedia adventure and some other few resources are helpful. That's it from me. Thanks Rafi, but I believe that we are giving too many open questions now that I mean we need answers, which resources do young people need in order to do this journey. I don't know if any of our key speakers, if Romeo, if August, if Nada had an answer, or otherwise if somebody in the audience has an answer of the kind of resources they would like to have available. So we have someone from the audience. She has a question probably right after we answer the question that you gave, then she'll give our question. So anyone, we have Nada? Okay, great Nada, thanks. So if there is a resource, practical one to share, let's connect actually. It's the main resource for a lot of knowledge and it tackles issues that other projects only talk about editing. No one is talking about how to manage projects, how to be a leader, how to document, and let's connect, manage to fill this gap. And I don't know if each affiliate has something internal to have or some internal resources, but for the whole movement, I believe it's let's connect if I have something to share. Thanks Nada, it's very important to talk about let's connect because they are doing a great job. And now I believe that we have a question on the audience side. So we have one more answer from Cess Laos. Perfect, we can hear Cess Laos and then we go to the question. Hi Cess Laos. Hi Francesca, nice to see you guys remotely. Hi Femiah. So when we talk about resources, it's easy not to recognize the privileges that could exist and privileges that probably don't exist in some parts of the world. Resources could be internet for us in Africa. It could be electricity. So when she mentioned Vickie, I may not remember me, I'm Cess Laos from Vickie Africa Hour. So how Vickie functions is especially for WikiChallenge in South Africa. So we use WikiFundi software which enables offline editing and then Raspberry PI server which is very mobile and then Power Bank to enable these kids in rural areas in I think nine francophone countries now to be able to contribute to Vickidia. So if you talk about resources, I think when we say let's connect, that's rich. Sincerely, that's rich. So how about we ensure that, you know, I hate to say it but then mostly those young people from Global South who probably don't have a job and can't easily buy internet subscription for themselves. How about electricity and how many hubs are out there that could give a young person's access? I mean, one thing I love about this place is you can just stand in front and tap from the free Wi-Fi. We don't have those in most parts in let's say Africa, for instance, right? So we need to amplify the discussion. I mean, these are things that they should have before even coming to let's connect. Oh, of course, that's part of it. But then I would love us to have a broader view of what resources mean. I am the Rikimena residents for African League initiative and we run a survey through the African environment campaign precisely. And there are things we've overlooked or we've been overlooking when we talk about resources. How many young people could afford a smartphone to edit? How many young people could afford a tablet? And this is why I'm so huge a fan of the Wikipedia and the Wiki challenge because Foundation Orange has been gracious enough to give tablets to enable these kids to make these contributions. So we need to think of resources that would enable these young people to onboard to our platforms, to our projects, to our programs. Thank you. Thank you very much. So Francesca, we have Ruby wants to add something on this. Perfect. Sorry. My name is Ruby from Ghana. So just to add to what Romeo was talking about, I manage a community from Open Foundation West Africa. And we also work with young people in schools, universities and hub. And we realize that one way that young people can grow or be active or sustain in the community is consistency because one time training doesn't work. And if you're working with young people in universities, young people in those different places, they need people in those places to continually support them. So one of the ways that we've done that is by establishing clubs. And we are able to support their clubs by having leaders, for instance, club leaders or hub leaders who organize events. And also, they try to get us a place where they consistently meet, let's say once in a month or something like that, where we also provide them with internet data and also refreshments for their activities all the time because young people get hungry. I mean, everybody gets hungry, but it's more encouraging to provide some sort of incentives like food, refreshments that encourage. So we realize that in the universities, they show up a lot because they get food to eat. And I put myself in their shoes. When I was in the university and there was an event that has food, I would be there. And so these are the ways that has really helped us to try to motivate them, their participation in those places. But one other thing that we also seen as a challenge is the fact that devices, because some of them don't have devices, so our hub leaders reach outside. They need devices. And we also don't have enough devices to supply them. So we're looking at partnerships that can support us with devices because we know that some organizations donate computers, but where are they? Where can we find them? So these are some of the support that we need as a collaborative community if someone have those kind of connections. These are the real connections that we're looking out for to have. Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks Ruby. I believe that we have now one minute left. So I hope that there's anybody else who wants to speak because otherwise we we will be really bad in time. Well, first of all, thank you very much to everyone who has been here and also I wanted some conclusions for today. I believe that even if we haven't been able to to have a proper, you know, we lack more time to dive into all the topics that we need to dive. I believe that this session has been a great excuse to meet us, to connect all together and to think about all the problems that we have. And you know, here we have people on site and virtually we can use the virtual tools to connect to meet all the people here who are interested in the participation of young people in the movement and to start building things because we've taken notes of all the difficulties that exist, all the solutions that some of you have been giving and it's great to know the local experiences. Also the different tools like Wikipedia that can be used also in this journey. So please keep us in mind, keep ourselves in our agendas and that's it a little bit. So enjoy the rest of the conference and of course don't forget that we have two wiki vibrance activities right now running and that I mean we hope that everyone can participate on their on the behalf of their possibilities. So thank you very much and that's it. Thank you so much Francesca. So before we round it up I wanted to mention that we are on meta, we have the meta, well meta page is the wiki vibrance project. So when you go into meta you can join our social media channels where we could continue the discussion, we could discuss as youth so that we come into a clear understanding and a conscience for how we as youth participated in the wiki media movement. So thank you everyone and I wish you all the best. Thank you.