Erasmus+ Project BePart/PIF

ERASMUS+ PARTNER FORM

Participating Organisation

OID code: E10348672

Full Legal name: WIKIMEDIA ITALIA - associazione per la diffusione della conoscenza libera

Acronym

Country: Italy

Region: Lombardy

Post Code: 20144

City: Milan

Website: https://www.wikimedia.it/

Type of Organisation

No profit

BACKGROUNG & EXPERIENCE

Please briefly present the organisation/group (e.g. its type, scope of work, areas of activity and if applicable, approximate number of paid/unpaid staff, learners and members of the group)

– Max. 4000 characters incl. spaces

Wikimedia Italia – Association for the spread of free knowledge –  APS, is a social advancement association, operating since 2005 in the  field of free culture. The association is officially recognized by  Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (an American no profit organization founded  in 2003, that manages and hosts, from a technical point of view, the  websites linked to the Wikimedia movement), as part of the network of  local chapters that operate in their own countries to promote free  culture and the projects hosted by Wikimedia Foundation. Since 2016, the  association is also the official chapter of OpenStreetMap Foundation  (international no profit organization based in the United Kingdom, has  the biggest free geographic network of the web, and it aims to become a  platform that offers universal access to geographic data). Wikimedia  Italia’s job is to promote free content on online cooperation projects,  such as Wikipedia in Italian, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and many more.  Apart from the biggest and most famous projects (Wikipedia, Wikimedia  Commons and Wikidata), the Wikimedia universe has many other “sister”  projects, each one focused on a specific aspect of free knowledge. These  are joined by OpenStreetMap, of which Wikimedia Italia is the official  Italian chapter. All their content is published with a free license, and  it is built by the community of contributors; they are basically  cooperatively developed by volunteers.

Wikimedia Italia works to facilitate improvement and spread of  knowledge and culture. Specifically, Wikimedia Italia promotes  production, collection and spread of open content, that is public domain  works or works whose authors have released with a free license,  allowing processing and / or free diffusion for any purpose, including  for commercial purposes. The association is also involved in the spread  of knowledge and awareness of social and philosophical questions related  to the topics of free culture and public domain.

Wikimedia Italia is made of its members and volunteers (be them  members or not) who act to contribute to its corporate purpose. The  members share the values and scopes of the association and they  contribute to its life, each based on their own availability, either  with the annual fee or with volunteer work. Volunteers are those who  perform their services for free in order to achieve the target of the  association. The members are active participants of the association’s  decisions, steering its actions with yearly meetings, commissions and workgroups, and with the discussions conducted through the association’s  internal communication channels. Wikimedia Italia supports the  integration between members and volunteers with different backgrounds,  such as Wikipedia or other Wikimedia project users, OpenStreetMap  mappers, free software developers and people who have never previously  been involved on online free knowledge projects, while sharing their  principles and founding values. Members and volunteers are encouraged to  get organized, at a local level and with a wide degree of freedom, to  carry out their activities more effectively. Some of the functions  performed by the association are guaranteed by the staff.  in detail:

Members: 354

Volunteers: 283

Staff: 8

Wikimedia Italia’s corporate bodies are: the members’ General  Meeting, the Board of Directors (elected by the members’ General Meeting  and is composed of five unpaid members), the Board of Guarantors  (composed by three effective elements and two deputies, unpaid), the  Supervisory Body.

What are the activities and experience of your organisation in the areas relevant to this project?

What are the skills and/or expertise of key persons involved in this project?

– Max. 4000 characters incl. spaces

Wikimedia Italia works with schools and universities on educational  projects. Wikimedia and OpenStreetMap projects allow the development  of digital skills related to search, analysis and reuse of sources  (information literacy), the responsible and conscious use of the  net, the interaction with the online community and the use of free license of the contents. The collaboration between Wikipedia and  OpenStreetMap contributes to Open Science, opening data and content  following the FAIR principles , contributing to communication and  spread of science in the society; it also contributes to citizen  science, involving the population in research activities (Third mission  of the university). Moreover Wikimedia Italia offers training courses, that are  chosen by many institutions to spread their knowledge, train and involve  their staff or volunteers, and organize educational workshops focused  on Wikimedia projects. The activities suggested by Wikimedia and carried  out by wikimedians in residence are strategic, because they help  institutions (GLAM and University) to improve their content on the web and promote  their activities and collections.

Persons involved in this project - Iolanda Pensa is a wikipedian, art critic and researcher. She has  been contributing to Wikipedia since 2006, she is president of Wikimedia Italia, active in the implementation of the contest Wiki Loves  Monuments and in increasing the documentation of cultural heritage on  Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects; she is coordinator of the project  Empowering Italian Glams, that aims at addressing Italian museums and heritage institution for sharing digital content related to their collections . Since 2006 she has been involved  in triggering the use of open licenses by institutions, in publishing  research materials on Wikipedia and in rebalancing online geographic  information. Her job is senior researcher at SUPSI University of Applied  Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland, where she is head of the  research sector “Culture and Territory”, she is member of SUPSI board  and she is actively involved in the implementation of Open Science.

Elena Marangoni has a degree in Historical Geography and works as  digital librarian. She has been contributing to Wikimedia project since  2012 and member of Wikimedia Italia since 2017. As a volunteer and  regional coordinator for Piedmont region she participated to Polo del  '900 GLAM project in 2021 and to the organisation of the local contest  Wiki Loves Monument in 2022 and 2023. She is a member of GWMAB (Wikidata - Group for Museums, Archives and Libraries).

Marco Chemello has an architecture degree and a strong interest  for digital culture. He is a Wikipedia contributor since 2004, and an  admin of the Wikipedia in Italian since 2005, when he also became a  member of Wikimedia Italia. From 2015 to 2019 he was coordinator of  Wikimedia Italia for the Veneto region, then he joined the staff as a  trainer and a GLAM specialist. As a Wikipedian in Residence, he worked  with many cultural institutions: BEIC Foundation and the National  Science Museum "Leonardo da Vinci" in Milan, the Central Institute for  the Archives (ICAR) of the Italian Ministry, the Accademia delle Scienze  di Torino, the Archivio Storico Ricordi of Milan, the Polo del ‘900 of  Turin; in 2021 he became one of the two first Wikimedians in residence  in a university in Italy, at the University of Padua. He also worked  with other Italian universities as a Wikipedia trainer. He lives in  Vicenza, Italy.

Ilaria Diterlizzi has a degree in Political Science and  International Cooperation, and a master's degree in Economics,  Management and Social Innovation. She worked as project manager for  several NGOs in Italy and Africa, dealing mainly with planning and  development cooperation. She joined the Wikimedia Italia staff in May  2021 and is in charge of relations with schools and universities and  projects on education.

Would you like to make any comments or add any information to the summary of your organisation’s past participation? (This is a complementary and optional question in the application form that accompanies the automatically prefilled presentation of all Erasmus+ projects your organisation participated).

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Has the partner organization participated in a European Union granted project in the 3 years preceding this application? Please indicate the number of granted project and related data and the number of project applications: Number of granted projects: NO

ASSOCIATED PERSON - Legal representative person: Maria Iolanda Isabella Pensa

ASSOCIATED PERSON - Contact person: Ilaria Diterlizzi

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT

In what way is the project innovative and/or complementary to other projects already carried out by your organisation and/or in your country?

Wikimedia Italia works with teachers and students of all ages to access and use the full potential of Wikimedia and OpenStreetMap projects for their learning objectives. We aim to foster learning experiences in which students actively interact with the information they are consuming on projects—transitioning from passive information consumers to proactive knowledge creators. In this field, the project is complementary to the activities the association already carries out with some Italian universities (Università Statale di Milano, Università di Padova) to improve the skills of art and heritage students in promoting participatory processes through Open Digital Tools. The project is also complemetary to the trainers certification process that Wikimedia Italia is carrying out, as another project that enforce our experience in the education sector.

DISSEMINATION and IMPACT and SUSTAINABILITY

To whom will you disseminate the project results inside and outside your organisation at local/regional/national/EU level (approx. number of contacts, name/type of stakeholder organisations/institutions of your network)

By creating project pages on Meta-Wiki (the global community site for the Wikimedia Foundation's projects and related projects, from coordination and documentation to planning and analysis), on other Wikimedia projects, as for example Wikipedia and Wikiversity (the Wikimedia project dedicated to learning materials and activities) and on OSF Open Science Framework (for content which is not pertinent for the Wikimedia projects), those who will have the opportunity to learn about the project, its goals and results will be a very large number of people. Infact Meta wiki is used by aproximately 2k volunteers all over the world, Wikiversity has about 5.000.000 visits by month  has about more than 600  active contributors by month and Wikipedia is the site for visit in the web. In addition, Wikimedia Italia will involve the international Wikimedia communities, particularly in the related countries of the project.  

Approximately how many people can you reach via your company’s website and social media?

• Facebook: 928K
• Instagram: 275K
• X: 14K
• Website: 18K visits, 23K pageviews

Any international groups that are relevant and will enhance international networking?

Wikimedia Italia is local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation and OpenStreetMap Foundation. Wikimedia chapters are national or sub-national not-for-profit organizations created to promote the interests of Wikimedia projects locally, by members of the movement; currently there are 38 chapters, with at least one on every inhabited continent. Instead the OpenStreetMap country-level or region-level not-for-profit legal entities representing the area's OSM mappers and OSM data dealing with local government, business, and media are currently 17.

How can you ensure that the project's results will remain available and will be used by others? (important question on sustainability)

The long-term availability and sustainability of the project's results will be ensured through the use of Wikimedia projects as free and collaborative projects, whose availability, infrastructure and organizational framework are ensured by the Wikimedia Foundation, as its mission.

What are the activities and results that your organisation will maintain after the end of the EU funding, and how will you ensure the resources needed to sustain them? (important question on sustainability)

The methods and methodologies learnt will be shared with the community and possibly included in the certification process of trainers that Wikimedia Italia is carrying out. The results obtained from the project will become also case studies and will also be disseminated during national and international meetings on education and cultural heritage in which Wikimedia Italia participates annually.

SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

Specific question A, like.: What are the different target groups you are planning to engage with? Researchers? Students? Professors? Supporting staff? How do you plan to engage with each different target group?

We are planning to engage with professors and supporting staff of the university and coordinators and volunteers active in GLAM and Wiki Loves Monuments projects.