Project goal is to make minority communities of Croatia (with focus on Serbs in Croatia) more visible by using Wikipedia. Under this project there will be made research and written articles about history, culture, traditions of community in English, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian and Croatian Wikipedia. Also, articles about rights of minority groups will be translated from English Wikipedia into local Wikipedia so that local population can have source of information about their rights. Project will continue already started activity but enable more people to take part and make rural sources accessible
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Rural postwar villages in Croatia and City of Zagreb
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
Target population level of internet familiarity is sufficient for implementation of this project. It will include young students from community into project. Also, I will try to ensure public support of minority institutions for matters of project visibility. Young people already helped in similar activity, but now they will be able to get lecture about Wikipedia editing and they will take part in taking photos and making research about community in different parts of Country.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
Serbian Democratic Forum-Youth Forum (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serb_Democratic_Forum)
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
We will make dozens of new articles about cultural and historical places. They will include images and information from documents and local archives that are not available on internet at the moment. Articles about minorities rights will be important source for entire society. We will improve or make new articles about small settlements where members of community live what can be one source for future development.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
*Serbian Democratic Forum-Youth Forum (established)
*Local religious communities (I will try to establish)
*Rural municipalities offices (I will try to establish)
*Anti-fascist veteran groups for WWII history heritage (I will try to establish)
*Unemploued
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
Participants will get training in Wikipedia editing. Since they have to make accounts in order to be able to make all tasks on training they will have open opportunity. Still, we will not stay on that. We will include every person in work about their local community and make sure that there will still be something to do even after project is over. They will for some time work on small topics but expectation is that their future goal will be to take part in bigger topics and that they will bring there voice of their community.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
We will use simple projector and PPP for training. Once we start we will use cameras, copy equipment, PC's. We will use Skype and Facebook for communication and Facebook for additional promotion. We will also need one camera in order to make YouTube videos on during project (for stories of local people, for videos of some attractive historical place or local tradition…)
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
We will use Hostel in Zagreb since this project will be active among Serbian population in whole country. I personalty for example will focus on eastern Croatia, while someone who live in south Croatia will do it there. Therefore, we will have to meet in Zagreb before we start. Hostel has free internet connection and available space.
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
I was an activist in Serbian Democratic Forum (Zagreb, Croatia) for two years and first president of Youth Forum before I move to study in Turkey. Before that I also was student in Serbian Orthodox Secondary School where I stay in good confections. I also attended minority elementary school and live in region with big number of members of community. I also have completed informal Youth Studies for Youth provided by Croatian Youth Network and participated in implementation of Youth projects on European level so I have necessary knowledge for work with youth.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
Last year Croatia face series of protests against application of bilingualism officially introduced in 2009 in town of Vukovar when Serbian language and Serbian Cyrillic alphabet were assigned co-official status due to local minority population. In September 2013, complaints about right-wing bias of administrators and editors on the Croatian Wikipedia began to receive attention by the media so we have to prepare participants for potential unpleasantness communication on Wikipedia. We will put full attention to educate participants how to avoid edit war, how to use sources and how to make their work most productive without going into conflicts. I will also keep 24/7 open phone for giving of advice's on peaceful communication and conflict resolution in emergency situation.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
We will evaluate it on following way;
1) Before start we will locate our goal and interest topic.
2) We will take statistical analysis of page visiting pasterns in one month before project member start to work on it.
3) We will take PDF version of final version of page. If we increase already existing page we will also take initial version. We will take number of visits one month after the start of work on page, and one month after the end of project.
4) We will put it all in one PDF report packet with additional statistical analysis.
-We expect participants to get knew knowledge and became active and not just passive user. We expect to raise level of visibility of community. On global level we expect to make good for global open free knowledge.
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
It will mainly be summer project when participants can give most of their time. Then we will make all physical workshops and ground work (photo taking etc.). After that we will work with collected material until the formal end of project and probably as individuals later also.
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
1.1 Hostel workshop (group of 8 people)- 600 $ (2 days, travel-food-places)
1.2. Ground travel costs (8 people*65 $ grants)- 520 $
1.3. Mobile phone costs – 15$
1.4. Coordinator honorarium (for organization, report writing…)- 250$
1.5. Cameras (8 peaces)- 800$
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
We will contact Radio Student to transfer information about project. Also, we will contact minority magazines and local papers in order to inform community. When we are not on ground collecting materials we will organize Facebook page.
Contact name
Mirko Savković
Organization
Serbian Democratic Forum-Youth Forum
