2025:Program/What we learned about young Wikimedians' participation from the first youth conference in Prague

Session title: What we learned about young Wikimedians' participation from the first youth conference in Prague

Session type: Roundtable

Track: Community Engagement

Language: en

In 2023, as part of the CEE Hub's activities, we established an informal group of CEE young Wikimedians, which started to meet regularly and work on getting more young people involved. The WMCZ decided to further support and expand this lively and collaborative group of people globally with the very first youth conference, which took place in Prague in May 2025. With them, in a workshop-style conference, we addressed the fundamental question of how to get more young people involved in Wikipedia. Come find out what we learned about engagement and the perspectives of young Wikimedians.

Description

The aim is to share the intentions and outcomes of the conference, what our journey to the conference was like, and what we found out with the young Wikimedians. We will share the whole journey that led to the conference, what role young Wikimedians played in it, and how we created the journey with them. We will also present the starting point for the conference's core question, which was: How to attract young people to Wikipedia? We will explain how we approached it and what surprised or surprised us in the preparations. For the conference, we tried to get as broad support as possible and to involve different groups in the period when we started planning the conference. Subsequently, with the support of the CEE Hub, we prepared a smaller youth meeting where we could try out the format of the meeting on a small scale and then apply it on a large scale at an international meeting. The principle was not to set up a program with presentations and sharing of experiences so far but to create a space for young people's voice and their discussions, empowerment, and creative role for the future. How did we design the conditions for participants to maximize the effect and impact of the meeting? How did we do that? From the meeting, we will process and analyze the outputs, which can then be used in the movement and work with the target group of young Wikimedians. What outcomes such a meeting brought, what was the process, and what worked more or less will be shared at the meeting. At the conference, participants also created a personal plan on how they can further develop their role as organizers. Some of the participants will also be present to add their perspectives. We will share what the meeting brings and hopefully, together we will look for further ways to increase the participation of young Wikipedians and support the growth of future leaders of the movement. What are our future plans and how to build on this experience we would like to discuss with the participants in the following discussion section.

How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?

Our conference offered full scholarships to 80 young active Wikimedians from all over the world, inclusivity was a crucial optic. At the same time, the sharing itself is not only inclusive but more importantly reflects the impact of such a working conference, which among other things, is designed to have long-term impacts and respond to various needs in a global movement investing in the future and sustainability. That is, we built on the activity we co-founded two years ago and the foundation of the CEE Youth group community we built while inviting a wider audience to expand and create such an additional horizontal collaborative community. The condition was that the participants had organizing experience and also planned to collaborate within the movement for at least another 12 months: to maximize sustainability.

What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

Everyone can participate in this session

Resources

Speakers

Klara Joklova

I have been the Executive Director of Wikimedia Czech Republic since 2018.

I am an active member of the CEE community and was able to participate in the regional collaboration and the establishment of the Wikimedia CEE Hub. I co-founded the CEE Hub with other colleagues and have been an elected member of the steering committee.

In 2023, I initiated and started the CEE Youth group within the CEE Hub, a group of young Wikimedians from the region, which has since grown. I have been facilitating and supporting the group ever since, most recently by creating new outlets for members who are already very independent.

In the summer of 2024, I received sufficient support to organize an international meeting of young Wikimedians. I successfully applied for a conference grant on behalf of WMCZ and, together with my team, organized the Wikimedia Youth conference in Prague in May 2025.

I focus on process-oriented facilitation and working with groups.

Jan Beranek

I am Jan Beránek, a Wikimedian from the Czech Republic. I'm member of Wikimedia Czech Republic and part of the staff team as trainer and coordinator of Programs for editors. I'm an administrator on Czech Wikipedia, Global rollbacker and VRTS member. I contribute mainly to Czech Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

JStephenson (WMF)

I am Colombian, British and Brazilian and grew up moving around the world.

I studied politics and history and have a Master's in Development Studies. For the last 25 years I have worked in project design, management and evaluation in issues related to education, peace building, improving livelihoods, youth and gender equity. A main feature of my work has been empowering diverse communities through innovative movement strategies. This has ranged from working with indigenous women's movements in remote regions in Colombia to youth groups in Brazil.

I have been part of the Movement since April 2021 when I joined the Wikimedia Foundation. I currently work within the Community Devleopment team supporting hub initiatives and Let's Connect.