CIS-A2K Finance Officer: Call for application

tito — 2019-03-07T08:46:29Z

The Access to Knowledge team of the Centre for Internet and Society is seeking applications for the position of Finance Officer, to support its Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) Programme. The job application is open to women only.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is seeking applications from prospective candidates who identify themselves as female, for the position of Finance Officer, to support its Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) Programme. The job application is open to women only because we feel that a woman Finance Officer will contribute more towards bridging the gender gap in the Wikimedia movement and also it will bring a gender balance in the team. The position is full time and will be based in CIS’ Bangalore office No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560071. Finance Officer will work closely with the CIS-A2K Team and would report to the Executive Director/any supervisor in Team.

Position Summary

As a Finance Officer, your job will be to support the A2K Programme and the community members in financial related aspects such as filing the reimbursements, maintaining the books of accounts etc.

Characteristics of the Programme Officer

High level of commitment: The Finance Officer should believe in the values of CIS and Wikimedia projects, exude enthusiasm for the mission and can powerfully embody and communicate the mission.
Intellectual curiosity and flexibility: Must enjoy tackling difficult, ambiguous problems and able to incorporate new knowledge into how one approaches situations and generates solutions, loves learning from others while expanding intellectual horizons.
Open and transparent: Have a high level of integrity and be comfortable working in a highly transparent fashion.
Strong cultural competency: Able to navigate in a global movement and on a global team in addition to navigating the complexity of India.
Willing to travel: The Finance Officer must regularly travel within India during the events to help the community members to file the reimbursements.

Responsibilities

You will be responsible for the overall finance-related aspects of Team that include maintaining the books of accounts, filing the reimbursements.
Assistance in book-keeping to include monthly expenditure, financial statements, accounts receivable, accounts payable, disbursement journal, trial balance, tax reports, etc.
Work in preparation of budgets, proposals, objectives, audits, annual reports.

Requirements

Prior experience of working in a collaborative community, preferably an open movement.
Must be fluent in English and at least in one Indian language.
Minimum of 1-year experience in clerical/bookkeeping/accounting field.
Ability and flexibility to deal with pressure and deadlines.
Good knowledge of formulas in excel sheets.
Basic knowledge of Tally software.

Wikimedians will be given priority.

Location: The position is based out of the CIS’s Bangalore office.

Remuneration: Compensation structure will be determined by the level of expertise, experience and current remuneration.

Contract period

Initial contract will be till 30 June 2019, following the current work-plan of the A2K team

Apply

To apply, please send your resume and cover letter to Tito Dutta (tito+fo@cis-india.org) (please do not miss the +fo part in the email address). The last date of application is 18 March 2019.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-a2k-finance-officer-call-for-application

Train-a-Wikipedian and policy discussion meetup in Hyderabad

tito — 2017-06-28T10:06:34Z

The first on-ground Train-a-Wikipedian and policy discussion meetup was conducted in Hyderabad on 15 May 2016. 14 editors from 5 Indian Wikimedia communities participated in this event.

A Train-a-Wikipedian and policy discussion event was conducted in Hyderabad on 15 May 2016. Tito Dutta of CIS-A2K joined as a resource person and Telugu Programme Associate Pavan Santosh coordinated the event.

Although the Train-a-Wikipedian program was launched in January 2016, this was the first on-ground workshop for Telugu Wikipedians. The event was organized at Golden Threshold campus, Hyderabad. 13 editors from 5 Indic Wikimedia communities participated in the event. Here is the list of the participants:

User:Meena gayathri.s (Telugu)
User:Ajaybanbi (Telugu)
User:Pranayraj1985 (Telugu)
User:Nrgullapalli (Telugu)
User:Rajasekhar1961 (Telugu)
User:Viswanadh (Telugu)
User:Kasyap (Telugu)
User:Vin09 (English, Telugu)
User:Sonalisubudhi122 (Odia)
User:Mouryan (Bengali)
User:Sakthi swaroop (English)
User:Yash.golechha (interested to contribute to Hindi and English Wikipedia)
User:Yohannvt (English, Wikimedia India representative)

Introduction

The day's program started with discussing and explaining the works CIS-A2K is currently doing to support Indian-language Wikimedia communities. This session was primary focused on introducing the Train-a-Wikipedian (TAW) program. There were a number of editors who either were not aware of TAW, or were attending a real-life session for the first time. The program's vision, working-process and syllabus were narrated in details so that those who were new to the program understand how TAW works better. They were also informed about the past sessions. As there were a few editors, who were very new to the world of Wikipedia, they were quickly introduced to Wikipedia's main components. User:Rajasekhar1961 discussed the basic structure of an article.

Train-a-Wikipedian: Hands-on activity

This was followed by a hands-on activity where the participants were asked to glance through random articles on Wikipedia and discuss the issues in the article. More than 20 articles from English and Telugu Wikipedia were read and the issues/concerns were listed. The new editors were asked to comment from their own perspective, and the experienced editors shared their views using Wiki-vocabulary. The aim of the activity was to make a list of issues Wikipedia articles generally have (such as prose style, article size, references) and try to discuss those with relevant policy or guideline, so that it becomes clearer that policies and guidelines are needed in every step of Wikipedia editing.

Policy discussion

After the hands-on session which ended with a sense that almost every Wikipedia-editing related issue to be directly related to one or another policy, the second session of the day, on policy discussion, started. In the beginning of this year CIS-A2K, —with the help of Indian Wikipedians—created an Indic Wikipedia Policies and Guidelines Handbook, discussing how to create Wikipedia policies and modify the existing ones, discussing on Village pump, consensus etc. The book's content was presented to the participants.

Right after this session the participants were divided into two groups with Telugu Wikipedians and non-Telugu Wikipedians, and two parallel activities were conducted. Telugu Wikipedians started discussing their Wikipedia's policy portal and with non-Telugu Wikipedians the Train-a-Wikipedian session was continued. Telugu Wikipedians discussed a number of policies and guidelines such as stub policy, notability of books, authors, academics, prose style, and, using honorifics etc. Telugu Wikipedians suggested that they should work on the policy portal on a regular basis. They proposed that for the policies where they already have consensus, they should try to work on at least policy in every 1-2 week(s). For other policies discussion should take place on the village pump on regular basis.

Train-a-Wikipedian: Tools and gadgets

Following the policy discussion, a second session of Train-a-Wikipedian was conducted where a few advanced tools and gadgets were discussed. Some of the tools, gadgets and topics discussed in this session are:

Google Books citation
Autofill option
Indian Newspaper search tool
Search Indian news website
Copyright violation tools (with and alert about Mirrors and forks)
QuickWikiEditor
ArticlePlaceHolder
UserScripts and how they help

The day's program ended with a general feedback-gathering on how the Train-a-Wikipedia program can be improved more in future.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/train-a-wikipedian-and-policy-discussion-meetup-in-hyderabad