2025-05-10 General Assembly

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APPROVED

Wikimedia Belgium (WMBE) invites all effective members to the General Assembly.

Only effective members can vote. If you can't be present, you can give a proxy to another member. One single proxy allowed per member. There is only a physical gathering, no video conference.

Venue

Saturday 10 May 2025 from 14:00-18:00 Amazone, Middaglijnstraat 10 Rue du Méridien, 1210 Sint-Joost-ten-Node

Introduction

We needed some time to prepare the room because we could only enter the room at 14:00. Geert opens the meeting at 14:20.

Meeting administration

Chair of the meeting: Geert Van Pamel
Vote counting: Bas van Pelt and Antoine Motte dit Falisse
Note taking: Caren Vervaeke

Presence

General meeting attendees:

Voting members

Rony Vissers
Griet De Ceuster
Geert Van Pamel
Paul Hermans
Dominique Labar
Antoine Motte dit Falisse
Roland Rotsaert
Norbert Matheuwezen
Frans Grijzenhout
Lionel Scheepmans

Becoming an effective member

The Board confirms one new effective member:

Bas van Pelt

Proxy declarations

Ronald Torfs to Geert Van Pamel
Rony Vissers to Griet De Ceuster

Rony left the meeting early for personal reasons.

Non-voting participants

Caren Vervaeke

Counting	Result
Count of presence	10
Count of proxies	2
Associate member	0
Observer	1
Total represented	12
Ordinary majority	7

Introduction round

Everyone introduced themselves briefly.

Activities in 2024

Geert shows the 2024 activity overview, including the Public Domainday, Industriemuseum, Jenevermuseum, Vrouwen van papier, Meemoo (Project Visual name authority).

Activities/2024

public domain day
annual photo contests Wiki Loves
a number of writing sessions with different organizations
collaboration with educational institutions and heritage institutions
Geert participated at the General Assembly of Wikimedia Europe in Prague, the (last) Wikimedia Summit in Berlin, and Wikimania in Katowice.
Dominique participated at the Hackathon in Tallinn.

Board planning days: Every year in September, location: by the sea, hours: 2 days (including overnight stay).
Freelancer came on board - training 18 and 19 December and started immediately.
4 photo contests:
- Wiki Loves Heritage
- Wiki Loves Monuments
- Wiki Loves Monuments Luxembourg
- Wiki Loves Denderland

Planned photo contests 2025 (in the sommer months):
- Wiki Loves Heritage
- Wiki Loves Monuments
- Wiki Loves Denderland

Collaboration with museums and archives; WMBE works closely with strategic partners to promote the use of Wikipedia/Wikimedia.
- Industry Museum Ghent
- They also applied for a project through Friends of Wikimedia.
- Project has been approved.
- Gin Museum Hasselt
- Women of Paper (Library of Bruges)
- Heritage institutions & Archives
- Army Museum
- KBR (music scores)
- Visual Name Authority (meemoo)
- Gemeenschapsmunten - schrijfsessies

Wikipedia in Education
- Antoine has led sessions for teachers on how to use Wikipedia in education.
- Surprisingly, schools are no longer ‘scared’ about using Wikipedia, but ChatGPT has taken this place.
- Erasmushogeschool Brussel - Journalism course, History subject - for 6 years now that there is a session for the students who have to write a Wikipedia article.
- UGent Department of Medieval History
- ULiège - Women and Science
- Antwerp - Writing session Circular architecture (cement industry in Belgium)
- How to contribute to Wikipedia as part of a PhD (Antoine) doctoraat (Antoine)
  To get a fair award of paid performance, it is necessary to have some kind of job posting and selection of candidates, to arrive at a unanimous ‘best fit’.

Partnerships
- The Friends of Wikimedia Fund is extended for 3 years.
- WikiFranca
- Wikimedia Europe

Press about Wikipedia and Wikimedia
- George-Louis Bouchez had engaged someone to edit his Wikipedia page.
  This is allowed, but it should be mentioned. Moreover, he was asked to modify some things, which was refused. The commotion about this caused Wikimedia to get into the press.
- Standaard Solidariteitsprijs: The design must be delivered before the end of June; 1 pager

Communication
- second edition Schrijven voor Wikipedia (only PDF)
- publication of Vrije kennis ontsluiten met Wikimedia (book and PDF; second edition D/2025/13702/0001)
  The CC BY-NC-SA is not the best solution. But it was required for the first edition (part of a project of de Vlaamse Gemeenschap). For the next edition CC BY-SA should be used (needs approval from Hilke Arijs and Geert Van Pamel). The design of the book is owned by the printer. The CC BY-NC-SA licence is not a problem as such, because all the images are public domain, or being created by Hilke. An attachment will be published with the list of images, and their credits. WMBE must be a role model to correctly apply copyright rules.
- New website wikipedia.be. Since January 2025, the domain name is owned by Wikimedia Belgium. It was originally paid for by Wikimedia Netherlands. The website has been modified for automatic browser language detection.
- Note: we started in February 2025 with Bluesky instead of Twitter/X. We are also evaluating Mastodon.

Approval of the Annual Accounts 2024

Full review of the financial report.

Annual Accounts 2024 (legal statements)
Financial report 2024 (WMF grants)

Annual accounts Wikimedia Belgium 2024 - Report of the audit committee 17 May 2025

Composition of committee

The committee consisted of Frans Grijzenhout and Dominique Labar.

Opinion of the committee

Opinion after review by Frans & Dominique: The committee had full access to the accounts. The committee found no discrepancies in the accounts and recommends that the general meeting approve the financial statements/2024 and discharge the board for the 2024 financial year.

Checks and balances

The bank account balances as at 31 December 2024 were verified. The balances on the balance sheet as at 31 December 2024 match the bank statements.
Receipts 2024 have been verified. The entries match the bank statements.
Expenditure 2024 has been verified by sampling. The checked entries match the invoices and claims submitted.
Balance sheet: equity increased by €1,169.36. Cash and cash equivalents increased by €34,543.31 thanks to the advance on the WMF grant 2025 transferred in December 2024.

General suggestions

Important to note: if there are assignments within Wikimedia Belgium that are paying, communicate them clearly - further professionalisation also requires a lot of transparency in this, as well as possible ‘tendering’ to see who is the best fit for the job.

Control of the WMF grant

The annual granted grant amounted to €35,000 in 2024. €15,000 received in 2024 from the WMF. €20,000 was on the balance sheet as of 1 January 2024 as a reserve. This was the unspent amount of the 2023 grant. WMF agreed to use this amount in 2024.
As of 31 December 2024, expenses paid with the WMF grant (including accruals to 2025) amounted to €21,097.24. Excess received €13,902.76. €10,000 recognised as a reserve on the balance sheet as at 31 December 2024. This amount may be used for activities in 2025. €3,902.76 was repaid to the WMF on 9 February 2025.
The WMF grant 2025 amounts to €10,000 (carried forward from 2024) and €70,860. Of this, €35,420 was received in December 2024 and recognised as a reserve on the balance sheet as at 31-12-2024. The second tranche is expected to follow in June/July 2025.

Friends of Wikimedia Belgium Fund

Donations of € 18,154.58 were received in 2024. The total amount available as of 1 January 2025 is €40,903.33.
In 2024, there was no appeal to the fund. In 2025, three projects will be financed with reserves from the fund.

For information:

The FVV Committee thanks for donations to the Friends of Wikimedia Belgium Fund.
Doing a gift is made easy with the QR-code.
The Belgian government is requiring people to provide their national number (consequence: international donations are not possible any more).
Renewal of the contract with the King Baudouin Foundation till 2028.

Audit report of Dominique Labar

I, Labar Dominique, volunteer member of the Wikimedia.be Chapter, hereby join the audit committee of the Wikimedia asbl as an elected member of the board and present my audit report and my comments to the said committee.

Declaration

The Wikimedia.be chapter has made available to me all the ledger documents and files for the 2024 financial year. After visual inspection of the spreadsheets and bank transactions, as examiner I declare that I have not identified any irregularities in the calculation of balances and accounts. I recommend that the General Meeting approve the financial statement for the year 2024.

Work performed

Verification of the balance of accounts at 31 December 2024 and compliance of banking transactions.
Control of income.
Validation of expenditure.

I confirm the amounts previously collected in the report by Mr Frans Grijzenhout, a member of this committee.

Approval of financial statements

The financial statements were approved.

Discharge of the board

The Board was discharged.

Approval of the budget 2025

Geert presents an overview of the budget and the activities in the first half year of 2025 and adds an outlook for the second half of 2025. We will receive a WMF grant of 80.860 € for 2025, which is the base budget of 2024, taking into account inflation, and the hiring of a freelancer.

We have a freelancer as of December 2024 for 2 days per week for communication (e-mail, internal and external websites, social media), project management, and partner relationships.

The budget was approved.

Board elections

Association rules

Geert explains the procedure and the nominations.

A mandate as Board member is valid for 2 years
The Chair needs to be re-elected every year
The number of Board members is between 3-6; Board decision 2015-12-05 approved at the 2016-01-23 General Assembly
Effective members can become a Board member after being candidate board member, and after election by the GA
Associate members can become effective member, after 6 months being associate member, upon request, and after approval by the Board

Candidates

Can continue their 2^nd year Board member without re-election:

Up for re-election:

Voting by the General Assembly

Voting by the General Assembly
Statement	Yes	Abstain
Approval of the Annual accounts 2024	12	0
Agree to Discharge the board 2024	12	0
Approval of the Budget 2025	11	1
Approval of Board member Geert Van Pamel	11	1
Approval of Board member Norbert Matheuwezen	10	2

Note: board members can't vote for themselves, as this is considered being a conflict of interest.

Everyone was re-elected. Geert remains chair, but wants to pass this on to someone else in due course.

We will continue to appeal to more women, appeal to other backgrounds, engage younger generations. To do: brainstorm ideas to make this happen.

Other subjects

Application Peer-to-Peer platform for the Friends of Wikimedia Belgium Fund; approved by the Committee, applied to the King Baudouin Foundation. We plan to start this in Q2-Q3.
New ways to evaluate students. (Lionel)

Communication

Every Tuesday evening from 19:00-21:00, an informal virtual meeting and helpdesk

GLAM

This summer, we will organise several photo competitions: Wiki Loves Heritage, Wiki Loves Monuments.

Expense claims

Participants of the general meeting may submit an expense claim.

The meeting was closed at 17:00, followed by a drink and some snacks.