In 2025, Let’s Connectbegan its transition from a Foundation-organized program to a community-organized one.Today, anyone or any group in the movement can adopt or adapt the Let’s Connect peer-to-peer learning program to their local and regional context using the Toolkit and the resources and materials collected from the 70+ learning clinics organized over three years. The shift to a community-organized model began through pilot initiatives and discussions with ESEAP Hub, Wikimedia Iraq and Volunteer Supporters Network. You can read about the key learnings here. Our hope is that by using the toolkit, communities can leverage the tried and tested methodologies and templates of Let’s Connect to organize local, multilingual, and audience-relevant clinics.
Why the Let’s Connect model?
Peer-to-peer learning is not unique to Let’s Connect, and many valuable learning spaces already exist across the Wikimedia movement. What Let’s Connect contributes, however, is a documented and adaptable methodology for intentionally creating these spaces, informed by experience running more than 70 learning clinics across different regions, languages, projects, and experience levels.
Rather than starting from zero, communities can build on what Let’s Connect has learned, developed and documented. This includes best practices for encouraging participation, preparing presenters, creating inclusive learning environments, and capturing knowledge for future use and adaptation. Beyond these practical tools, what makes Let’s Connect distinct is its emphasis on culture-building. Let’s Connect recognizes that safety, joy and care are fundamental to our movement’s growth and sustainability, and embeds these values into how learning spaces are created and facilitated. The result is an environment where newcomers can learn alongside established contributors, organizers can exchange knowledge across linguistic and cultural contexts, and communities from different regions can share successes and challenges.
The value of the Let’s Connect model is not that it replaces existing community learning spaces, but that it makes both accumulated knowledge and the practices that create safe, inclusive, peer-to-peer learning reusable across the movement.
Key elements of the community-organized model
The Toolkit: Central to making the community-organized model accessible is the Let’s Connect Toolkit– a step-by-step framework and set of materials, templates, and guidance built specifically so any interested community group can start their own Let’s Connect program.
Local ownership:With the toolkit, local versions of Let’s Connect can emerge and take shape independently. Let’s Connect Across Zonesin Nigeria, which expanded from a pilot in the Kwara state, to Wikimedia UAE, which also adopted Let’s Connect’s Connectathon format to create a supportive environment for newcomers.
Resource Repository:A collection of the past learning clinics the Let’s Connect Working Group compiled and facilitated with Wikimedians across the movement. We would love for this repository to grow and welcome Wikimedians to add clinics they have hosted to the list. Some highlights:
- WikiLearn essentials for course creators: Building community skills online
- Engaging with newcomers in the Wikimedia Movement: strategies and experiences from Wikimedia México
- Mastering the Capacity Exchange (CapX) Tool
- Spotlight on Women’s health in Wikimedia Projects
- Understanding and Navigating Conflict in Wikimedia Projects Part 1
- Wikimedia Netherlands: Friendly Space Policies: Fitting the UCoC to Your Local Context
- Color, Clarity, and Commons: Crafting Our Brand for Collective Impact
- Wikimedia UK Changemaker’s Toolkit
An invitation to you
Now it’s your turn. You’re invited to host your own Let’s Connect clinics, wherever you are in the world. Start with the toolkit, review the resource repository, and design your first clinic!
Let’s Connect is designed to be adapted. Communities are welcome to use the Let’s Connect brand while adding their own flavors, colors, and culture, making the program their own and ensuring it fits your context. You do not need to adopt the entire model. Use the elements that are most useful to you, adapt what needs to change, and build on what has already been learned.
The Community Development team is here to answer questions and share guidance. Feel free to reach out at comdevteam@wikimedia.org.