Greetings Program Leaders and Evaluators!

== WMCON 2016: New pre-conference workshops! [1] ==

For the third year in a row, during the days before Wikimedia Conference, we will host pre-conference Learning Days, in partnerships with nearly 50 affiliates from all over the world. Workshop sessions will be scheduled on both Wednesday, April 20 and Thursday, April 21, on four priority topics selected via the registration surveys for this year’s pre-conference are; a) Engaging and Retaining Volunteer, b) Best Practice Exchanges with other Leaders, c) Designing Wikimedia Programs and Events, and d) Measuring and Evaluating Impact. A draft agenda has been put up and we would request all the participants to keep an eye on the same for any updates. As in previous years, Learning Day participants were invited to take part based on expression of interest on their Wikimedia Conference application. Unlike other years, this time the team had to select one participant per organization due to room limitations. Following our common practice, we will document all sessions and share back on our portal on Meta, so all program leaders who are interested in Learning Day should add the event page on Meta [1].

== New blogs: Education Collaborative and Hashtags on Wikipedia [2] ==

Wikimedia Education Collab members met in Stockholm this March to brainstorm about the improvements they had implemented since last summer and set the goals for the upcoming eighteen months. In this blog, you can read more about the goals the Collab members reimagined to take the Collab to the next level and their future plans. [2. a]

Hashtags have come to Wikipedia edits with this new search tool. Now, including a hashtag in the Wikipedia edit summary will help that edit appear on the search page alongside other similar edits. Read about The Wikipedia Library’s #1lib1ref month-long campaign, during January this year. On the blog, we review this large-scale campaign, and how the use of the hashtag #1lib1ref affects Wikipedia outreach efforts around the world. [2. b]

== Review WMF Annual Plan proposal on this FDC round [3] ==

The community review period for this round of the Annual Plan Grants program (APG) is underway. Five movement affiliates; Wikimedia Armenia, Wikimédia France, Wikimedia Norge, The Centre for Internet and Society and Wikimedia Foundation have submitted annual plans and budgets. Community members are welcome to join the review and provide feedback on their submitted plans, ask questions, and offer comments by April 30. Your review will be really valuable when the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) meets in May to make recommendations to WMF's Board of Trustees on how to allocate movement funds to these affiliates in order to achieve the most impact. Additionally, please find our newly integrated team, Program Capacity and Learning’s, annual plan on our space on Meta. [3]

== New resource: Standard Education survey template [4] ==

Towards the end of February, we reached out to the Education Program community to gather education surveys and standardize a typical survey that any program leader can use. After reviewing eight education program surveys, we drew out important data for students and educators involved in the education programs. We are now happy to present a new resource: 3 survey templates for Educators, Educator trainings, and Students.  These surveys will help you capture data about: activity/output, learning outcome, behavior outcome, program design, non-program personal questions, and non-program questions on the person’s environment. If you have follow up questions or need support implementing these surveys, please contact Edward Galvez via email or on his Talk Page [4].