I don't know if you are onlly interested in the PinePhone development, but I'll answer in general as the questions are about UBports (if I understood that correctly).

@privacylover said in Questions and Interest in the PinePhone Ubuntu Touch Project:
[...]

[...] is this truly like a decentralized community project or is it more organized?

I would say there is a small core team working, but work from the community is needed.

Are there any skills or contributions besides development which are missing or needed?

Indeed. Translation, testing, documentation, promotion, etc.
There is a post about this: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/6991/how-can-i-help/13

Who are the current participants who are actively helping the project along?

Part is here: https://gitlab.com/ubports
Part is here: github.com/ubports/
Part is here: https://gitlab.com/theopenstore/openstore-meta/ and open-store.io/
Part is here: https://translate.ubports.com/
And sponsors, and people spreading the word...