Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wikimedia Awareness in Offa Community (ID: 22050536)

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Applicant Details

Please provide your main Wikimedia Username.

Mijesty

Please provide the Usernames of people related to this proposal.

Bukky658 Linasonblessing

Organization

N/A

Are you a member of any Wikimedia affiliate or group, including informal groups like Wiki Fan Clubs, emerging language communities, not recognized Wikimedia groups etc.? Please list them all.

Wikimedia Nigeria User Group University of Ilorin Fan Club Lets Connect

Grant Proposal

M. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.

Wikimedia Awareness in Offa Community

Q. Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries? (optional)

Local

Q2. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

R. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has.

1. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important.

Offa is a local government area in the outskirts of Kwara state with a population of 90,000 according to the 2006 national census and a population projection of 133,600 people as reported by citypopulation.de in 2022. It is home to various tourist attractions such as the Moremi Hall of Fame, Hengee resort, and Olofa of Offa palace, among others. Education is the leading industry of the Offa people with over 13 Tertiary institutions, which include the Federal Polytechnic Offa, Kwara State College of Health Technology and Nigeria Navy School of Health Science, the Pan African College of Health Technology, Summit University, University of Offa, the National Board for Technology Incubation, and a host of other institutions spread across its community among others. But unfortunately, despite the promising advancements in the community, there is very little presence of Wikipedia editors and projects that seek to promote Wikipedia in the community or its various uses. It is my duty as a Wikipedia volunteer and associate of this community to create an immense awareness about Wikipedia and begin the recruitment and training of active volunteers to improve articles and document various data linked to Offa and other places in Nigeria by laying a solid foundation and educating people on the multiple uses of Wikipedia to aid the acquisition of skills needed by volunteers to embrace the use of Wikipedia. The creation of Wikimedia awareness In the Offa Community is targeted towards laying a solid foundation for the widespread adoption and use of Wikimedia projects among the youths, especially students in higher institutions in the community. If approved, the proposed one-month project will help establish the first-ever Wiki community meetup in Offa and bridge the information gap on Wikipedia and its sister projects and keep track of the current and future activities of Wikipedia in the community as well as the editors' journey as new Wikipedia champions from Offa.

2. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.

Training and recruitment of 50 new editors across different learning institutions in Offa. This will aid the active participation of youths from different institutions within the target community.

Creating awareness about Wikimedia projects among participants in Offa: Most of the participants may be familiar with English Wikipedia very few are aware of other existing languages and Wikimedia products, such as Yoruba Wikipedia; the pre-dominant language in the community, Wikidata, and Wikicommons. Therefore, the training project will focus on English and Yoruba Wikipedia and other sister projects that promote free knowledge and open access to information, enhancing the need for this approach.

Photo walk; As stated earlier, there are various historical tourist attractions in the community with little on Wikicommons, such as the Oloffa of Offa palace, the ancient Offa central mosque, the Moremi hall of Fame etc. These tourist sites will be our main focus for the entries on Wikimedia commons.

Creating a community of Wikimedians in Offa: to keep in touch with the newly recruited volunteers and keep track of their editors journey, a WhatsApp group will be created where information will be shared aside from our physical meet-up in Offa.

Training participants on how to contribute to the various Wikimedia projects that the training focuses on;

Creating a Wikipedia account.
Understanding the core content policies, and the general editing principles.
Creating new articles and performing minor edits, among others, to improve content about people, places, organizations in the Offa community, Kwara State, and other parts of Nigeria.
Translation of articles and items on Wikipedia and Wikidata to Yoruba.

The outreach dashboard will be used to keep track of all contributions made by the editors during the edit-a-thon.

Giving out prizes to top 6 contributors as incentives to motivate them at the end of the campaign.

3. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

This project will run for a period of one month to implement all proposed objectives which will consist of five different sessions with the establishment of the Wikimedia community in Offa;

1. Two days of an in-person (physical) workshop: With the help of the facilitators to be engaged, the two day physical sessions will teach the participants the basic knowledge about Wikipedia. This will also involve account creation and on-site minor edits by all the participants.

2. Two (2) series of online reinforcement training: To properly equip all newly recruited volunteers with the needed skills on how to edit on Wikipedia and other sister projects: With the help of the facilitators of the project, the online sessions is aimed at improving the editing skills of the new editors.

3. Photo walk: To capture images of tourist attractions and monumental structures in Offa.

4. One day online review session (on the final day of the edit-a-thon): After the two days physical trainings as well as the two days online sessions, an interval of three weeks will be given for the participants to edit and practice the knowledge acquired from the project into fruition.

After the edit-a-thon the winners will be awarded a certificate of excellence; a WhatsApp group will be created and utilized to encourage them to edit and attend to questions arising from their newfound journey. Thereafter a one-day online review session, on the last day of the project, will be convened with the purpose of reviewing the works of the participants, clarifying where necessary, entertaining questions and clarifications, and awarding certificates to wrap up the project.

5. Creating a group of Wikimedia editors in Offa: The last day of the project will see the creation of a community for sustainability purposes.

4. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign or event? If so, please select the relevant campaign below. If so, please select all the relevant campaigns from the list below. If "other", please state which.

Not applicable

5. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

Mijesty (Project lead): She is an experienced Wikipedia editor who has volunteered during the Reading Wikipedia in the classroom as a facilitator and the recently concluded Wiki Loves Libraries project and participated in several edit-a-thon. She has a strong passion for writing and improving the story of Nigerians on Wikipedia.

Bukky658 (Facilitator) : Will lead and join the project lead to coordinate the online sessions. She is a volunteer and a certified trainer of the reading Wikipedia in the classroom program, the Project lead for WikiGLAM Awareness for Librarians in Kwara State, the project lead for Wikidata for Libraries and notable Librarians in Kwara State, the first prize winner of Wiki Activate 2021 and the organiser of Wikimedia Fan Club, Kwara State University Awareness Campaign. She will be one of the facilitators of the project.

Linason Blessing (Communication Expert): She is a member of the Nigerian user group and the Kwara state university fan club. She has facilitated many Wikipedia projects and has made an outstanding contribution on editing Wikipedia and Wikidata.

6. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Content Gender gap, Geography, Language, Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial

6.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

Offa is a community in the west where the most spoken language is Yoruba, as it is a well spoken language already we hope to engage new editors on the Yoruba wikipedia and we hope to bridge the content gap about Offa on the Yoruba wikipedia also.

7. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Education, Culture, heritage or GLAM , Not applicable

8. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities?

Geographic , Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background, Linguistic / Language, Socioeconomic status, Digital Access

9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities?

This proposal is targeted at the diverse youths (Students) in Offa Community. We hope to engage these participants before the project implementation through e-posters and constant jingles through their various institutional online platforms. Amongst the facilitators we have alumni of a popular educational institution in Offa, we hope to use this to our advantage and reach out to lecturers in the facility to assist in engaging the students.

These platforms and new online groups will be created to keep in touch with participants even after the implementation of the project. The newly found hub in Offa, Kwara state, will be a platform where information and updates will be regularly sent, there will be a regular check-up on participants to make enquires about the challenges they are facing and they will be given probable solutions.

10. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants?

The general friendly space policy for Wikimedia events will be utilized efficiently and explained properly to the participants and the event will adhere to the Wikimedia friendly space policy throughout the implementation of the project.

11. Please tell us about how you have let your Wikimedia communities know about the planned activities and this proposal. Use this space to describe the processes you carried out to make the community more involved in planning this proposal. Please link the on-wiki community discussion(s) around the proposals.

I have notified the Wikimedia Nigeria user group about the proposed implementation of a wikipedia awareness in Offa, kwara state [1]

12. Are you aware of other Rapid Fund proposals in your local group, community, or region that are being submitted and that align with your proposed project?

No

If yes:

12.1 Did you explore the possibility of doing a joint proposal with other leaders in your group?

N/A

12.2 How will this joint proposal allow you to have better results?

N/A

13. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedia partners to implement this proposal? Required.

Yes

13.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.

There will be a partnership with the School Managements of various educational institutions in Offa, Kwara state, to help recruit new editors. These partners will help publicize the project and its objectives to students, which will boost their interest in participating in this project. Our partners are people who are very particular about promoting open knowledge and also particular about impacting the knowledge and habit of volunteering of their students.

We will also partner with the Student Union Governments and presidents of different faculties within the various institutions to amplify the project reach among students.

14. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of THREE options that most apply.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Improve User Experience, Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Innovate in Free Knowledge

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

15. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

As facilitators of the project, we hope to have positive answers to the following questions;

Was the community awareness about Wikipedia successful?

Were we able to recruit new editors?

Do the participants understand the basic skills needed to contribute efficiently to Wikipedia?

If the friendly space policy was adhered to?

If the participants could contribute to Wikipedia and its sister projects properly?

If we successfully created a new community of editors in Offa, Kwara state?

If the project was beneficial to the target participants and the community at large?

16. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following spaces provided.

Main Open Metrics Data
Main Open Metrics	Description	Target
Creating Community Awareness about Wikimedia Projects	Students (youths), online and offline outlets will be used to create massive awareness about the aims, goals and objectives of the Wikimedia Foundation.	200
Number of Editors	95% of the participants will be new editors and they will be trained by experienced Wikimedia editors in four different sessions. Two online training and two offline(physical) workshops.	50
Number of events	To reach the objectives of this project there will be 2 physical sessions and 3 online sessions which includes the introduction, training and review session.	5
Total number of articles/items/media files created or edited/ uploaded	The total number of articles to be created or edited during the offline and online edit-a-thons.	500
N/A	N/A	N/A

17. Core quantitative metrics.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target
Number of participants	We hope to recruit at least 50 new editors as this project will only focus on recruiting new people to contribute in the community.	50
Number of editors	For the project to reach its goals and objectives we hope to recruit at least 50 editors during the course of the project	50
Number of organizers	To help facilitate this project and to put new editors through navigating wikipedia, also to answer questions that will arise during and after the project there will be a total number of 5 facilitators including the project lead	3

Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target
Wikipedia	The number of articles improved and or created	200
Wikimedia Commons	Number of pictures uploaded during the photo walk and physical sessions	100
Wikidata	Numbers of new and improved items on wikidata	200
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

17.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

18. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support.

The outreach dashboard will be utilized to track each participant's contribution and article listing manually on the project metapage

Financial Proposal

19. & 19.1 What is the amount you are requesting from Wikimedia Foundation? Please provide this amount in your local currency.

1260504 NGN

19.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

2772.03 USD

20. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PFaf4nW1yisbj4D_9KqnvafudCF7zrd2ugCgmdGeOAk/edit?usp=drivesdk

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Endorsements and Feedback

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Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:

Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).

Endorse