Grants:Project/Rapid/Gikü/Wiki Loves Earth 2017 in Moldova

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:
1. What content will the contest focus on, and why is it important to your community?

This is part of the international photo contest Wiki Loves Earth 2017, focus content is natural heritage. It is an important topic for Moldova because the country lacks awareness of its natural heritage over the internet, especially when it comes to freely licensed images. Before Wiki Loves Earth was first organized in Moldova in 2016, there were only 7 protected areas illustrated on Commons out of a total of 471.

2. How will you let people know about the contest?

Through Facebook page, press release, and offline media; also by participating in events such as Eco-Hackathon 2016 and by organizing photo expeditions

3. How will you judge the contest and award prizes?

Jury consists of 2 professional photographers and me as Wikipedian. This is the same jury that successfully provided evaluation of last year submissions. Jury evaluates submissions using a software provided by international organizers. Awarding will take place in July and will be a ceremony held by WLE Moldova organizers, just as last year

4. For photo contests, what is the strategy to get images used on projects?

Volunteers of Romanian Wikipedia (mainly Tolea93 and me) are regularly adding images to articles in Romanian language. It is assumed that Wikipedias in other languages will use these articles as example in illustrated their articles. There is also a good categorization on commons: c:Category:Protected areas of Moldova. Also, image property is regularly updated on Wikidata items with new submissions.

5. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?

It's awesome.

Calendar / schedule

before contest: promoting through Facebook page, press release, and offline media
May 15 – June 15: contest is running
June 16 – June 30: members of the jury are selecting their favorite submissions
July 1 – July 5: members of the jury gather to decide on the best 10 images
July 6 – July 8: the local results are announced and are sent to international team as international submissions
July 9: local awarding ceremony
optionally, sometime at the end of September: another meeting dedicated to the international results

Impact

How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets and feel free to add more:

The targets are as follows:

at least 2000 photographies uploaded;
- hopefully, at least 5 quality images
- and at least 300 images used in Wikipedia articles on different languages (there is an estimated average of 15% usable images in the articles, as many uploads come in batches with more detailed images than needed in an article);
30 participants with at least one upload
- of which an estimate of 20 newcomers;
at least new 50 covered of the total of 471 monuments / protected areas (before the contest there were 70 items covered).

Last year goals and results

Please see the grant request from Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in Moldova (last year) made to Wikimedia Ukraine: https://ua.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?&oldid=36722#.D0.9F.D1.80.D0.BE_.D0.BF.D1.96.D0.B4.D1.82.D1.80.D0.B8.D0.BC.D0.BA.D1.83_Wiki_Loves_Earth_2016_in_Moldova

Last year's goals were not fulfilled because of poor participation. Multiple steps were taken to mitigate it. Namely:

Contest has been promoted at the main eco-hackathon event of Moldova, where the project took 1st prize, see press report;
Assistance of local ecology NGOs was requested and provided; they gave a lot of suggestions to improve the contest, some of which will find themselves in the next steps;
Location has been added for 357 out of 471 protected areas, using an interactive map published by the Academy of Sciences of Moldova
All information about the protected areas has been copied over to Wikidata. This made it possible to have additional features:
- A map has been added featuring all localized protected areas and their images, if available. The map is available in Romanian, Russian, and Ukrainian languages;
- List of protected areas is dynamically updated with images and categories as they are added to Commons and subsequently to Wikidata (Russian and Ukrainian lists are updated manually, because of template usage issues)
Last year participants were queried on their thoughts about how to improve the contest;
The prizes will provide more flexibility: last year we had concrete objects (GPS navigator, backpack, tripod) that risked not to satisfy the winners (and the GPS navigator didn't), now we will award gift certificates to a local photography store;
A readable shortcut has been provided to the contest's landing page: http://md.wikilovesearth.org
Landing page has been simplified. There are now three understandable steps to participate, instead of the bulky text before. Header has also been simplified;
Last year prizes were not announced on the landing page and not announced on FB either until the last days. This was because there were worries the grant could be refused. This year the prizes were announced before the contest;
A showcase of last year results has been added to the landing page;
A photo expedition has been organized before the contest to draw attention to it, and to provide a sort of 'how it's done'. A local ecology-themed radio station helped, see full details: Grants:Project/Rapid/Gikü/Photo expedition before WLE 2017 in Moldova.

The following table displays what are the goals of 2016 vs. 2017, and the total results of 2016 vs. current results of 2017 (as of May 24, 10th day of the contest):

Metric	2016		2017
Metric	planned	actual	planned	current (as of May 24)
No. of uploaded images	3000	553	2000	820
No. of quality images	10	?	5	?
Images used in articles	300	?	300	?
No. of participants	30	25 (17 valid)	30	27 (? valid)
No. of newcomers	20	? (majority)	20	? (majority)
No. of new items covered	50	63	50	55

Resources

What resources do you have? Include information on who is organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding).

I am doing local promotion and I am helped with that by project's partners: Wikimedia Ukraine, Moldovan ecology-oriented communities Hai Moldova and MEGA, and EcoFM radio station.

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount.

The table below lists the items that need to be purchased in order to fulfill the project scope:

Item	Number of units	Price per unit (MDL)	Price per unit (USD)	Amount (USD)	Comments
2.500 MDL gift certificate from the photography store Fotomax.md	1	2500	134.559	134.559	Main prize
1.500 MDL gift certificate from Fotomax.md	1	1500	80.7352	80.7352	Second place prize
1.000 MDL gift certificate from Fotomax.md	1	1000	53.8235	53.8235	Third place prize
Promotion (banners, FB page management, etc.)	-	0	0	0	Negligible amount, not more than a lunch in total; paid by myself. The associated photo expedition has been covered by a separate grant request.
Hosting awarding ceremony	1	0	0	0	"B. P. Hasdeu" Municipal Library of Chișinău provides access to their venue for free (they also hosted last year awarding ceremony). As a backup, platzforma.md can offer the hall in their headquarters also for free.
Total				269.1177

Note: USD amounts are based on exchange rates provided by Oanda on May 24 2017

Endorsements

Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!

Support The contest had success last year and is already more successful this year. By Ukrainian 5-year experience of the contest I am sure that it is very useful to do this in every country. --Visem (talk) 18:10, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
As a member of WLE international team I am sure Moldova will be able to organise a successful contest this year. They had a solid start last year, they have a good infrastructure for their size of community and Gikü is an experienced organiser — NickK (talk) 20:17, 24 May 2017 (UTC)