Grants:Project/Rapid/The AfroCine Project/2021 Months of African Cinema Global Contest

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Rapid Grants

The AfroCine Project/2021 Months of African Cinema Global Contest

Months of African Cinema Wikipedia contest is a major annual writing contest which we started in 2018, shortly after the establishment of The AfroCine Project. The contest happens in October and November of every year, and through this contest, about 5,000 Wikipedia articles on African film and arts, have been created in about 20 different languages. Furthermore, about 500 relevant images have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, which are available for illustrations on Wikipedia articles. We aim to continue on this upward trajectory in this year’s edition. The purpose of this grant is to fund the international prizes, communications, and project management for the contest this year.

targetWikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons

start date1st October

end date30th June

budget (USD)$5,000

grant typeIndividual

grantee• Jamie Tubers

contact(s)• samoye_hotmail.com• ebenmlay.tzgmail.com• therealayokunlegmail.com

organization (if applicable)• The AfroCine Project

website (if applicable)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_AfroCine/Months_of_African_Cinema

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Create your report

Please see the sample Contest application before drafting your application.

Project Overview

The AfroCine Project is a multi-country and multi-faceted project which aims to encourage the contribution of digital content that relates to the historical and contemporary cinema, theatre, and arts sectors of several African countries, the Caribbean and the diaspora to Wikimedia projects.

The vision of this project is to bridge the huge African content gap and improve on the systemic bias that is present in the existing content. This is being achieved by making: articles, citations, images, videos, and data, about the historical and contemporary African cinema, theatre and arts, to be readily available and easily accessible, both online and offline, and in different languages.

One of the main activities carried out on this project is the “Months of African Cinema” Wikipedia contest. This is a major annual writing contest which we started in 2018, shortly after the establishment of this project. The contest happens in October and November of every year, and through this contest, about 2,000 Wikipedia articles on African film and arts, have been created in about 10 different languages. Furthermore, about 500 relevant images have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, which are available for illustrations on Wikipedia articles. We aim to continue on this upward trajectory in this year’s edition.

Project Goal

Choose one or more of the following goals. You can add or delete goals as needed.

1. Improve on the low amount of coverage of Africa on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, by getting a good number of quality Wikipedia articles and appreciating the most dedicated participants using a good rewarding system.
2. Improve on the low level of participation to Wikimedia projects from Africa, using pop culture as a good draw for more editors from the continent to develop interest in this movement and participate in it.
3. Significantly boost the quality of participation through the introduction of gifts for winners.
4. Ensure trust in the contest, through better coordinated jury system and prize management.

Project Plan

Activities

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing?

Communication Coordination

1. Develop specific coordination elements for the contest, such as utilizing an offwiki project management tool for core coordinators, creating and updating a meta project summary page, designing landing page for English Wikipedia and supervising translations into languages where local organizers have signed up, and so on. A lot of these activities are already being carried out.
2. Design several contest leaflets and posters which can be used on our social media promotions and can be adapted by local organizers to promote the contest in their communities.
3. Design media content to be used in promoting The AfroCine project as a whole and to promote the contest, demonstrating how people can join us.
4. Engage the media: Design and release at least one press release or one interview session promoting the project/contest.
5. Dissemination and promotion of designed materials across all digital platforms, as well as with local volunteer communities.
6. Organize calls to provide opportunities for volunteer groups to build capacity and project management skills which they may need to organize the contest, most especially in recruiting and training new editors in their communities.
7. Engage signed up participants to contribute to Wikipedia throughout the contest and beyond.

Contest Facilitation

• Finalizing decisions on appropriate prizes for winners of the contest.
• Ensuring adequate communication of prizes and contest rules with signed up contest participants. This would be done manually as well as using the mass messaging tool.
• Sorting out different categories of prizes planned for this contest, which are as follows:
  • Overall winner (1st, 2nd, 3rd places) - The users that achieve the highest quality of contributions overall. This would be determined using a point-based jury system, which factors in the size of articles created and the quality of citations.
  • Language Winners - Users that achieve the highest quality of contributions for each language. There would be a minimum contribution expected to qualify for this prize (To be decided before the contest).
  • Diversity winner - The user who creates the most articles for the most countries.
  • Gender-gap filler - The user who creates the highest number of articles about women.
  • Page Improver - The user who has made the most efforts at improving articles. We intend to use a hashtag to track the amount of contributions.

How will you let people know about the contest?

We will inform existing members of the movement through the different mailing lists available. Contest information would also be shared on different Wikimedia social media and chat platforms, as well as our official pages. As already stated, marketing flyers, posters and videos would also be designed to promote this contest and the project as a whole.

Currently, The AfroCine Project manages 5 official pages, most of which were created recently and are being grown to fully engage the community and the public, especially through the promotions which this grant would fund. Our platforms include:

1. Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/AfroCineProject
2. Twitter Page - https://twitter.com/AfrocineProject
3. Instagram Page - https://www.instagram.com/afrocineproject/
4. Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/378950832622441/
5. Telegram Group - https://t.me/joinchat/IvVVoxA85QplRUO8BCMwwg

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

1. For more information on Afrocine Project - Check out our meta page
2. To review the metrics and activities carried out for Months of African Cinema in 2018, 2019 and 2020 - Checkout our summary page
3. To review progress on the organization of the contest for this year so far - checkout our meta coordination page
4. English Wikipedia Contest landing page - en:w:Wikipedia:WikiProject AfroCine/Months of African Cinema

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: We’d consider the contest a success, when we have been able to help narrow the African content gap on Wikipedia by a significant measure. This would be considered achieved when:

1. At least 1,000 quality articles about African cinema and arts have been created on Wikipedia.
2. At least 5 African communities/Affiliates organize productive Wiki-events at the local level.
3. We have significantly improved the awareness level of Wikimedia movement in Africa, through our publicity efforts
4. The jury is able to successfully assess entries and unanimously decide the international winners for each prize category of the contest.
5. All international winners have been successfully contacted and received their deserved gifts.

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).

Human resources:

1. Sam/User:Jamie Tubers - The lead of the AfroCine project; would actively coordinate and oversee every aspect of this contest.
2. Ayo/User:HandsomeBoy: Would be in-charge of online facilitation during the contest, monitoring all our wikipages across all languages and also managing the social media campaigns.
3. Eben/User:CaliBen: Community Liaison for the AfroCine Project; would design a lot of our communications with the community, as well as with the public.

....and several leaders from across the continent to champion local activities during the contest; we currently have seven (7) countries signed up to participate this year.

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

Funding of the budget ($5,000)

Budget

Prizes' budget

• Prizes - $1,600 (these would all be given in the form of gift cards).
  • Overall Winner (1st, 2nd, 3rd places) - $500, $200, $100
  • Language Winners - $500 (this is the total budgeted for this category and would be shared equally amongst the language winners, up to $100 each).
  • Country Diversity Winner - $100
  • Gender-gap filler - $100
  • Page Improver - $100
• Gift to the Jury Coordinator - $200
• Administrative cost - $200 (shipping, bank fees, FX fluctuation, etc)

Communications' budget

• Graphics Designs (flyers, posters, covers, etc) and media productions - $1000
• Press and Social media engagement - $500

• Project management costs (mainly to support costs incurred by core coordinators for more than 8 months of planning and coordination) - $500 X 3 = $1,500

• Total - $5,000

Endorsements

Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!