This project is funded by a Project Grant

Report under review

This Project Grant report has been submitted by the grantee, and is currently being reviewed by WMF staff. If you would like to add comments, responses, or questions about this grant report, you can create a discussion page at this redlink.

To read the approved grant submission for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Wiki In Africa/Wiki Loves Women 2018.

Review the reporting requirements to better understand the reporting process.
Review all Project Grant reports under review.
Please Email projectgrantswikimedia.org if you have additional questions.

Welcome to this project's final report! This report shares the outcomes, impact and learnings from the grantee's project.

Part 1: The Project

Summary

Wiki Loves Women officially took place from June 2018 to July 2019 in Uganda and Tanzania. Preparation for this portion of the project happened over many months prior to the official launch, and activities around the project continue into the second half of 2019.

The project was driven by the two global project managers (based in South Africa and France). The activities on the ground in Uganda and Tanzania were organised by teams made up from the volunteer groups (that now both have Usergroup status as an affiliate) and led by local Wikimedians.

The focus’ within each country was to activate a larger community around the subject of local gender equality and the celebration of notable local women through in-person introductory and editing events. The events and attendance were supported and facilitated through strategic local partnerships centred around mutual benefit relating to networking, communications, venue, and content. These synergistic activities embraced and achieved the three integrated goals (detailed in Project Goals below).

In addition, two integrated, cross-project online drives were held: Women in Cinema in October 2018 and Women in Sport in June 2019. In addition and not part of the original project, a WLW Event Toolkit is being compiled and material created in order to better assist future ad hoc events or programmes organised by gender-focused groups (Wikimedia or external) beyond this specific funding cycle.

The mid-point report covers all activities up until November 2018. This report covers all activities until the end of July 2019 (and includes activities at Wikimania 2019). All-in-all the goals of the project have been achieved and the project has been a success, especially with regards to the on-the-ground activities in both countries. This intense process does achieve much and has many advantages, however, it also does have its limitations. As with all projects, there were some hitches along the way, not least of which were unfortunate delays in the second payments that affected the momentum of the project.

Project Goals

The original goals of the project are to:

1. Create visibility for women’s equality in Tanzania and Uganda using Wikipedia as a platform for content creation.

23 events were held in total across the two countries - the events (according to Outreach Dashboard) saw over 238 articles created and 367 articles being improved by 278 attendees. (Note, that Dashboard does not record all of the events conducted within the countries.)
Visibility was achieved by inviting notable women to attend (in Tanzania), as well as aligning with existing gender-equality and other strategic partners who helped to raise information about the events and the needs behind it.
Media relations were developed and secured in Uganda. This was harder to do in Tanzania given the current government attitude towards media and civil-society.

2. Support the development of the Wikimedia groups in the two countries through a series of structured and varied activities; and

Both groups became affiliated Usergroups in the build up to, and during the early part of, the project. In addition, they have both been integral to recent WM events in the region, including the East Africa Wikimedia Strategy Summit held in early September 2019 in Uganda and the East Africa training session, held in Tanzania in mid-2019.
Both projects have reported that the structure of the project (focussing on building the project’s community through defined roles, strong partnerships and establishing and updating a collective database) helped to build the capacity of the team, as well as the team themselves. It allowed them to see the diversity of tasks that can be covered by people with different skill sets.

3. Encourage women to be involved as leaders, partners and editors, whilst supporting all gender-sensitised editors to participate.

Both project leaders are women.
Both local team leads are women (although in Tanzania, Iddy and Antoni took over most of the management due to Maryam’s work and other commitments).
In Uganda alone, out of a recorded 204 participants, 134 were women.

Project Impact

This report is the meta report. Separate reports have been created for the main elements of the project. Each individual report can be accessed through the links below.

Supporting report links:

The impact in Uganda can be read on this page, written by Erina and Alice
The impact in Tanzania can be read on this page, written by Iddy.
The report on Women Occupation Drive can be found here, written by User:Anthere
The report on Women in Sport can be found here, written by User:Islahaddow

Targets


Planned measure of success (include numeric target, if applicable)	Actual result	Explanation
20 events held (10 per country)	23 events were held in each country	Summary of events are here - although 5 are missing (2 from Tanzania and 3 from Uganda), the figures in this document are being considered as a base-line reflection.
20 new active participants in Wikipedia per country;	278 editors took part in the events, the majority of them being new. (Please note: Uganda, separately from Dashboard recorded 2014 attendees at their events. 8 of which attended more than two events).	Please note: this figure is the lower estimate. It is from the Dashboard records, however local team records are much higher, for example, the Uganda teams hand recorded that they had 204 participants, of which 134 were women.
5 new active members in each group (with at least equal representation);	2 new members joined the Uganda group; and there were 8 repeat attendees to their events.	In the case of Uganda, a new group was targeted for each event, this meant that it was very difficult for attendees to feel a sense of belonging and continuity, to the extent where they would feel a sense of belonging and join or assist the main team.
50 subject specific / themed articles created per country;	238 articles were created in total with 367 articles being edited and improved. There were 3470 edits made overall.	As per the explanation above, this is a lower estimate given the limitations of the Outreach Dashboard.
Comprehensive local country lists of strategic contacts in CSOs, GLAMs, Media, Academic and other key institutions;	These have been created by each team and are available on their google drives.
Attendance and presentation of the Wiki Loves Women project to at least 3 global wikimedia event during 2018/9 (might typically be Wikimania, WikiIndaba and Wikimedia Con);	Attendance (lighting talks, poster, facilitating round tables) was at: UNESCO Mobile Learning Week (Paris), CC Summit (Lisbon), Wikimania 2018 (Cape-Town) and Wikimania 2019 (Sweden) and WikiConvention francophone 2018 (Grenoble) and WikiConvention francophone 2019 (Bruxelles) Attendance is expected to take place at WikiIndaba (Nigeria) in November.
Set up of 2 global online events.	Women in Cinema in October 2018 and Women in Sport in June 2019.

Story

It is very difficult to sum up a 16-month, collaborative, cross-country project in a single story (and not turn it into a book), but here goes …

Wiki Loves Women 2018 started as a 9-month long project that officially extended to a 12-month long one (but was in effect a 16 month project from initial preparation to report). The project itself was the extension of a very successful pilot project conducted in 4 countries in West Africa in 2016. As such, we went into the project a lot more prepared with regards to expectations and ideas of what the project could and did achieve. Luckily, the launch coincided with Wikimania Cape Town in July 2018, where Erina and Iddy could join for brief discussions about the future of the project. It was also an ideal opportunity to launch the project through visibility with in the movement: Erina was on a panel that discussed the realities of working across Africa, and was chaired by Katherine Maher; and both Erina and Isla were included in the Conversations with women in Africa.

Conversations with Women in Africa - Wikimania 2018
Wikimedia and the spirit of Ubuntu -The power of unity in action. Wikimania 2018
Erina and Emma at Wikimania 2018
Launch of Wiki Loves Women 2018 with Uganda and Tanzania teams
Wiki Loves Women at Wikimania 2019, photo: Camelia.boban
Video of the Gender Gap in Africa panel at Wikimania 2019
1Lib1Ref event in Uganda
Group Photo at 1Lib1Ref Uganda
Wiki Loves Women Training at Kawempe Youth Centre
Dominique Eliane and Florence at Wikiconvention francophone 2018
Some of the participants who attended the fifth Wiki Loves Women event in Tanzania.The photo was taken outside the COSTECH building in Tanzania.
Posters at Wikimania 2019
Wiki Loves Women 2018 event at Women in Technology Uganda
Mkutano wa kwanza wa Wiki Loves Women Tanzania mwezi January 2019
WikiGap Wiki Loves Women Training Makerere University
Alice in Mbarara
Wikimedia UserGroup Uganda in Western Uganda for Wiki Data Event
Habibu Mrisho with his friend Invyoleta happy as they choose different contents for edition in Wikipedia.
Fun moments after the work done
Iddy John at the posse

More pictures on c:Category:Wiki Loves Women

Once Wikimania Cape Town was over, we all went back to our homes, and the remote work of an agreed project plan, milestones, expectations, finances, databases, events, etc. were discussed and agreed on. (The documentation for all these elements are on a google drive and can be requested. A summary of this work took is found in the mid-point report.)

Despite working with already cohesive groups of Wikimedia volunteers, it took a while for the project to build momentum, and we think this was - in part - due to not having an in-depth training week (which we did have with the first Wiki Loves Women project in 2016). Much of the discussions that could have happened in a training/integration week, happened on a trouble-shooting basis during the monthly calls; with much of the early discussions being centred around introducing and reinforcing the knowledge of how to use Outreach Dashboard effectively (not entirely easy), how to run WikiData events, how Categories worked on Commons, etc. Other discussions were centred more on the organisational skills aspect of the project, such as why documentation was important, how databases increased organisational effectiveness, etc.

There was also the internal dynamics of each team to take into account. In Uganda, the roles were applied early (the leadership changed in the first month with Douglas' employment by the Movement Strategy team, and Erina taking over) and each person seemed to keep on-task. In the case of Tanzania, it also took a while for the project team to gel as they had not worked together previously. Although they had individually worked on Wikimedia projects. The dynamics of the Tanzania team meant that there was a lot of overpromising and under-delivering due to the lead’s other commitments (and her inability to communicate these effectively to the rest of the team), and, in turn, their reluctance to approach her about the issue.

However, the momentum did start to occur after the 3rd event in each country, only to be halted again in the new year with the delayed delivery of the money for their events (caused by issues within the WMF). Activity over March and April did accelerate, sadly as the project drew to a close. All in all, there were 23 events held (although only 18 are recorded on Outreach Dashboard). Individual lessons of each team can be found in the separate reports linked below.

As a way of drawing focus to Africa's women outside of the main focus countries, the two online drives were also interesting and different ways of approaching content drives. The Women in Cinema, run by Anthere used WikiData to show how simple and necessary it is to translate and correctly genderise filmmaking occupations in WikiData. It was a simple project, but it raised some interesting issues with regards to the difficulty of tracking the impact of drives on WikiData. Similarly, the multi-project online drive for Women in Sport aimed at showing gaps and allowing multiple ways to add or link images, add data or create or translate articles also raised the impossible issue of tracking the impact of any additions (I stopped counting individual changes to the page at around 2500 items added). Beyond the online drives, there were also in-person attendance at international events to draw visibility to the project. Both Anthere and Isla attended the UNESCO Mobile Learning Week in Paris and the CC Summit in Lisbon, where Wiki Loves Women was informally discussed with delegates (although not on the programme). And, of course, the final act of the Wiki Loves Women team was to be at the core of some of the presentations at Wikimania 2019.

The project, as a whole, has been a success. While we wish that some elements could have been better, overall it did contribute significantly to coverage of notable women in those two countries, reinforced the volunteers now involved in official user groups and helped to raise the profile of Wikipedia and articulate the importance of celebrating local people and culture by contributing to the Wikimedia projects. The enthusiasm with which the project was embraced on the ground in both countries is a testament to these elements. Lastly, we are grateful that the project will continue to develop and be expanded beyond this national focus model. Thank you for believing in the project, and supporting us through this.

Methods and activities

Events

Tanzania

Full record of Events in Tanzania

Dashboard Recorded Events in Tanzania:

Please Note: Above is a record of what was recorded on Outreach Dashboard, 2 additional events were not recorded via this platform

Uganda

Full record of Events in Uganda

Dashboard Recorded Events in Uganda:

Please Note: Above is a record of what was recorded on Outreach Dashboard, 3 additional events were not recorded via this platform

Main project activities

Introduction of the project via the WMF Grant Team’s presentation (Youtube, Commons)
Discussions and finalisations of MOAs with the teams
Including Uganda and Tanzania teams in the WikiProject page and updating all activity
Establishing multi-layered communications systems and task management using tools such as Trello and Google Drive
Development of WLW poster
Launch of Wiki Loves Women at Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town
Printing and distribution of WLW communications materials
Monthly meetings and regular updates
Launch of the Wiki Loves Women WikiData Occupation drive
Drafting the structure and elements collated for the Wiki Loves Women Event Toolkit. (This is still in process and has been done as an addition to this project. How toos and audio files are still to be added).
Wiki Loves Women in Uganda on-going events organised by the WLW Uganda team
Wiki Loves Women in Tanzania on-going events organised by the WLW Tanzania team
Launch of a Facebook group as a discussion forum for the intersection of gender + africa + digital /online - also a way to develop a network of like-focused people across Africa
Creation of a Wiki Loves Women playlist on Youtube.
Launch of Women Occupation Drive and report published.
Submission of the mid-term report
Ongoing mentoring and discussion with teams.
Contributing to the Wiki Women Telegram Group.
Attendance of Isla at WikiSummit in Berlin
Attendance of Florence and Isla with Wiki Loves Women posters and information materials at UNESCO Mobile Learning Week and CC Summit
Updating and presentation of Wiki Loves Women at Wikimania 2019 at the poster session
Organising and facilitating Gender Gap in Africa panel discussion at Wikimania 2019
Taking part in the Bridging the Gender Gap with WIki Loves Campaigns panel as a representative of Wiki Loves Women at Wikimania 2019
Florence at Wiki Convention in Brussels
Launch of Women in Sport online drive with a report is published
Presentation on Women in Wikipedia at AFEMS, the African Feminist Conference held at the University of the Witswatersrand, September 2019
Activity report compiled by both teams
Final report compiled and delivered ;-)

In more detail

The information below was initially placed in the Midpoint Report. It has been updated to mid-2019.

Tasks and admin

Team arrangements and MOAs were developed over several remote meetings. The MOAs were signed and tasks are reiterated and discussed monthly. Tasks, systems and processes have been set up on Trello and communicated with all teams. Communication systems such as a dedicated slack, whatsapp and skype channels were established. Milestones discussed and established with in the MOA.

Monthly meetings and mentorship

Monthly meetings are held to ensure that neither team flounders. These sessions are intended for updates, but most time is spent in a mentor session, with explanations of the more confusing elements that the teams are grappling with. The meeting notes can be seen via links below.

During the course of these meetings several elements recur that shows that some concepts are not as easy to grasp as initially thought, and require constant discussion and mentorship. To date, these include:

Event dashboard on Outreach
Commons categories
WikiData training and introduction; opportunities for events

Partnerships

Partnerships were seen as a vital aspect of the project. Partners were approached to enhance the project with regards to:

content (existing content held within the organisation),
networks (able to attract already passionate and invested members to get involved and join the project),
communications (providing the project with access to established communications channels) or
venue (provide in-kind support services).

With local partners invested in the project, Wiki Loves Women has a greater chance of stability, and thus being sustainable within the community beyond the grant period.

Current partners in Uganda:

Femrite
Women In Technology Uganda
Femrite
Women In Technology Uganda
Ugandan Bloggers
Hive Colab
Goethe Zentrum - Kampala
Kawempe Youth Centre (KYC)
High Sound Uganda
Luganda Department, Makerere University
Women of Uganda Network
School of Women and Gender Studies - Makerere University,
Embassy of Sweden Kampala,
Internet Society - Uganda Chapter
Girl Up Initiative Uganda
Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association (UWEA)

Current partners in Tanzania:

Buni Innovation Hub
Seed Space Dar es salaam
Goethe institute
Swedish embassy for WikiGap event

Communications

Internal communications systems and methods have been established via a variety of communications channels. Trello is used for project and task management, while Whatsapp, Slack and Skype are used for internal discussions, follow up and adhoc questions. All collective internal documents and materials are kept on dedicated folders on Drive and Dropbox.

All branded materials have been updated to reflect new funders and uploaded to the Commons Category as well as a shared Dropbox and Drive folder. The current element are as follows:

Links:

* Page

* Tanzania

* Uganda

* Discussion group: Mind the Gap in Africa (private)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen

Commons Categories:

Updated or additional Communications materials:

Generic press release template
Mailchimp newsletter in English to 1004 subscribers; French to follow in late November.
Rollup Banner
Generic poster template
Business card template
T-shirt
Hoodie / Fleece design

Wiki Loves Women Online Occupation Drive

In order to support AfroCine project, Anthere created the Occupations Drive. The aim of the Occupations Drive was to help improve the occupation labels in WikiData with non gender-biased description and description in more languages. Pages were established for 12 Africa-based languages. The deadline for the drive was on the 30th November 2018.

Wiki Loves Women – Women in Sport

Women in Sport logo

From the 1st - 30th June 2019 Wiki Loves Women celebrated all of Africa's sports women across several language Wikipedias (English, French and Swahili), WikiData and Wikimedia Commons. The project was created for Wiki Loves Women by Islahaddow with help on the query from Spinster.

Through the drive people were encouraged to update all the information available on WikiData on Africa’s Sportswomen. Participants were encouraged to upload images, translate existing articles, add WikiData items or create new articles on their favourite female sportswomen. The existing list of sports women that are covered on Wikimedia projects was listed (by country) displaying a variety of information in order to show what was missing.

Wiki Loves Women Event Toolkits

Although still a project in progress, the initial structure and elements for the Toolkits have been created. The intention of the toolkits is to provide any gender focused organisation or Wikimedia community with the resources to host their own events focused on gender issues and the celebration of women across Africa (and beyond).

Project resources

Project links:

Tanzania links:

Uganda Links:

Learning

What worked well

Collaboration with Wikimedia Teams

Working with Wikimedia volunteer groups that were on the cusp of gaining usergroup status allowed for a different experience to the previous iteration of Wiki Loves Women. The knowledge of the wikiverse, the outreach, training and event management skills that had been garnered from their involvement in Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Monuments and 1Lib1Ref and other Wiki-based events allowed the project to start from a different point. We much be clear here that Uganda’s involvement and team cohesion was more advanced than Tanzania’s team who was small and, while they had worked on Wiki projects separately, had not really worked together yet (which we think is responsible for their internal issues).

The model designed for adaptability

The design of Wiki Loves Women was always intended to be adaptable to local circumstances. While the project team offered a loose model for interaction and specific outcomes that were required as a result, it was made clear to the teams that they should test the guided model and/or adapt it to local conditions through the process and as needed. The Uganda team lead, who has worked with the Project Team before, was very aware of this aspect of the work. However with the Tanzania team this did not occur until much later in the process, mainly due to the internal impasse within their team, and lack of confidence to change what they thought was ‘set in stone’. Once the team were reassured they could proceed as they thought best, the events were much more impactful and productive.

Concentrating on different subjects and focal groups per event

Pro: With the focus of each event being on a different subject matter or focus, this ensured that new partners could be approached and greater visibility around the project could be sought.

Con: Moving from one focus group to the other did not allow for retention to be built into the design. It meant that potential interested and enthusiastic attendees at one event could not have their interest developed at a subsequent event. In Uganda, 8 attendees did attend a second event, and two new people joined the team, but retention was not built into the process and more effort to retain previous attendees, and the instigation of different pathways to multiple attendance considered in the design of future events and WLW programmes.

What didn’t work

Initial training event

At the beginning of the project it took a long time for the momentum to build and the teams to gel and get on with their tasks. After discussion with the teams, it seems that both teams could have benefited with an intensive planning and training week in-person and at the start of the project. This approach had been used for Wiki Loves Women 2016, however due to budget constraints, it was cut from the budget for this iteration.

Onboarding a team onto a new project (especially a WIkimedia project) is a steep learning curve. A lot of energy at the beginning of the project was aimed at negotiating and making clear the project plan, milestones, processes, communications channels, etc. There was a lot of remote onboarding, and this could have been done better over an intensive yet short week, than dragged out over several remote and frustrating skype meetings with difficult connections and the inability to see each other. Initiating sessions could have been either held together or at each country, but they were definitely necessary in leaping into the project with knowledge rather than learning through the process and fumbling with some elements - such as reporting (Dashboard and Project), etc.

Delays delivering second tranche

The second payment from the WMF took an inordinately long time to be delivered. The mid-point report was posted on the 26th November 2018, and the money finally arrived in the WIA account on the 25th February 2019. We understand that the grants team were under-resourced and that there could be a delay, but not two months more than we were expecting. The delay severely impacted the momentum of the project and meant that all events planned for January and February were put off until March, although events still happened in January and February, the money for these events was paid out of pocket by the teams. We were lucky they could, but they shouldn’t have had to.

Outreach Dashboard

This was definitely a steep learning curve for the organisers and team leaders. Although 18 of the events were recorded (2 were not) some did not fully record the events. We have used the results from Dashboard as a low base line in this report and hope that there is some way to ensure that a) there is more training in the effective use of the tool, and b) there are additional processes in effect that records as much as possible so that Dashboard is not the only tool of record (as Alice on the Uganda team did).

Social media drive

A social media push was anticipated for the early part of the second half of the project. This did not happen for two reasons. The first was the delay of the second tranche dissapated the momentum of the project, the second was that as the ‘action’ was happening in two countries - one of which has a sensitive media environment - it was difficult to decide on an call to action or element on which to ‘hang’ a social media drive. At one point, it was decided to use the WLW Event Toolkits as a call to action, however this element to the meta project has not yet been finished, and so the Social Media drive was not developed further.

Exchange Rates

This is an age-old problem across developing countries. The Rand/USD exchange rates fluctuate wildly. As does the rates of the Ugandan Shilling and the Tanzanian Shilling with the USD. This year has been no exception and accounts for the larger than expected spend for each of the country expenses. Luckily we included the Contingency line item in our planning as experience has shown us that this is the case.

Next steps and opportunities

There are a number of opportunities for growth of this project and the Project Team has deliberated long and hard about its future. Heartened that every single group that has been part of Wiki Loves Women so far has continued their activities in one way or another, the Wiki Loves Women team has an exciting future planned for the project. That future can be seen in the ‘’’Rationale of 2019-2020 evolution’’ put forward for a Simple APG application for 2020 here.

Part 2: The Grant

Finances

Actual spending

line item	BUDGET EUROS	BUDGET USD	MONIES RECEIVED	SPEND RAND	SPEND USD
1. Project management and global operations					1:13.6044
1.1. en. PM 1	€8,000.00	$9,929.12		R135,055.86	$9,927.37
1.2. fr. PM 2	€12,000.00	$14,893.68		R201,347.00	$14,800.14
1.3 Financial administration	€1,500.00	$1,861.71		R20,512.35	$1,507.77

2. Operations
2.1 Equipment	€500.00	$620.57		R7,217.21	$530.51
2.2 Financial transfer costs	€500.00	$620.57		R7,286.49	$535.60
2.4. Promotional materials: t-shirts, badges, etc.	€1,000.00	$1,241.14		R14,932.75	$1,097.64
2.5. Public relations, marketing and social media	€1,200.00	$1,489.37		R22,460.00	$1,650.94

3. Country 1: Tanzania				R158,591.00	$11,657.33
3.1 WIR/team stipend (include local travel)	€6,400.00	$7,943.30
3.2 Local communication materials	€250.00	$310.29
3.3 Events (Catering + venue hire)	€2,000.00	$2,482.28

4. Country 2: Uganda				R158,904.40	$11,680.37
4.1 WIR/team stipend (include local travel)	€6,400.00	$7,943.30
4.2 Local communication materials	€250.00	$310.29
4.3 Events (Catering + venue hire)	€2,000.00	$2,482.28

Sub-total	€42,000.00	$52,127.88		€726,307.06	$53,387.66
5. Contingency	€2,100.00	$2,606.39		R10,375.50	$762.66
BUDGET TOTAL	€44,100.00	$54,734.27		R736,682.56	$54,150.32
Project administration	€2,205.00	$2,736.71		R37,038.41	$2,722.53
GRAND TOTAL	€46,305.00	$57,470.99	R774,961.04	R773,720.97	$56,872.85

Remaining funds

Do you have any unspent funds from the grant?

NO

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadminwikimedia.org, according to the guidelines here?

YES

Confirmation of project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

YES

Is your project completed?

YES

Grantee reflection

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on what this project has meant to you, or how the experience of being a grantee has gone overall. Is there something that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed, or that you’ll do differently going forward as a result of the Project Grant experience? Please share it here!