Grants talk:IEG/Wikipedia to brighten Africa

Examples of other projects involving Wikipedia & Africa

Hi, thanks for sharing your project idea. I admire your boldly expansive vision of a brighter world, but I think you may want to consider what's realistically achievable from a project in 6 months. In that spirit, here are some past/ongoing projects involving various initiatives in Africa with Wikipedia that may spark your thinking or potential connections for accomplishing some of your aims - many initiatives involving Wikipedia in Africa haven't been successful, so if you're serious about taking on a project like this in Kenya I would encourage you to spend some time learning about what strategies have already been tried and what their outcomes were, and then consider scoping your aims a bit further:

• Africa portal - jumping off point to lots of Africa initiatives (past & present)
• 2 IEGs we've funded involving Wikipedia in Africa so far:
  • Grants:IEG/What_is_about_-_C'est_quoi._A_series_of_communication_tools_about_Wikipedia._Cameroon_pilot_project
  • Grants:IEG/Mbazzi_Village_writes_Wikipedia
• WMF's Global South Strategy, based in part on early findings from past projects in Africa

Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 22:51, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Note that the link to the Global South Strategy above was broken, and is now correct. Please do take a look if you haven't yet. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 21:23, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

--Hello Siko and Asaf Bartov, Thank you so much for bringing into my attention the reality which will help me improve the project as well as under stand the reality in the communities and the wikipedia and hear is my observation after studying the recommended materials.

• Bearing in mind the past experiences with the wiki projects implemented in Africa, this project recognizes that the main thing that led to their failure was lack of a sparkling light that can directly light their lives which should be used as an incentive to help create a linkage between the implementers of the project and the targeted people that will help deliver and achieve the targeted results. The incentive in this case is the laptop which upon issuance the beneficiaries view them as an asset to the group that can help increase their resources especially the financial resource. For example, the groups will view the laptop as an asset to them which they can use to document their information, the groups will have been saved the cost of paying cash to the cyber cafes which offer computer services such as typing at a fee and may even consider starting their own cyber cafes and others may start designing cards such as inspirational cards for sale and even buy a printer that will help them to print their documents. This will be a weapon used to attract the targeted audience to the project.
• The project will also use the locally available sources ranging from human capital to their cultural way of doing things such as citing examples relevant to the teachings from their own way of life which will provide a sense of them owning the project and enhance their involvement in the project.
• There will also be a commitment form of agreement signed by the targeted groups which will contain the expectations of the project and their role upon the issuance of laptops.
• On the realistic part, the project can be achieved through the following work plan which will be implemented within a maximum of eight hours (8hrs) per group and the rest will be to await the results as implementers make the follow ups. That is: - 2hrs- health care lesson, 2hrs poverty an unemployment lesson, gender equity and equality and good governance lesson, 1hr e-learning lesson and 1hr environment conservation and preservation.

--Regards, Emily Mumbi and am really looking forward to here from you soon.

Eligibility confirmed, round 1 2014

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 1 2014 review. Please feel free to ask questions here on the talk page and make changes to your proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 1 2014 begins on 21 April 2014, and grants will be announced in May. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:07, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you!

scope

Hello, EMILY MUMBI!

That's an amazing and wide-scoped project and I am happy that there are volunteers that are ready to put their efforts into the project. Nevertheless, I think that the scope of the project is too wide and if it would be more specific - it would be easier to implement, evaluate and continue in the future.

Particularly, I think that hunger/mortality are out of scope here because of the following:

1. Mortality. Wikipedia is an project where articles could be easily edited by anyone, so it's not safe to use it as a source for medical advices - materials in the articles are not verified by professional doctors and I wouldn't guarantee that all of them are absolutely correct and wouldn't do any harm to people. So, I kindly suggest not to propose such articles as an advice to someone;
2. Hunger. Frankly speaking, I haven't seen detailed information about farming methods and so on in Wikipedia and am not sure if it is in Wikipedia scope at all. Thus, I am not sure that we would be able to work on this topic, too.

Nevertheless, I do agree that remaining points of the project are in line with Wikipedia strategy and could have definitely positive impact.

Waiting for your comments, rubin16 (talk) 06:11, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

--Hey,

• I do appreciate your concerns and ideas concerning the project and would like to thank you and inform you that I have addressed your concerns in the project proposal.However, I would like to ask for your guidance into bringing the project to being more specific as I was visualizing and thinking of achieving development as a multidimensional process.
• Thank you and hope to hear from you.

Emily Mumbi

financial moments

And I wanted to discuss some financial questions of the project:

• how many laptops are you going to buy? Simple dividing of total sum to price gives about ~40 laptops but futher text gives information about solar laptops that, I think, would be more expensive, so, the final number of laptops can differ.
• what laptops (basic technical characteristics) are you going to buy? Is it possible to buy them in Kenya or will they be delivered from somewhere? Price of 45 000 shillings gives about 500 USD per laptop, I don't think it is expensive and I just want to ensure that they would be goog enough and suitable for participation in Wikipedia
• wages for hired speciailists: is it possible to get more detailed breakdown for these expenses? How many people are to be involved? How many months will they work and what will be their workload? I am again calling to the point about medical advices based on Wikipedia (see my thread above) and that's why, tell us, please, what kind of involvement would specialists on health have?

And one suggestion: as I know, mobile access to Wikipedia is free to the users of Orange provider (Wikipedia Zero initiative), I think it would be important to state this point to your audience.

Best regards, rubin16 (talk) 06:27, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• wrote to the grantee by email to notify about our questions :) rubin16 (talk) 07:45, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

--Hallo Rubin16, Thank you for your great contribution , suggestion and concerns about this project which I really do appreciate and would like to inform you that I have addressed them in the budget plan of the project. --Regards, Emily Mumbi.

Improve

Hi, thanks for your idea. I see the project and the problem is largely covered by the narrative in the beginning of the page, but the project is less documented, Can you try to improve this?. Some ideas:

• try to express the budget in USD dollars: this would help us to evaluate the quantity to assign;
• the measure of sucess would be a "measurable" metric (quantitative) and not only "perception" metrics (qualitative): this helps you to say "yes, my project is successful" and provides a clear field of action to focus your efforts to try to accomplish your project.

Regards Superzerocool (talk) 20:06, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you for this great contribution in shaping my idea and above all your help in sharpening my skills in proposal writing I appreciate it and I have included your ideas in the project proposal.

Some Confusions

Hi, I just have some confusions about the projects.

• Will this project using content on English Wikipedia or Swahili Wikipedia?
• Would you mind to explain a little bit more about the details that you plan to do in activities section.

--AddisWang (talk) 18:05, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

--Hello AddisWang, I appreciate your concerns concerning this project and here is the clarification.

• The project will be implemented in both English and Swahili which are the official and national languages of Kenya respectively though for proper understanding of the project to the targeted audience a common slang called Sheng language will be used during training which is mostly a combination of English and Swahili used by the youths across the country and East Africa.
• ‘Wikipedia to brighten Africa’ will be implemented as a school syllabus provided to the target communities with the project implementers being the guides, the community being the students and the Wikipedia being the resource center. The guides will have the role of creating awareness of the resources available in the resource center to the students and how to utilize them as well as improve them. The students will be required to implement the teachings, add value to them and the resource center by improving the quality and the quantity of the content of the resource center which is flexible to changes. The syllabus will be implemented within a maximum of eight hours (8hrs) per group and the rest will be to await the results as follow ups are made on groups progression. That is: - 2hrs- health care lesson, 2hrs poverty an unemployment lesson, gender equity and equality and good governance lesson, 1hr e-learning lesson and 1hr environment conservation and preservation.

Thank you Emily Mumbi.

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Wikipedia to brighten Africa

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background)	Score 1=weak alignment 10=strong alignment
(A) Impact potential Does it fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities? Does it have potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	3.8
(B) Innovation and learning Does it take an Innovative approach to solving a key problem? Is the potential impact greater than the risks? Can we measure success?	3.5
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in 6 months? How realistic/efficient is the budget? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	3.9
(D) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support? Does it support diversity?	3.6
Comments from the committee: Scope of the project is very wide and does not fit that much with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. Some points are outside Wikimedia’s scope (hunger/mortality), though involvement of Africa is definitely an area to develop in. Tries to do too much without a clear plan of attack. There are few goals we'd value more than helping bring Africa into our community and mission, but the foundation for impact in this project simply isn't there. A more narrowly scoped proposal with less ambitious scope would be more likely to have an impact. Projects that aim to improve an entire continent should be framed as very narrowly scoped pilot programs for deep engagement that pioneer methods and develop scalable processes. Not an innovative approach. We've seen offline outreach perform weakly in the past, across the board. This approach, which requires some substantial technological investment seems to repeat some of those errors. The measures of success are not clearly defined and are vague. Aims to do too much in too little time with a highly improbable chance of achieving the impact goals. Mobile phones rather than laptops might be a better focus. It would be great if they could give assignments that asked for input to Wikipedia articles that the class then updated with their teachers, but that would require some in-depth knowledge of Wikipedia editing, which the proposers don't seem to have.

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results, and WMF is proceeding with its due-diligence. You are welcome to continue making updates to your proposal pages during this period. Funding decisions will be announced by the end of May. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 00:36, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Round 1 2014 Decision

This project has not been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant at this time.

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