Grants talk:PEG/Wikimedia Ghana User Group/Wikineedsgirls/Report

Hi Flixtey, thank you for submitting this report. It is impressive that you were able to make such good progress toward meeting your goals for content and participation despite the challenges you faced. It sounds like your user group learned several important lessons about planning effective workshops. Please see our questions and comments below:

1. You note that 5 new editors showed commitment and activeness after the program ended. How have you followed up with those individuals? Have they become involved in the user group?
2. It sounds like limited access to computers and internet made it difficult for people to participate in workshops. Are there places you could host future workshops that have computers available, such as a tech organization, University library or an internet cafe? Would it help to ask participants to bring devices with them to workshops?
3. What will you do in the future to ensure that more than 20% of registered participants come to workshops?
4. In response to the learning question in the report you note that through this project you inferred that "ladies feel that IT related stuff is not their interest" but that the most committed participants were motivated by the challenge to improve the coverage of women on Wikipedia. You also note that most of the high school student did not have basic IT skills. Do you think you would see improved results by promoting events to people with IT skills and interests in the future?

Please hold on to the remaining 3,453 GHD while your GLAM Ghana proposal is under review. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

1. We are in touch with all the five participants mentioned. We have been trying to get them to edit regularly so we naormally engaged them with opportunities to edit. Opportunities such as the writing contest by Wikipedia center on women, a training and editing session at the impact hub, etc.
2. In our report you will realize that the infrastructural issues occurred in the high school, as we didn't have such problems during our second training which was held at a more reliable institution. We hope to rely on partner institutions (Goethe institute, AITI-KACE and Impact Hub) that we have recently secured and are well equipped for such programs. We always ask participants to come with their own devices but looks like the majority turn up without it, mainly because they don't own one.
3. We will ensure that henceforth we make provision for a margin of error of about 30%. Resulting in over registering of participants for events, up to 30% more than the required number or spaces available for an event.
4. Our only reason to believe that ladies here don't have a keen interest in technology is based on the turn up to our event and similar events been held in the country. If a similar event was hosted an opened to the public, the number of male students who will attend will be twice or three times the number of females. IT skills are basic but mostly lacked in our high schools. Hence training for people in this category should include a session or two in this area to equip the students before the actual training meant for a project, or better train people in a different category that are well equipped to make sense of what ever training is intended for them. Flixtey (talk) 18:26, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Flixtey and Rberchie, just a reminder that we are still waiting on your responses to these questions. Please post your replies soon. Thanks --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 18:55, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Ok KHarold (WMF) we will attend to the questions accordingly.Regards Rberchie (talk) 08:09, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi KHarold (WMF) the comments have been replied. Thanks for your patience --Flixtey (talk) 18:27, 2 March 2016 (UTC)