Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Alliances Fund/Ensuring the Palestinian Narrative:Wikipedia and Palestine

Feedback from the Middle East and Africa Regional Funding Committee on your proposal

Dear 7amleh - Arab Center for Social Media Advancement,

Thank you for submitting your application for the Wikimedia Alliance Fund. We reviewed your application and to support us in the next phase of the review process, please find our comments, thoughts, and questions for you to share your input and responses to;

• We would like to know about your interaction with Wikimedian communities who informed the development of the project. Would you let us know what their input was and will be in the implementation of the project? This is especially important for us knowing and seeing from our assessment that while you have the organizational capacity to implement the project, you lack the necessary Wikimedia experience needed. *It is important that it is clear how the Wikimedians will be involved and how your expertise and experience will support the growth of the Wikimedia community. Please say more on this as well.

As mentioned in our proposal in the development of our grant we consulted with Palestinian and Palestinian Citizens of Israel wikimedians that have worked on content development. It is important to make clear that we will continue to work with these individuals to help inform our training sessions, as well as help us in the structure of our tours in order to ensure we are utilizing best practices and that the content that our participants create is relevant, meaningful and engaging. Furthermore, we will work with wikimedians in the development of our outreach dashboard in order to ensure that it is effectively measuring the developed metrics.

• We find the impact suggested to be low and therefore misaligned with the requested resources. Would you share what informed the suggested impact and if there is an opportunity to grow the impact of the project and review the budget for better alignment? For instance, you have indicated having between 15 and 20 items to be improved for 50 students trained during a whole year. We find this outcome and the number of participants engaged low. The same applies to the articles to be created and improved which means that we will have one improved article per student trained. Kindly review.

We have changed the number of students trained from 50 to 250, (50 students will be selected from each of the 5 Universities). Additionally, we increased the number of articles expected a minimum of 3 articles per participant which results in a minimum of 750 articles. Furthermore, we are planning 5 tours across the main geographic areas of the occupied Palestinian territories, for each tour a minimum of 50 pictures of the area will be created, resulting in a minimum of 250 photos. These changes have been updated in the grant application.

You did mention field trips and contributing to photographic content, yet, we do not see this reflected in your learning and evaluation or your sharing information on the impact you hope to make towards Wikimedia Commons. Would you kindly review it? As mentioned above, we will host 5 tours focused on the 5 main geographic regions of the occupied Palestinian territories. Each tour will be require from the participants to produce minimum 50 relevant and illustrative photos related to the area, sights, people and cultural organizations visited. This will result in at minimum 250 photos added to the Wikimedia Commons. This information has now been updated in the grant application.

• Would you share more about the approach you will use in identifying the content gap and the source for the information needed to close the knowledge gap?

Our approach to identifying the content gap will include the following. To being, during the training sessions we will be providing a pretest which will work to identify areas of skills that need support in developing, but more importantly, it will also establish a baseline of what information about the 5 geographic areas that are unfamiliar to the participants, this information will help shape the agenda for the tours. Additionally, 7amleh conducts extensive media analysis as part of much of our digital rights work and will conduct an assessment of the gaps we and our network of civil society organizations see as most needed to be addressed. It is important to note that due to the current situation there is a active effort to eliminate the Palestinian narrative, so the representation of Palestinian life, culture and freedom of expression helps to address and counteract efforts to erase the Palestinian identity and the lack of representative content available.

• Would you share the measure tools you will use to assess the outputs, outcomes, and impact of the projects?

The tools to be used to measure each metric selected include, outreach dashboards, Stats, wikipedia.org. Additionally we will conduct a pre and post test to help identify capacity building develop of participants and will have a survey following the tours in order to help support participants determine the topics and lessons learned about the area explored. This has been updated in the application.

• We also find the staff costs high and especially when we review them against the intended impact. Would you share with us the rationale and is there an opportunity to reduce these costs?

It is important to note that at this time the cost of living in Israel is the seventh highest in the world, and these high costs lead to higher expectation in salary, as well as impact the cost of all of the transportation and hosting of training sessions as well. We have reviewed and adjusted the budget in this draft to address this concern as much as possible. The budget has been updated accordingly.

We highly recommend you get in touch with the regional program officer to support you in understanding the questions raised or if you find it useful to meet with the committee as well, please let them know and they can organize a conversation meeting. This meeting took place and it was very helpful.

Wikimedia Alliances Fund Declined

Dear 7amleh,

Thank you for submitting your application seeking General Support Funds - Wikimedia Alliances Fund. The Middle East and Africa Regional Committee and Staff have reviewed your application and has made the decision not to fund the proposal.

The decision is based on the following;

• The Wikimedia Alliances Fund requires that mission aligned organizations seeking to contribute to the mission collaborate directly with any of the Wikimedia Communites in the geography where the project would be taking place and in this case Palestine.

• Based on various conversations, discussions and deliberations, we realize that you did not engage the communities directly in as much as you spoke to a few individuals. While the conversations with individuals has value for a proposal of this scale, it is important that you speak with the communities to identify and establish areas of collaboration and avoid any instances that may lead to overlaps and duplication of efforts. We specifically recommend that you get in touch with the Wikimedians of the Levant to identify collaborative opportunities and establish an agreement of how you will work together. We are willing to set up an initial meeting with the Wikimedians of Levant for a productive engagement.

• It is important for us that the Alliance Fund partners contribute towards supporting communities and this would include safeguarding the community health.

We recommend that you use the period between now and the next round to work with the community in the development of proposed project ideas and establishment of roles in enabling the successful implementation.

We understand that this news can be disheartening ; please reach out to the region program officer to support you in understanding our decision and recommendations for future re-application.

We wish you the very best.

On behalf of the MEA Regional Committee and Staff VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 08:20, 6 December 2022 (UTC)