Grants talk:Project/Modjou/Wiki Kouman 2021

Proposal Clinics

Thanks for posting your draft proposal for the Project Grants open call! I wanted to make sure you are aware that we are hosting proposal clinics for applicants to discuss, ask questions and get feedback about their proposals. Participation is optional. If you would like to attend, you can find the dates, times and videoconference links posted at this link. Let me know if you have any questions! Good luck finishing and submitting your proposal for the February 10 deadline!

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 14:11, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Reminder: Change status to proposed to submit

IMPORTANT: Please note that you must change your proposal status from "draft" to "proposed" by the submission deadline in order for your proposal to be reviewed in the current round. When your proposal has been successfully submitted, it will show up in the "Open proposals" list (it may take several minutes for the list to update after you submit it). Applications that are not completely filled out and correctly submitted by the deadline will not be reviewed. To submit your proposal, you must complete all fields of the application and then:

1. Click on "edit source"

2. Change "|status=DRAFT" to "|status=PROPOSED"

3. Click the "Publish changes" button.

Thank you,

--MCasoValdes (WMF) (talk) 02:30, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, Round 1 2021 - Community Organizing proposal

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for review in Round 1 2021 for Community Organizing projects.

This decision is contingent upon compliance with our COVID-19 guidelines. If your proposal includes travel and/or offline events, you must ensure that all of the following are true:

• You have reviewed and can comply with the guidelines linked above.
• If necessary because of COVID-19 safety risks, you can complete the core components of your proposed work plan _without_ offline events or travel.
• You are able to postpone any planned offline events or travel until the Wikimedia Foundation’s guidelines allow for them, without significant harm to the goals of your project.
• You include a COVID-19 planning section in your activities plan. In this section, you should provide a brief summary of how your project plan will meet COVID-19 guidelines, and how it would impact your project if travel and offline events prove unfeasible throughout the entire life of your project. If you have not already included this in your proposal, you have until February 28 to add it.

The Community review period is now underway, from February 20-March 4. We encourage you to make sure that stakeholders, volunteers, and/or communities impacted by your proposed project are aware of your proposal and invite them to give feedback on your talkpage. This is a great way to make sure that you are meeting the needs of the people you plan to work with and it can help you improve your project.

• If you are applying for funds in a region where there is a Wikimedia Affiliate working, we encourage you to let them know about your project, too.
• If you _are_ a Wikimedia Affiliate applying for a Project Grant: A special reminder that our guidelines and criteria require you to announce your Project Grant requests on your official user group page on Meta and a local language forum that is recognized by your group, to allow adequate space for objections and support to be voiced).

Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community review period. By March 4, make sure that your proposal has incorporated any revisions you want to make and complies with all of our guidelines. If you have not already done so, you can make use of our project planning resources to improve your proposal further, too.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for round 1 2020 will occur March 5 through March 20, 2021. We ask that you refrain from making any further changes to your proposal during the committee review period, so we can be sure that all committee members are scoring the same version of the proposal.

Grantees will be announced Friday, April 22, 2021. Sometimes we have to make some changes to the round schedule. If that happens, it will be reflected on the round schedule on the Project Grants start page.

We look forward to engaging with you in this Round!

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

We are provisionally marking this proposal eligible for further review, but to move forward we need to resolve concerns about the plans for international travel and in-person activities. In order for this proposal to be eligible, we require that your proposal include a plan for how you would succeed if it proves true that travel and in-person gathering are not possible throughout the duration of the project lifespan. If the project strictly depends on travel and in-person gathering to succeed, we cannot review it at this time because of the safety risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. --Marti (WMF) (talk) 06:10, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Hello Marti (WMF), your remarks were well taken into account in the grant. Thank you. Modjou (talk) 00:18, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Modjou / Wiki Kouman 2021

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	7.0
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	6.0
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	5.2
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	6.6
Additional comments from the Committee: Fits with strategic direction of knowledge equity. This work builds on prior work by the grantee to use Wiktionary to document local languages that may not have many written sources, let alone ones that are readily available for free online. While this project is valuable, I would like to see more planning around the sustainability of the work given that this would be the second project grant to support it - specifically, it would be good to formalize and record workflows/processes of language documentation that will be shared during the training of members of Wikimédia Tchad. Project in an underrepresented community This seems like a project that promotes local language inclusion within Wikiprojects, something valuable as they are already underrepresented. The project fits with the Wikimedia priorities IMHO. The projects showed good outcomes in the first phase and I think the team will achieve good results as well for this edition. The project's goals are clear and can be achieved. Nevertheless, I would expect it to be more sustainable by investing in the equipment rather than hiring them each year and by training local users to avoid traveling each phase. Risks are low. There is potential for even more learning for the movement around language documentation with an expansion to another country and part of the work being led by another coordinator. I do not see a huge innovation This seems an innovative approach to language inclusion. The project has clear targets and showed that they can be achieved (c.f. the first phase). Grantee had successes with the previous iteration of the project. The main area for concern relates to COVID and proposed international travel. It would be beneficial to have a greater understanding of how the costs for the project staff, totaling $39,735, were determined. As a result, I am also unclear as to their ability to execute as they did not provide enough data to explain how, what, or when they would take action, including a timeline and amount of commitment by the various people involved in this project. The project can be accomplished in 12 months. The budget although it's realistic, it looks that it's more than the double of last year for almost the same goals. This can maybe explained from last year learnt lessons as they said that last year's budget was not enough to cover the compensations for the project coordinators. If the budget allocated to traveling is not used it will be nice to see it used to buy equipment to be used in later phases/activities. The participants have the required skills and showed that they can achieve their goals during the first phase. There are a number of endorsements and planned engagement with user groups. They appear to have local community engagement, though I am not entirely clear if those within the proposed areas have all agreed. The project has the support of local communities in both countries After the loss of Lingua Libre, I suggest reviewing the application. The project is interesting and will impact languages that are not represented in Wiktionary but the deliverables are too low for a yearly project. I would like to know why they will use French Wiktionary for indigenous languages. This seems a worthy project, though the cost seems high to me. It may be a justified cost, though there are not enough details provided for me to determine this. Instead of hiring equipment I recommend buying some equipment to be used in the next phases.

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Next steps:

1. Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page.
2. Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on Friday, April 22, 2021.

Questions? Contact us.

Réponses aux commentaires

Nous vous remercions d'avoir laissé des commentaires constructifs qui m'on permit de réajuster la subvention et le plan de travail. Pour l'heure voici des éclaircissements aux commentaires que vous avez envoyé:

1- Toutes les communautés locales où se tiendront les ateliers Wiki Kouman sont informées. Vous pourrez retrouver leurs commentaires de soutien au projet dans la partie endossement du Grant.

2- En ce qui concerne le budget:

• Nous avons pris le temps de réajuster le budget en prenant en compte vos commentaires. Le voyage international a été retiré. Je souhaite aussi clarifier qu'il n'était pas prévu de voyager à chaque étape du projet.
• J’ai bien pris en compte les remarques sur les achats des équipements. Au lieu de louer les équipements, les appareils seront achetés et le budget à été mis à jour dans ce sens. Cependant, les achats seront faits dans un seul pays afin de réduire les coûts.

3- En ce qui concerne le coût par rapport à l’année dernière, il faut noter plusieurs aspects:

• La connexion coûte deux fois plus chère au Tchad (100mil par mois en moyenne) qu’ en Côte d’Ivoire.
• Le transport des coordinateurs pour la collecte de données est plus élevé que celui de l’an passé à cause de la distance et de la taille de l’équipe de coordination (4 personnes).
• Le temps de travail est plus élevé à cause des responsabilités plus grandes; la chef de projet de la Côte d’Ivoire supervise aussi le Tchad étant donné que c'est la première fois qu’ils pilotent Wiki Kouman.

4- En ce qui concerne la plateforme (Wiktionnaire) que nous utilisons pour contribuer, il faut noter que :

• Il n'y a pas de plateforme wiki conçue pour les langues ciblées par ce projet
• Les mots sont traduits en français. C’est donc pour cela que nous utilisons le Wiktionnaire Francophone et aussi pour une visibilité plus large plus que nous faisons les ateliers dans des pays francophones.

5- Les remarques sur le Lingua libre ont été prises en compte dans le grant en espérant que le problème technique que Lingua Libre rencontre se règle dans les plus brefs délais.

6- Nous prendrons aussi soin de rédiger un document sur le processus de documentation linguistique sous licence libre pour permettre à tous ceux qui voudront reproduire les ateliers de pouvoir le faire.

English translation of applicant's response to committee comments

Thank you for leaving constructive comments that allowed me to readjust the grant and the work plan. For now, here are some clarifications to the comment you sent:

1- All the local communities where the Wiki Kouman workshops will be held are informed. You can find their comments of support for the project in the endorsement section of the Grant.

2-We have taken the time to readjust the budget taking into account your comments. The international trip has been removed. I also want to clarify that I will not be traveling at every stage of the project. I have taken into account the comments on the purchase of the equipment. Instead of renting the equipment, the devices will be purchased and the budget has been updated accordingly. However, the purchases will be made in a single country in order to reduce costs.

3- Regarding the cost compared to last year, several aspects should be noted:

The connection costs twice as much in Chad (100 thousand per month on average) as in Côte d'Ivoire. Transportation of coordinators for data collection is higher than last year because of the distance and the size of the coordination team (4 people). The work time is higher because of the greater responsibilities; the project leader from Côte d'Ivoire is also supervising Chad since this is the first time they are piloting Wiki Kouman.

4- Regarding the platform (Wiktionary) that we use to contribute, it should be noted that :

There is no wiki platform designed for the languages targeted by this project The words are translated into French. This is why we use the French Wiktionary and also for wider visibility as we do the workshops in French-speaking countries.

5- The remarks on the Lingua Libre have been taken into account in the grant, hoping that the technical problem that Lingua Libre is facing will be solved as soon as possible.

6- We will also take care to write a document on the process of linguistic documentation under free license to allow all those who want to reproduce the workshops to be able to do so.

--Mercedes Caso (platícame) 23:23, 8 April 2021 (UTC) Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Round 1 2021 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project Grant.

WMF has approved partial funding for this project, in accordance with the committee's recommendation. This project is funded with $40,000

Comments regarding this decision:
The Project Grants Committee supports partial funding of this proposal for $40,000 USD. The committee appreciated the opportunity for the Wikimedia movement to benefit from the grantee’s proven experience in designing and managing local languages documentation and preserving local languages (some at risk). They valued that the project includes cross border projects between User Groups, seeing this as one of the best ways to strengthen Wikimedia networks, to share knowledge and enhance capacity building between affiliates and add valuable content to projects. They are glad to empower proven and capable Wikimedians in sharing the knowledge and experience they hold in the African region.

While the committee is glad to support the growth of the Wiki Kouman project, funding support is partial because it is a best practice to support growth gradually over time, as a project builds a demonstrated record of success. Because previous funding was substantially lower than the current request, the partial award reflects this best practice.

The grantee is at liberty to decide how to reduce the scope to best meet the needs of the project with the budget awarded, with the exception that:

• The committee would like you to preserve a strong focus on building local capacity in the Chad’s User Group, with the goal of preparing them to continue activities independently in the future without continued project management from Côte d'Ivoire. Prioritize training and building capacity to ensure project sustainability locally. Consider identifying a local person who can be part of the project management efforts to be trained and to learn from more experienced project managers starting from the inception, design and implementation of the project.
• The committee would like you to document the process of documentation of local languages for potential replication of the project in new places.

In order to reduce your budget, we suggest reducing the large number of activities that in turn might result in a reduction of the number of project management hours required. However, we trust the grantee’s judgement to make sure the adjustment is workable for the project.

NOTE: Funding of any offline activities (e.g. travel and in-person events) is contingent upon compliance with the Wikimedia Foundations COVID-19 guidelines. We require that you complete the Risk Assessment Tool:

• 14 days before any travel and/or gathering event
• 24 hours before any travel and/or gathering event

Offline events may only proceed if the tool results continue to be green or yellow.

Below is a summary of the issues that various members of the committee raised during discussion of the proposed project:

• Currently, LinguaLibre is inaccessible due to a fire in March of 2021. Wikimedia France is working to relaunch the service. Considering the current status of LinguaLibre, the applicant needs to develop a contingency plan for audio recording and integration into Wikimedia projects that does not rely on using LinguaLibre given the uncertainty. A committee member shared other alternatives and similar tools. In Ghana for example they used a tool called Spell4wiki which can potentially deliver the same result as LL. In addition, it is recommended that the applicant reaches out to Wikimedia France to see if there are any updates on the status of LinguaLibre.
• The committee expressed concern about the high salary level for the project management, relative to published market rates available online for the geographic context.
• The committee thought that the proposed outputs for participants were too low relative to an investment of $40,000. They would like to see a minimum of 30 participants by the end of the project, rather than only 12. Even with 30, they assess the cost as relatively high and would like to see you focus on increasing this number even above 30, if that is possible.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Upcoming changes to Wikimedia Foundation Grants

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 01:00, 23 April 2021 (UTC)