Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Wiki Loves Monuments Uganda 2017

Hi Kateregga1 and Erina Mukuta. Thank you for this grant request and your efforts to organize Wiki Loves Monuments in Uganda! It's exciting to see activities organized in Uganda and efforts to document its culture and heritage. We have a few comments/questions before moving forward with this request.

1. Please tell us more about your plans to organize the two events to attract new contributors. Have you contacted partners in those areas or thought about who you would like to reach out to? We have found that outreach activities targeted at people that are more likely to participate in a photography event is a good strategy. For example, partnering with local photography clubs is a great idea. Will the events include trainings, a photo walk, upload session, etc.?
2. It's a great idea to engage professional or skilled amateur photographers in order to get high quality photos. Having at least one person who is a skilled photographer able to provide trainings and tips is very helpful.
3. Here are a lot of resources for planning a photo contest, including tips for photographing monuments
4. The cost of the project relative to the expected number of participants and photos is very high. However, we also understand that one of the benefits of these types of projects is building community and doing outreach. What plans do you have to keep in touch with and engage new contributors after the event is over?
5. Please remove the t-shirts from the budget and provide more information on how the flyers will be used.

Thank you! Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi Alex Wang (WMF) thank you for the comments on our grant request. Please find the responses below

On partnerships, we are partnering with the Uganda National Museum who will have their regional officers and workers at the cultural heritage sites take part into the competition, an opportunity to have the monuments in very remote areas of the country to be captured into Wikimedia. The other strategy we are using is putting posters and flyers of the competition at the cultural heritage sites, so that tourists visiting these sites can be encouraged to submit the photos they take into the competition. Lastly we are targeting universities in different regions of the country, through students clubs that will be invited to attend our events and take part of the competition hence creating more awareness and training on contributing to the different Wikimedia projects.

To ensure that we get high quality pictures, we have a partnership so far Malaika Media, a photography company who also run a photography school who are going to take part in the photowalk / upload events. Also one of the organizing committee members is a professional photographer who will provide tips and training at the events. We are also approaching more photography schools, encouraging them to take part into the competition.

We have adjusted the number of targeted participants from 50 to 100, with the two events and reaching out to more people through social events and partnerships we should be able to achieve that and even more.

And we have removed T-shirts but would like to add a camera worth $500, that can be borrowed to participants to take photos and return it after. Would this be something acceptable to add into our budget?

The flyers will be given out at cultural heritage sites to encourage more people to take part into the competition, especially tourists who already have nice cameras and can participate in Wiki Loves Monuments 2017

Thank you for the resources and tips shared. In addition to that we are hoping to use Maps.meMaps.me to map the location of the monuments into OpenStreetMap but also help us capture the coordinates of each site.

Thanks! --Kateregga1 (talk) 20:02, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi Kateregga1. Thanks for the detailed responses. It's great to hear that you have a partnership with Uganda National Museum and Malaika Media. We've found that these kinds of partnerships yield much better results in terms of the quality of participation than any type of general outreach. We encourage you to focus on these partnerships instead of putting up a lot of posters and flyers, which also takes a lot of effort. We are happy supporting general outreach communication up to $100. At this time, we will not be able to fund a camera. Equipment requests from user groups are considered once the group has a track record of organizing successful photo events. We are happy to consider this request in the future. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:35, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi Alex Wang (WMF) thank you for you response.I didn't understand your previous message quite clearly. In regards to our request for a rapid grant, has that been denied? Or is it a question of adjusting our budget. The Ugandan team has organised successful photo events like Wiki Love Africa for the past three years. We were getting funding for the competition and we were able to properly account for the funds and reach our target number of photos. Through this experience we already have a good base of editors excited to take part in the competition. Our biggest limitation being the geographical locations of the monuments , this requires travel by user group and our partners. This is our first year to participate in this competition and we would be grateful for the support as it will also increase the Wikimedia Uganda User Group. regards Erina Mukuta

Hi Kateregga1 I think what Alex Wang (WMF) means is that your entire budget for communications in your outreach campaign (posters, flyers, etc.) should be reduced to a $100. I will advice that you do away with the posters and flyers and stick to running online campaigns via social media outfits and through the social media outfits of your partners. Create a design of an online poster, create a facebook page if you don't have one already and make some noise about your event. I don't know if you have heard but this year the international WLM team partnered with Flickr photogroups who can help market your photowalks to local and the wider Flickr photogroups.You can poke/announce them here: [1] and [2], this can be bring lots of proffesional photographers to your events and eliminate the need for a camera, at least for now. This may help you reach other local photogroups too. Lastly let me advice you to just have one intro and training session and have one real upload/edit-athon session to ensure people who even can't afford internet have a chance to upload their photos through your forum and actually get some pictures used on articles through this session. I am really excited for the work starting in Uganda and glad I am in touch to support where I can. I can also say for a fact that my interaction with this group while in Uganda gives me confidence that we will soon have a solid community in Uganda, hence may need all the help and support to get some activities done. --Flixtey (talk) 10:46, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi Kateregga1. Yes, Flixtey is correct. We are excited to support this project, but request that you decrease the communications budget to $100 and remove the camera. Then we can approve the grant. His other suggestions are great as well and hope you'll take them into consideration. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 21:13, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi Alex Wang (WMF) thank you for the guidance, we have adjusted the budget keeping the communication and outreach at $100. Flixtey thank you so much for the suggestions, we have reached out to the Flickr Photogroups and we continuing to reach out to local photography groups, in order to attract quality photographs into the competition. With the grant we will be able to achieve more, thanks. --Kateregga1 (talk) 10:54, 12 September 2017 (UTC)