Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round1/Wikimedia Argentina/Staff proposal assessment

Assessment Findings to FDC

We’d like to thank the WMF staff for their insights regarding the annual grant Proposal submitted by Wikimedia Argentina. We appreciate all the comments made, but we also want to contribute, from a programmatic point of view, with some details that we believe may be useful to better evaluate our proposal.

Staff Transition: Wikimedia Argentina had to make in early 2014 a strong change in staff, following the resignation of the Executive Director and the transfer of the Communications Officer to WMF. We’d like to emphasize that the transition, in spite of the expected time it took the new team to adapt, was scheduled and orderly. This circumstance forced us to adapt to work effectively in a fast manner and improve the contribution to the projects that Wikimedia Argentina must ensure. Argentina has a determined context, as every other country. In this sense, to include education as a priority and establish new partnerships in a cultural level, it took us several months of meetings, project formulation and definition of activities. Today, after six months to design and make agreements, at a program-level Wikimedia Argentina is no longer in a period of transition. We are now in a period of building. Our Q3 shows better results, we have painstakingly built and we hope and believe it will be better in the coming months. The team is ready, it’s already adapted to the work, knows its responsibilities and is improving every day about how to convey the activities we have done.

Education-related metrics: We believe it would be appropriate for you to point out more accurately what is the missing metric in relation to educational content to correct it. You are right when you claim it is one of our main program lines. We also want to make enough emphasis on our digitization program, which now has three scanners and three large institutions beginning to use them. We hope that with the series of workshops planned for 2015 in cultural institutions the results will improve. Also, keeping with the theme of education, Wikimedia Argentina considers crucial the improvement of articles through education and the encouragement to increase participation. Certainly, we were not able to convey that idea correctly in the proposal. Likewise, if you check the explanatory part of education and the planning matrices here, you will see that improving the content is present as a metric. In this regard, we offer them allow some expected numbers. Next year we hope to hold online courses (4) having as protagonists at least 400 teachers from across Latin America. The idea is not only to educate and start people on editing, but to make this a more inclusive movement in the region. Currently, the first 100 teachers who are participating in the first course are immersed in the I Week of Wikipedia editing, creating or improving 76 articles as their first task (they can work in pairs or individually). We hope that from each course at least 50 articles are improved or created by the participants.
Concerning the activities presented with Conectar Igualdad and workshops in schools (approx. 10) the numbers we expect in terms of improvement and contributions to content are present in the grant.
With respect to our future editing contest, we are still defining the subject, making it participatory and listening to the interests of our volunteers. Taking as a reference Mujeres Iberoamericanas, which was a huge success, we expect to have at least 1000 articles created or improved by at least 150 participants.

Workable program: In addition, the program presented is entirely achievable. The four lines of action are interdisciplinary and are transversal enough to cover the proposed activities that, on the other hand, are the result of an extensive analysis we have done over the last six months. It's not about wanting to do a lot, it is about knowing it can be done from the proven ability to perform similar activities, of being aligned, working closely with our volunteers and community to strengthen our results.

Strategic Planning: Wikimedia Argentina has laid the foundation, through this plan, of its strategic planning. The mission, vision, participatory approaches and SWOT analysis are the result of work done during the last six months, and the results can be seen in the annual statement. We invite you to review the attached appendix to the proposal here, which includes production work and documentation deeper than the proposal itself. We consider it responsible to make a first planning that sets the basis for future biannual planning.

Iberocoop: Wikimedia Argentina is strongly committed to promote the smooth operation of Iberocoop. Iberoconf 2014 will be held in Buenos Aires and brings together a schedule that alternates training, design workshops of common projects and spaces to share successful experiences. We want and believe we have a lot of potential to grow as a group and we are ready to support all organizations that are part of Iberocoop. Obviously, all the materials produced are shared with the Iberocoop network.

Improve communication of results: Wikimedia Argentina is committed to improving the communication of its results. With neat and clear objectives, we believe that we are able to do so. At Iberocoop network level, during Iberoconf 2014 we will settle the communication strategy needed to visualize the results of the organizations that are part, a claim that we could extract from the previous survey. Internally, and after half a year working on the movement, we understand the metrics needed and how to build parity between them and the stories they contain. We would like to note that the Q3 report of our current APG already shows improvements in this area.

Editor’s growth:The results in terms of active editors - 26% of increase comparing to 2013- and highly active editors- 31% of increase comparing to 2013- that represents a considerably grown according to last year, is in part the response of our work: 1) Lead people to become editor through the tool they want to implement. From Wikimedia Argentina, we always emphasize that anyone can participate in some way, there is always a project that can be adapted to user needs. 2) Volunteers are the protagonists. For this reason we have been timidly supporting projects proposed by the volunteers but we intend to generate diverse communities in the country, that with our support hold activities in other areas outside of Buenos Aires. Our federalization program aims for concrete results: 1. Strengthen actions in the countryside 2. Improve the content of the projects and the number of publishers 3. Generate new partnerships.
--Anna Torres (WMAR) (talk) 18:14, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Response from FDC staff

Dear Anna and colleagues at WMAR,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful reply to the FDC staff assessment. We appreciate the time and effort you have put into your response, and we will make sure that the FDC takes your response into consideration during the deliberations. Once again, thank you for this.

Cheers, KLove (WMF) (talk) 23:18, 14 November 2014 (UTC)