Africa Growth Pilot/Live Tutorials on Core Policies/Archives

 Africa Growth Pilot I - Live Tutorials on Core Policies 2023 

• Summary
• Module 1
• Module 2
• Module 3
• Module 4
• Archives

Archive

Make your contributions to this project matter!

In July 2023, community members were invited to comment on the Draft modules 1-4 by directly commenting on each module's talkpage and adding what they believed to be gaps or oversights.

Why this pilot

More Africans are online than ever before – consuming and contributing to Knowledge. Globally, in less than ten years African internet usage rate will be on par with the rest of the globe. Within our movement, we have also seen contributors growth from the region with the recent DEI report showing that newcomers in the movement are twice as likely to come from Africa. Currently, pageviews, unique editors and active editors in the region are just about less than 2% of global totals. Despite this, retention of African editors has been a challenge in our communities. We also recognize the need to enhance capacity for our volunteers and communities by creating pathways to empower volunteers and consequently communities in Africa to better understand and articulate the policies that guide our work.

Between now and 2030 a series of pilots will be conducted, where cohorts of volunteer contributors will be trained into well-rounded experienced contributors through different levels of active participation in the Wikimedia movement. What we’ve found is that while there is a growing interest among volunteers to contribute on the various Wikimedia projects there are glaring gaps in knowledge around the platforms (tools of the trade) and policies (copyright, notability, free license) that guide the work that we do.

This pilot also aims to bring about a deeper understanding of the culture and norms of our movement – everything from our core values, sanctions and blocks, and how we welcome new editors to the fold.

How you can help

As a community organizer, leader and seasoned editor you can help by adding your voice and specific changes you want to see in the draft modules penned for this pilot. Your experience working within the African movement (and the wider Wikimedia ecosystem) is invaluable to making this project a success for true editor retention and ultimately for the sustainability of the movement in Africa.

As you interact with this pilot, we would like to know:

• Did we capture the essence needed for newcomers (and existing editors) to understand core policies necessary for them to meaningfully contribute to our projects?
• What are some of the movement policies that need to be sensitized?
• How can we best use the tools available to us to be bolder and sharper in our contributions?