Community Resources and Partnerships/India Rapid Project/WikiForAll program series 1 – An Educational training program
Applicant
[edit]- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
Bhuvana Meenakshi
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
N/A
Project
[edit]- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
WikiForAll program series 1 – An Educational training program
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2025-02-07 - 2025-05-31
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
India
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Other (please specify) EduWiki, MediaWiki
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
The Open Source and Open Knowledge outreach in the suburbs in India needs more on-ground research and work to identify challenges, access and support. Women who belong to the rural and semi-rural setups and are interested in pursuing an education and career in technology usually have social and accessibility barriers. However, there is a large set of women students from various regions who are first gen Graduates who do not have opportunity to afford education, resources and time.
To address some of the above gaps faced by the women who come from a marginalized socio-economic status, we have identified a crew of 20 women students with the help of iGiver (link) (an NGO based in Chennai, India) and Women In Tech collectives, India (link)(a self-help community). In order to develop skills in tech and help the women students to learn technology through Free and Open Source Software projects we introduced the WikiForAll program series.
WikiForAll is a series of training programs designed to train students on Wikimedia’s Technical platforms. By doing this training for the students we believe that the students will learn about how to apply their technical skills for developing Wikimedia projects. Moreover, this will also help the students to develop the core technical skills and programming languages that can help them to pursue careers in tech and also add more value to their portfolio. This way the students are also introduced to Open Knowledge projects, culture and ecosystem.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
WikiForAll program series will be a 3 month long program. This is carefully planned to ensure that the students who come from a Computer Science background shall learn about the core skills required to develop for their career and education through Wikimedia technologies and projects.
The module planning and training is in association with the Wikimedians of Kerala User Group ([1]) The program will be carried out in partnership with iGiver ([2]) and Women In Tech collectives, India([3]). The partnership organization (former) and Self-Help Community(latter) is supporting the grassroot needs of the 20 women viz., their educational fees, career mapping and coordinating activities between the student’s Academic Institution and the WikiForAll program. The activities and training of the program will be carried out in the seminar hall at Shri Krishnaswamy College for Women, Chennai ([4]) who will be the venue partner for this program.
The link to the course module: [5]
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc.
1. Bhuvana Meenakshi [User:Bhuvana_Meenakshi] (Wikimedian and Researcher, MediaWiki/ WikiCommons and Tamil Wikipedia) – Program Organiser and Researcher (paid – Contract basis) (70 hrs)
- Organising the training events based on the syllabus and resources availability and ensuring the complete functioning of the program.
- Submit a research report based on the case studies and observations from the Program.
2. Ranjith Siji [User: Ranjithsiji] (Wikimedian - Wikimedians of Kerala) – Trainer and consultant (paid – Contract basis) (70 hrs)
- Design a syllabus that fits the target group and implement the training program. · Train the students on the MediaWiki and help them contribute to the Wikimedia projects.
- Monitor the progress of the students and support them with all technical challenges.
3. Reshma [User: Reshmak0615] (Wikimedian, Communication specialist) – Admin activities (paid – Contract basis) (40 hrs)
- Carry out communication works.
- Organise training programs and internal meetups.
- Manage the calendar schedules and payroll.
- Manage logistics and maintain records for reimbursements.
4. K J Prashanth - Finance audit consultant (paid – Contract basis) (30 hrs)
- Support to maintain the financial records of bills and payroll.
- Audit the bills and invoices.
- Provide the financial statements, Utilisation report based on the program expenditures.
5. Vijayalakshmi – volunteer
- Ensuring safe space policies are followed in both physical and virtual meetups.
- Represent the Community and be the point of Contact for any type of Grievance redressal related to the program.
6. Raghav – volunteer
- Receive feedback from the community of students about the training and the program.
- Suggest improvements based on the feedback and do a quality check on the program.
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
In the first series of the WikiForAll program we are targeting a cohort of 20 women participants who belong to marginalized socio-economic backgrounds. These women participants are also the first gen in their families who will be Graduating with a Degree certificate in Computer Science. This program will help them bridge their Academia and technical skills which will in turn help them seek for better opportunities in Tech industries. We have designed the module for WikiForAll in such a way that it touches on the fundamentals of programming languages and a guided pattern to help them learn MediaWiki. The trainer(s) would assign various interesting tasks and projects on Phabricator/Gitlab for the students to get an individual hands-on experience. We shall be curating some publicly available tutorial videos and send it in advance to the students to refresh on the fundamentals or pre-requisites which will be required to understand the training better. To engage and follow-up on the status of the project tasks and activities we shall create To-Do lists on Github and manage the repositories specifically assigned before or after the training sessions. The trainer and mentors would create groups on chat platforms in order to answer any questions from the student community.
By the end of this first series of programs we shall host a mini-hackathon or provide an Internship where the students will engage in developing impactful projects from the Community Wishlist using MediaWiki.
The research findings and observations from the case studies shall be compiled into a report and published for public use.
- 9.1. If your project includes in-person activities, are there any international participants travelling to India for them? (required)
- No
- 9.1.1. List all countries of participation. (required)
- 9.2. Will the project be transferring funds to any international participants? (required)
- No
- 9.2.1. List all international participants receiving funding and their countries. (required)
N/A
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
- No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
The idea was suggested by the iGiver and Women In Tech collectives communities where these communities have already been working with grassroot works on training women interested in tech. The student community of these groups wanted to learn about Open Source and contribute to FOSS and Open Knowledge projects. Therefore, we wanted to collaboratively do this with Wikimedia volunteers to support and facilitate the students to start their Open Source journey through Wiki projects. In association with the CIS-A2K program ([6]) we launched the pilot phase of the project. As part of this we did group discussions with the students, mentors and the other community members associated to this project. From the survey we have found that MediaWiki would suit the students' interests and also enhance their learning curve in exploring new technologies.
We also hosted an orientation program with the support of CIS-A2K program ([7]) for the students to give a better understanding of MediaWiki and the approach for the curriculum we have tailored for them and received the feedback.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Other Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context)
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Education
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Socioeconomic status
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Innovate in Free Knowledge
Metrics
[edit]- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
The major takeaways for me and my teammates from this project are:
- Identify and design an educational curriculum for the MediaWiki project based on the student's interests and skills in the technology.
- Create a project structure to help students to contribute to the projects such as identifying bugs, fixing code and writing codes based on the community's needs.
- Observing the challenges involved in the learning process and addressing the same through alternative research and techniques.
- Understand the Academia structure and help the students to meet the industry needs which can make them eligible for employment and also pursue their further interests in tech.
- This whole experiment is first time in the Indian Wikimedia communities which we want to launch and do in phase by phase manner. Therefore this first series involves introduction to the Wiki project, hands-on experience on the project and a research observation report to help us understand various outcomes from this project.
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 20 | The students will receive the offline training for 2 days in a month and the follow up activities will be made virtually. The trainers will travel to the student's place of venue for the training. |
| Number of editors | 20 | |
| Number of organizers | 4 | 2 organiser; 2 mentors/trainers |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | |
| Wikimedia Commons | 20 |
| Wikidata | |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | 20 |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
N/A
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
Yes
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Research report | N/A | 1 |
| Social media posts | N/A | 6 |
| Blogposts published on Diff | N/A | 6 |
| Number of bugs fixed on Phabricator | N/A | 15 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
- To count the number of participants who will participate throughout this cohort and Diversity of participation: A registration Form will be used for signing up for this program in the beginning and with the participant’s consent the details shall be collected. - Outreach dashboard and Quarry service
- To track the project contributions : Phabricator / Gitlab
- For students to communicate with mentors throughout the learning : A messenger group on any Open Source platform shall be used.
- For running the SQL queries and extract any on Wiki information for analysis: Quarry
- To post on Social media about the project and for sharing the blogs we shall use a hashtag: #WikiForAll
- For sharing blogs : [8]
- Research: Interview, Focussed Group discussion and survey tools ([9]) and research report will be published on Meta Wiki.
Budget
[edit]- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12W0EovHSyBg-DuMXFCs3ikD_dZJUb2V8V-lDmUX6aC8/edit?usp=sharing
- 22. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in Indian Rupees. (required)
418700 INR
- 22.1. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD. (required)
4953.02 USD
- By submitting this proposal request you agree with the Institutional Partner Privacy Policy, Application Privacy Statements, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
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