Grants:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round2/Wikimédia France/Impact report
Purpose of the report
[edit]FDC funds are allocated to improve the alignment between the Wikimedia movement's strategy and spending; support greater impact and progress towards achieving shared goals; and enable all parts of the movement to learn how to achieve shared goals better and faster.
Funding should lead to increased access to and quality of content on Wikimedia project sites – the two ultimate goals of the Wikimedia movement strategic priorities, individually and as a whole. Funded activities must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."
Each entity that receives FDC funding will need to complete this report, which seeks to determine how the funding received by the entity is leading towards these goals. The information you provide will help us to:
- Identify lessons learned, in terms of both what the entity learned that could benefit the broader movement, and how the entity used movement-wide best practices to accomplish its stated objectives.
- Assess the performance of the entity over the course of the funded period against the stated objectives in the entity's annual plan.
- Ensure accountability over how the money was spent. The FDC distributes "general funds", for both ongoing and programmatic expenses; these funds can be spent as the entity best sees fit to accomplish its stated goals. Therefore, although line-item expenses are not expected to be exactly as outlined in the entity's proposal, the FDC wants to ensure that money was spent in a way that led to movement goals.
For more information, please review FDC portal/Reporting requirements or reference your entity's grant agreement.
Basic entity information
[edit]Note you can copy this from your recent progress report if the information is the same.
Table 1
Entity information | Legal name of entity | Wikimédia France |
Entity's fiscal year (mm/dd–mm/dd) | 07/01-06/30 | |
12 month timeframe of funds awarded (mm/dd/yy-mm/dd/yy) | 07/01/13 - 06/30/14 | |
Contact information (primary) | Primary contact name | Nathalie Martin |
Primary contact position in entity | Executive Director | |
Primary contact username | Nathalie Martin (WMFR) | |
Primary contact email | nathalie.martin@wikimedia.fr | |
Contact information (secondary) | Secondary contact name | Christophe Henner |
Secondary contact position in entity | Vice Président | |
Secondary contact username | Schiste | |
Secondary contact email | christophe.henner@wikimedia.fr |
Overview of the past year
[edit]- HIGHLIGHTS: We have worked this year on the organisation of our chapter on several aspects:
- Defining an associative policy: action plans, strategic project, quality approach, charter.
- Work on the governance of the association: interplay between senior management and the executive board.
- Reorganization of salaried human resources.
- The search for new premises to encourage contributors to visit.
- We have also focused on diversifying the themes that we support, by, for example, encouraging sports photography and initiatives linked to the social and supportive economy.
- Finally, we have begun the introduction of territorial development by setting up local groups, a methodology and specific tools.
- SWOT
Strengths | Weaknesses | |
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Opportunities | Threats |
- WIKI-FOCUS: The activities of our chapter have focused around the following projects
- Wikimedia Commons
- French-language Wikipedia
- Wikidata
- French Wikibooks
- GROWTH: How did your entity grow over the past year (e.g., Number of active editors reached/involved/added, number of articles created, number of events held, number of participants reached through workshops)? And what were the long term affects of this growth (e.g. relationships with new editors, more returned editors, higher quality articles, etc)?
- Number of new contributors: 32 (at the end of the Q2)
- Number of participants reached through workshops: 185 (including 41 teachers and 42 people through Afripédia)
- Number of photos imported: 24620
- Percentage of quality images: 660 / 2.68%
- Number of new members: 76
- Note: Here is the data we have. Regarding other indicators (the one we reported last year in the GROWTH section), unfortunately, we did not tracked the data during this year due to changes of organization in the chapter. We have implemented a quality approach for this new year to track different indicators to indicate data in the coming quarters and reports.
Financial summary
[edit]The FDC requires information about how your entity received and spent money over the past year. The FDC distributes general funds, so your entity is not required to use funds exactly as outlined in the proposal. While line-item expenses will not be examined, the FDC and movement wants to understand why the entity spent money in the way it did. If variance in budgeted vs. actual is greater than 20%, please provide explanation in more detail. This helps the FDC understand the rationale behind any significant changes. Note that any changes from the Grant proposal, among other things, must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."
If you'd prefer to share a budget created in Google or another tool and import it to wiki, you can do so in the tables below instead of using wiki tables. You can link to an external document, but we ask that you do include a table in this form. We are testing this approach in this form.
Revenues
[edit]Provide exchange rate used :
- 1€ = 1.308 USD (rate used in the proposal)
Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan Donors by direct debit € 35,000 4,839 13,515 16,016 16,047 50,417 45,780 65,945.4 We will raise a little bit more than expected with the direct debit Donations to WMFr € 20,000 33,976.4 176,795.7 7,137.4 5,287.5 223,196.9 26,160 291,941.6 Major donors and sponsors € 50,000 2,700 26,642 3,100 0 32,442 65,400 42,434.2 Public support for civic service € 11,880 0 0 0 0 0 15,539 0 Cancellation of civic service needs Members fees € 15,000 2,596 3,074 844 2036 8,550 19,620 11,183.4 We had less members than expected in 2013-2014 Financial interest € 15,000 0 0 17,848 0 17,848 19,620 23,345 Co-funds € 9,500 0 0 0 0 0 12,426 0 We paid the CRM development without co-funders Grants € 1,000 0 0 0 9000 9000 1,308 11,772 Benefits € 1,000 0 0 0 0 0 1,308 0 0 Shop € 140 0 0 0 20 20 183 26.16 TOTAL € 158,520 44,111.4 220,026.7 44,945.4 32,390.46 341,473.96 207,344 446,647.86 We raised +200% than we expected. In fact we made a poor estimation of the amount we would raise in 2013-2014 because it was the first year that we collect on our own so we didn't have baseline. These results served us as basis for the 2014-2015 FDC proposal in order to be closer to reality for next year.
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Spending
[edit]Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- (The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan Wikimedia Movement € 17,000 7,101.75 1,191.92 2,834.89 4,466.54 15,595.1 22,236 20,398.39 91.7% - Territorial development € 17,100 186.48 2,099.67 2,147.78 4,466.54 8,900.99 22,367 11,642.49 52.1% territorial development is a new approach within the association. The first months were spent working plans of action with members. So spending will increase in the coming months to support the actions of Member Education € 11,200 282.8 1,245.05 37.13 96 1,660.98 14,650 2,172.56 14.8% We were supposed to take care of expenses ( awards ) for a project related to education which did not take place due to a last minute change with one of our partners. In addition the various projects that have succeeded have been more accompaniment to educational support that does not require fees. Research € 1,650 0 86.9 38.74 8.1 133.74 2,158 174.93 8.1% A project related to the research has not had the desired effect and we had to shorten it when we had planned to hold an awards ceremony so we did not spend the initial budget. Francophonie, Afripédia and languages of France € 30,000 3,880.92 1,637.49 126.9 2,331.62 7,976.93 39,240 10,433.82 26.6% About Afripédia we had some partnerships issues, so a training initially planed in Africa during Q4 has been cancelled and all the expenses dedicated to this action too. Technical projects € 3,000 0 62.16 309.08 187.08 558.32 3,924 730.28 18.6% Wikiscan is less expensive than expected and, as it is paid on a monthly basis and since December only, there are only 7 monthes instead of 12 paid : it costs 436 € instead of the expected 2000. Other tech projects got delayed, like the GLAMwiki Toolbox. Community projects € 30,547 60 507.85 814.94 7,602.38 8,985.17 39,955 11,752.60 29.4% Members focused ont their action plans durind few months in order to prepare action for the following year. The expense will increase with the development of the actions. Semantic € 16,000 1,147.88 3,285.9 0 17,580.77 22,014.55 20,928 28,795.03 137.6% We didn't used 100% of our subvention by French Ministry in 2013 and we obtain a new subvention in the Q4 (5000€) so that why there is an inscrease. But in 2014 all the subvention has been used in action about Semantic. Outreach € 2,500 4,603.01 9,471.87 539.36 836.5 15,450.74 3,270 20,209.57 618% We had initially unforeseen expenses due to participation in fairs requiring booth rental sometimes costly GLAM € 5,000 0 11.8 853.5 699.7 1,565 6,540 2,047.02 31.3% GLAM different projects we have undertaken have not generated as much expenses as we thought. The summer period corresponding to Q1 means that cultural partners are closed so there was no projects. Moreover, we do not have last year completed the project of Glam Wiki Toolset and technical costs should have been spent. Documentation and communication € 12,700 676.35 5,313.6 1,689.77 1242.65 8,921.83 16,612 11,669.75 70.3% We had new suppliers who are less expensive for a similar level of quality. We also planned a bigger increase of flyers usage than the reality. Europeana support € 30,000 0 30,000 0 - 30,000 39,240 39,240 100% We spend all the budget we planned on this project Associative partners € 1,000 0 0 0 0 0 1,308 0 0% In fact 750 € (75% of this budget) were spend but included in "functioning" asload of deferred Functioning (office and equipment, administration, association obligations) € 100,560 16,422.68 39,236.81 96,200.55 96,222.3 248,082.34 131,532 324,491.7 246.7% The relocation and reorganization of the association generated a large surplus of operating costs Fundraising and sponsorship € 42,430 2,230.93 7,437.27 3,919.98 6,015.76 19,603.94 55,498 25,641.95 46.2% Following the postponement of the e shop's opening due to legal issues with the foundation, all expenditures for the e shop were postponed to the following year. Costs related to the development of our crm were assigned to "functioning" because considered as a Paying-off Staff expenses € 376,321 33,439.79 77,772.73 100,728.29 167,077.36 379,018.17 492,227 495,755.76 100.7% - TOTAL € 697,008 70,032.6 179,361 210,240.9 308,833.3 768,467.8 911,686 1,005,155.8 110.3% Following the recruitment of our accountant in April, a lot of invoices and expense reports unpaied were treated and reallocated to the right programs. This reallocation of expenses changed the amounts we provided to you initially for Q1 Q2 and Q3. One has to note we spent 90k USD more than budgeted, however by the end of Q2 we had raised 150k USD more than our annual target, which gave the opportunity for our new ED to reorganize the chapter as she wanted and spent slightly more than budgeted (about 10%).
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Progress against past year's goals/objectives
[edit]The FDC needs to understand the impact of the initiatives your entity has implemented over the past year. Because the FDC distributes general funds, entities are not required to implement the exact initiatives proposed in the FDC proposal; the FDC expects each entity to spend money in the way it best sees fit to achieve its goals and those of the movement. However, please point out any significant changes from the original proposal, and the reasons for the changes. Note that any changes from the Grant proposal, among other things, must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."
Programme 1: Supporting communities
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Examples of media produced thanks to Wikimédia France support |
Presentation
Programme aims
Wikimedia France aims to support communities of contributors to Wikimedia projects. With this support they should be able to contribute more content, improve the quality of the existing content and maintain and develop the pleasure to be had in being part of the movement.
Through this programme, we are aiming towards the emergence and development of local communities of contributors and their activities. This national policy already exists at the French-language level, through WikiFranca, a working group in which we are involved. Our approach is that the development of a community is defined by the pleasure it has in running joint projects. We therefore aim to help communities of members and contributors by providing them resources and tools to make it easier for them to carry out their activities.
We have set ourselves targets to achieve this:
- the diversification and increase in requests to the association for micro-funding (target: over 30 requests in 2013);
- an increase in the number of contents produced by contributors with the support of Wikimedia France.
A content is identified as being “supported by Wikimedia France” if:
- the association has provided help to finance equipment used to produce the content (camera, photo studio, etc.),
- the association has financed expenditure used to produce the content,
- the association has provided help to enable access to the content (photo accreditation for an event, opening of a particular venue, privileged access, etc.).
The target for 2013 was to have at least:
- 9,000 photographs supported by Wikimedia France,
- 5 % of these photographs having received a label on Wikimedia Commons, these photographs having been produced by over 80 different contributors.
- To be an active support in encouraging the structuring of the French-speaking community (target: to help set up 2 French-speaking chapters).
Actions carried out
Micro-funding
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Ten new requests for micro-funding were processed in Q4. Most of these concern book orders in order to source articles. The books are encyclopaedias or academic works covering the fields of science-fiction and the fantastic, history and ornithology. The other requests concerned the covering of costs incurred by the photographic coverage of cycle races. Finally, the latest project we have supported is an aerial photography outing in the southern part of Île-de-France. Two volunteer photographers were able to spend 45 minutes taking photos from a CESSNA 172SP G1000 of the towns, castels and other places of interest around Rambouillet (see all the photos). Globally, micro-fundings supported mostly the French Wikipedia (18 requests) and Commons (8 requests). One request was for Wikidata, and another one for Vikidia, a Wikipedia-like projects for kids. Requests were mainly used to increase the contents of projects (22 requests) while 3 of them had an outreach purpose.
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Photography
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With 24,764 “Media Supported by Wikimedia France” put online since the beginning of the budget year, including 7,236 during Q4, the target of 9,000 photos is reached (in fact it was reached in Q2). In hindsight, this target was clearly too low (as far as we can track with out tools now, last year our photographers did upload 17,821 pictures, it's still a 40% increase). Over the year there have been 380 Quality Images, 18 Featured Pictures and 356 Valuable Images, with a total of 698 different files having had a label. That makes 2.82 % of the uploaded images, i.e. less than the target of 5% of the imported images (however, it is higher than the anticipated target: 5% of 9000 makes 450 files). At the moment there is no systematic way of putting forward proposals for labels and some of the photographers therefore do not take part in the system. One of the most visible photography actions was the series of three aerial photography sessions, using a drone, at the Château de Versailles in September 2013. The partnership with Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO) has continued and four new events were covered as a result of the accreditations we obtained: Marathon de Paris, The mud day Pays d’Aix, Paris-Roubaix and the Critérium du Dauphiné (Étape 6, Étape 7), in addition to the Paris Half-marathon covered in Q3. Finally, a photo weekend was organized on the last weekend in May in Domfront (Orne), with fifteen participants who spent the two days being introduced to photography and learning more about certain specific aspects: learning about and handling a camera for beginners, sports photography with a local cycle race, an introduction to video and time-lapse, using a mini photo studio and an introduction to light-painting on the Saturday evening. Some of the participants took the opportunity to photograph the historic monuments in the town (not fully covered on Commons up to now). |
French-language communities and languages of France
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For WikiFranca there was the organization of a joint action: French-language Contribution Month (Mois de la contribution) in October 2013.
(French-language Contribution Month on Wikipedia in French)
This was inspired by the contribution month organized in Canada in spring 2013. It was discussed between French-speaking Wikimedians at the WikiFranca meeting organized at Wikimania in August 2013 and seemed to be a relevant project with which to give a smooth start to a joint action. The contribution month consists of organizing contributor meetings and contribution workshops across the country for a given month. The idea being that the chapters are only involved in giving indirect support to contributors, who are fully responsible for the format and organization of the workshops. During the contribution month, a total of 20 workshops were organized in France, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Tunisia and Burkina Faso, attracting over 270 people, regular contributors or beginners. At the meetings there were presentations of Wikimedia projects, discussions about the scope of the projects and how they were run and contribution sessions on general (common resources) or local subjects. The contribution month was linked to the “Common Resources Towns” event organized by a group of associations gravitating around the open source, knowledge and more generally the promotion of common resources.
Wikimedia France also supplied beginner contributors with free copies of “Welcome to Wikipedia” booklets on email request. For the first time, we received requests from abroad and were able to support contributors in Tunisia, Algeria and Mauritania. A third edition, including visual Editor and new initiatives for newbies was released in September 2013.
We have begun setting up a library in our new office. We have taken an inventory of all the books owned by the association so that we can lend them to contributors if necessary and help them to improve the encyclopaedia. We have also purchased materials on the following themes: developing voluntary work, the associative project, to help the different people involved understand the reorganization process in which we are involved.
In May 2014, volunteers in Toulouse ran a stand at the Language Forum, where they presented Wikipedia and its language diversity to around 240 people. Contact was made with ten teachers to discuss future action and photos illustrating the event were loaded on to Commons.
To celebrate Wikipedia’s ten years in Breton, Nicolas Vigneron was interviewed in Breton by Radio France Bleu Armorique on 26 January 2014. The NCO (the local Rennes group) organized a contribution and improvement evening on 30 April and, on 20 June, a discovery workshop for this version of the open source encyclopaedia which now exceeds 50,000 articles. |
Results
Evaluation
Progress of the different targets
Micro-funding
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A total of 36 requests were received over the whole year, which is in line with the target set. Only two of these were turned down and two cancelled as the projects concerned were incorporated into association programmes. So, in all, 32 requests were accepted and nearly 14,500 € of the micro-funding committee’s 20,000 € was allocated, 2 requests were accepted by the Board of Trustees, and 2 were rejected. |
Photography
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The group of volunteer photographers in the association is very dynamic, as can be seen from the number of photos supported by Wikimedia France, with an increase of 40% of pictures uploaded compared to last year. As sports photography is already a favourite with group members, the partnership with ASO helps to make it easier to maintain commitment. The other areas are not neglected, as can be seen from the number of participants at the photo weekend and the different approaches linked to aerial photography (by drone and aircraft). |
French-language communities
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Wikimedia France played an enthusiastic part in French-language Communities Month in October 2013. The association also offered its support to the Tunisian user group, particularly by sending contribution guidance booklets in French. |
Indicator tables
Metrics | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Year-to-date | Objective
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Micro-funding | ||||||||
Number of requests (113.3%)
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8 | 8 | 10 | 8 | 34 | 30 | ||
Support to photographers | ||||||||
Number of files uploaded (273.6%)
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7459 | 5765 | 4177 | 7219 | 24620 | 9000 | ||
Number of highlighted files (146.7%)
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212 | 167 | 183 | 98 | 660 | 450 | ||
Number of uploaders (91.3%)
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27 | 30 | 28 | 33 | 73 | 80 | ||
% of highlighted files | 2.84 | 2.9 | 4.38 | 1.36 | 2.68 | 5% |
Volunteer involvement
- Micro-funding committee: The micro-funding committee has 7 permanent volunteer members. As its composition was renewed in Q2, a total of 10 volunteers have been involved in its running.
- Photography: The discussion list dedicated to photography has 38 more or less active subscribers. More than ten photographers are highly active and the “introduction to photography” weekend attracted 14 people.
- French-language communities: There was strong volunteer support in fourteen French cities for the French-language contribution month. Four volunteers were involved in the Language Forum, and 3 volunteers provided the training at the “Wikipedia in Breton” workshop.
Employee involvement
- Micro-funding committee: Employees support the micro-funding committee by sending out the materials requested (monitored by the Finance department).
- Photography: the network and system administrator is responsible for everything to do with the loan of photographic equipment and the partnership with ASO. The other accreditations are signed by the executive director.
- Contribution month:
- Sending out tuition materials for the organization of the workshops (e.g. contribution guidance booklets);
- Advising contributors seeking to organize workshops (by email or telephone);
- Reporting on and evaluating the actions carried out, by making contact with each workshop organizer to obtain feedback in terms of quality and quantity on the actions carried out, with the second target of being able to develop the experience.
As part of our support for the French-language communities, the system administrator also deals with requests for the “Welcome to Wikipedia” booklets sent in by French contributors and also from French-speaking countries that do not have a chapter.
- Library: the library is run by the system administrator. The books are either those requested by employees as part of their mission (books about running an association, guides to specific aspects of their work and books about Wikimedia projects), or those requested by volunteers relating to micro-fundings.
What worked?
- Micro-funding committee: the micro-funding committee has achieved its target of requests for the year and the increase in these at the end of the period is an encouraging sign, showing that it has begun to be clearly identified by contributors as a support to contribution, particularly since it was moved on to Meta.
- Photography: The pooling of photography equipment and accreditations has achieved outstanding results. This is the most active micro-funding expenditure item, with requests for the purchase of books to be used as sources. Photography is attracting more and more volunteers, particularly sports photography.
- French-language communities: The French-language contribution month also worked well, with the association involved only in supporting the initiatives of contributors and volunteers: it was a matter of providing a presence when asked to do so and offering support without being the formal organizers of the workshops.
What did not work?
- Photography: Although the “Wiki Loves Parliament” operation worked well overall, the association is sad to announce the theft, on the Paris-Strasbourg train, of a bag containing the “Fañch pack” in addition to a photographer’s personal equipment, worth a total of over 8000 €. It turned out that our insurance did not adequately cover the loss. We have since revised our insurance policies accordingly.
- French-language communities: The association has not moved forward sufficiently with its proactive support for the structuring of the French-language communities. The aim of employing one person partly dedicated to the French-language communities was set aside in summer 2013 for budget reasons and following discussions with French-language communities at Wikimania. The aim being to first of all establish the French-language communities through concrete actions before giving them a formal structure. At the meeting in August 2013, Benoit Rochon (Wikimedia Canada) was appointed coordinator of WikiFranca.
Which publications resulted from the programme?
Photo:
- http://blog.wikimedia.fr/des-drones-a-versailles-pour-des-photos-aeriennes-libres-6065
- http://blog.wikimedia.fr/40-000-illustrations-realisees-grace-a-laide-de-wikimedia-france-5809
French-language communities:
- Wikipedia in Breton: http://blog.wikimedia.fr/la-nco-participe-a-lamelioration-de-la-wikipedia-en-breton-6438
Contribution Month:
- http://blog.wikimedia.fr/archives-rennes-6163
- http://ecrans.liberation.fr/ecrans/2013/12/11/audio-le-56kast-8-l-avenir-du-pistage-et-contribuer-a-wikipedia-quand-l-hiver-vient_965681
- http://www.radiocampustours.com/2013/10/29/sortez-a-la-rencontre-de-clicc/
- http://www.lalsace.fr/actualite/2013/10/15/la-15e-edition-s-annonce
- http://www.strasbourg.eu/actualite/-/journal_content/56_INSTANCE_RrL3/10913/395237/10927
- http://www.musees.strasbourg.eu/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=4500&cntnt01origid=53&cntnt01returnid=423
- http://www.sudouest.fr/2013/10/08/perigueux-wikipedia-a-la-rencontre-des-wikipetiens-1192949-1980.php
- http://bu.univ-angers.fr/billet/2013/wikipedia-participez?destination=node%2F1266
Strategy
How does the program fit in with the foundation’s strategic priorities?
The program fits in particularly well with the following points in the Foundation’s strategic plan: increasing participation, improving quality and encouraging innovation. Increasing participation was the keystone to the “French-language communities and languages of France” section, particularly for the language variants in which participation is low in relation to the number of speakers.
Support for photographers was particularly aimed at improving the quality of the images on Commons and the brother projects. The micro-funding committee and the introduction of a contributors’ page aimed to improve quality (by giving access to better sources, equipment, etc.) and encourage innovation: apart from the maximum amount, there is no theoretical limit on the requests that may be made to the micro-funding committee.
What strategy was deployed?
The strategy on this part aimed to make it explicit that Wikimedia France wished to support contributors in the production of content. The micro-funding committee has communicated on projects to invite contributors to make requests, and the photography group has invested in more loan equipment.
What is the future for these actions?
The micro-funding committee has continued its work over the new 2013-2014 period, and work will be done to facilitate requests, including the production of a guide. Efforts will also be made to facilitate the financing of volunteer projects by crowdfunding. The actions undertaken in 2012-2013 should continue: new accreditation have already been obtained for sports photography, several aerial photography outings have been planned using an aircraft and the drone photography activity is set to resume in September, with Notre-Dame-de-Paris this time. Our proposal to the FDC for 2013-2014 provides for five photo outings per drone.
As far as the French-language communities and languages of France are concerned, the main event to come is, as announced in the proposal to the FDC, the organization of a Wikicamp for the overseas regions, in partnership with the DGLFLF (french branch ministry to promote the French language and the languages of the overseas regions). The efforts in favour of local languages will continue with a report to the DGLFLF on the regional languages on Wikipedia, and the workshops in Breton will continue with the study of a partnership with a Breton tuition network (primary and secondary schools).
Programme 2: Research and development
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Presentation
Programme aims
Wikimedia France aims to support Wikimedia projects and contributors by producing or contributing towards the production of tools. These may concern the internal running of the association, the involvement of the members and the development of our projects. The main areas for the development of tools are:
- to help towards automatically or semi-automatically improve the content of Wikimedia projects;
- to offer better monitoring of our actions and projects, in addition to our indicators;
- to encourage a better re-use of the content of Wikimedia projects, with the aim of sharing knowledge and promoting projects.
Actions carried out
- As part of the Semanticpedia project, which we are running in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and INRIA, the aim is to provide a stable semantic extraction of Wikipedia in French and host it following on from INRIA, which handed the technical management of the project over to us in July 2013. The deployment of the stable version is still in progress due to the rapid evolution of the Wikipedia infrastructure and the arrival of Wikidata and Parsoid, which has required us to update the deployment scripts. A secondary platform with partial daily updates, DBPedia-Live, was introduced in April;
- A competition for the design of tools and applications to exploit this semantic extraction took place from December to March; a dozen people took part with some innovative projects. The prize award ceremony took place on the evening of 29 April 2014. The competition jury, made up of representatives of the Wikimedia France association, the Ministry of Culture and Communication and INRIA, awarded three prizes of a respective value of 3,000 euros to:
- the Atlasmuseum project by Virginie Pringuet and Magali Guyou, for the “creation of tools for Wikipedia” category: http://www.publicartmuseum.net/;
- the CROTOS project by Benoît Deshayes, for the “cultural and linguistic data development” category: http://www.zone47.com/crotos/;
- the “Musées en France” project by Gautier Poupeau and Julien Homo, for the “re-use and circulation of Wikipedia resources” category: http://labs.antidot.net/museesdefrance/;
- In June, an extension to the Semanticpedia agreement was signed to include a project known as Tagmatica, the aim of which is to improve DBPedia by including new information extracted directly from an automated analysis of the text of Wikipedia articles;
- To support uploads of content on to Wikimedia Commons from the cultural institutions, we have contributed towards the financing and experimentation of the GLAMwiki Toolset developed in partnership with Wikimedia NL, Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia CH and Europeana;
- Wikimedia France continues to support and improve the Wikiscan tool with which we can obtain contribution statistics for the French-language Wikipedia (the tool was developed by a French contributor).
Results
Evaluation
Progress of the different targets
Semanticpedia
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The migration of DBPedia towards the Wikimedia France servers is in progress and all the important information that could be extracted is now managed. An extraction took place in November 2013. The Semanticpedia competition took place with a dozen tools developed for the occasion. A one-day workshop on Wikidata, Semanticpedia and links and differences between the two projects took place in September 2013, with eight participants. The workshop was attended by Wikipedia and Wikidata contributors interested in using Dbpedia.fr and Wikidata. The training programme focused on the autonomous import of content on to Wikidata via DBPedia. The workshop was designed to provide highly pragmatic solutions. We have handed over the server used to host DBPedia Live to our partner Vocal Apps. DBPedia Live’s role is to be a daily updated implementation of DBPedia (instead of updates at intervals of several months for the stable version), and Vocal Apps intends to use it for its Izipedia project, which is a project for a vocal search engine (in French only at present) that searches for answers in DBPedia Live. It is possible to ask, by simply speaking, what is the capital of Canada or the name of the President of Argentina and obtain a vocal response in the form of a constructed sentence. |
GLAMwiki toolset
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Wikimedia France has chosen to end its financial support for GLAMwiki Toolset in 2014, for budget reasons ; but is still involved in the project: beta-testing the tool, looking for GLAM institutions to act as testers for the project. |
Wikiscan
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Volunteer involvement
- Semanticpedia: Volunteer involvement in the Semanticpedia project is mainly through discussions about the development of the project, which is open to all interested members and contributors and has 26 subscribers. The former manager at INRIA also now offers his support as a volunteer.
- GLAMwiki toolset: An international discussion list is dedicated to the GLAMwiki Toolset project. A Wikimedia France volunteer, Jean-Frédéric Berthelot, is the association’s representative on this list.
- Wikiscan: The project is being run by a volunteer, Akeron, who is the sole developer of the tool.
Employee involvement
Two employees are mainly involved in these projects; for Semanticpedia, the former director of programmes coordinated the project with the Ministry of Culture, INRIA (National Institute for Research into IT and Automation) and current or potential partners and re-users. She also coordinated communication about the project. The Awareness and Evaluation representative has now taken over the running of the competition, and the systems and networks administrator is responsible for the technical management of the Semanticpedia project.
For the Wikiscan project, the former director of programmes provided the coordination with the volunteer project developer; this has now also been taken over by the systems and networks administrator.
What worked?
- Semanticpedia
- The introduction of all the DBPedia extractors in French, except for the multilingual summaries: the migration of the dedicated site, blog and wiki has been completed. We received a dozen submissions for the Semanticpedia competition, and successfully co-organized the prize award evening (attended by approximately 70 people).
- GLAMwiki Toolset
- We successfully worked to integrate the GLAMwiki Toolset in our current mass uploading workflow, by making our tools compatible with it, and conversely by requesting enhancement to make the Toolset compatible with our workflow.
- We generated some interest among several of our GLAM partners, and our pilot with the Musées de la Haute-Saône unveiled several bugs.
- Wikiscan
- Wikiscan is fully functional and is used as a data collection tool for several indicators drawn up as part of our quality policy. The tool monitors contributions from a dedicated category of contributors (e.g. for a particular association project), using an improvement specially developed for Wikimedia France.
What did not work?
- Semanticpedia
- The DBPedia migration was delayed for two reasons: the web provider had problems in delivering the servers and the migration of the Wikipedia interwiki links to Wikidata, which meant having to rewrite the multilingual summary recovery script.
- In the meantime, as a result of the evolutions in the Wikipedia search engine, the export of summaries in French no longer works: work to correct this export is still in progress as this report is being written. However, the deployment of Semanticpedia made good progress in Q4 and should be completed for the forthcoming Q1.
- GLAM Toolbox
- The GLAM Toolbox project, which aims to make it easier for cultural institutions to contribute, has not been taken forward this year, mainly due to lack of time.
- GLAMwiki Toolset
- For budget reasons, Wikimedia France has been forced to end its financial support for the GLAMwiki Toolset project.
- Over the year, we have not been able to finalise a complete mass upload.
Which publications resulted from the programme?
- http://www.semanticpedia.org/blog/index.php?post/2013/12/22/Concours-Sémanticpédia.-Réutiliser-et-innover-autour-des-données-de-Wikipédia
- http://blog.wikimedia.fr/laureats-du-concours-semanticpedia-6435
Strategy
How does this programme fit in with the foundation’s strategic priorities?
Semanticpedia
Semanticpedia is in line with the Wikimedia Foundation’s “Stabilizing the infrastructure” priority” by introducing a popular tool for re-using Wikipedia into the Wikimedian sphere (the INRIA server on which it is currently hosted sometimes crashes under the load). It also encourages innovation through the Semanticpedia competition.
GLAMwiki and Wikiscan
The two other projects in the programme focus on the three targets relating to improvements in participation, quality and scope.
What strategy was deployed?
Apart from the introduction of Semanticpedia itself, the strategy deployed has aimed to publicize the project among its potential users and projects. The introduction of the discussion list dedicated to semantic issues (thereby establishing a dialogue between the experts in these issues and contributors who know Wikipedia well), the workshop on Wikidata and Semanticpedia and the Semanticpedia competition are all ways of implementing this strategy.
What is the future for these actions?
- Semantic Web (Semanticpedia and Wikidata)
- The introduction of Semanticpedia continues and is a priority for the first quarter of the new 2013-2014 period. The project will be supported by actions aimed at publicizing the semanticized means of using Wikimedia projects (DBPedia and Wikidata), such as workshops or more informal meetings.
- GLAM Toolbox
- The development of the GLAM Toolbox will resume this year; our FDC proposal provides for the opening of a site aimed at institutions during Q3.
- Wikiscan
- A brainstorming session will take place with the GLAM and Quality groups in the autumn to evaluate the innovations to be introduced to Wikiscan or its replacement for the association’s needs by a new metrics tool.
Any additional details:
Programme 3: Increasing the content
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Free content from Wikimédia France partnerships |
Presentation
Programme aims
Wikimedia France aims to support open source knowledge. In this respect, we are working to increase the number of institutions capable of contributing towards or facilitating the creation of open source content. This involves partnerships with cultural institutions. It is a question of either putting relevant content, already digitized, online for Wikimedia projects or of creating the conditions required for the production of this content by partner institutions or contributors. The content may be made up of contributions on Wikipedia (see programme 4), or files uploaded on to Wikimedia Commons, among others. To support this work, we are seeking to make the environment more favourable to Wikimedia projects, and raise awareness among target groups.
Our target for the year was to have at least three large-scale projects to upload content from cultural institutions, with at least two categories on each file, minimum size 1200 px per side, and 10 % of files re-used on Wikimedia projects and each upload posted on the Wikimedia France blog. To make the environment more favourable for Wikimedia projects, we are also developing actions to raise awareness of the public domain, such as Public Domain Day and the Public Domain Remix competition, which aim to inform a broad and varied public of the importance of the subject. One of the aims of the programme is also to release existing content by changing the distribution licences to make them compatible with Wikimedia projects. We were hoping to complete at least three content release projects.
Actions carried out
Contribution of open source content
Archives
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The 2013-2014 campaign has been marked by an increase in archive collection projects. Most archive departments are little-known to the general public and the work of an archivist is itself relatively unknown. In the same way as libraries and museums, these institutions contain a wealth of heritage and in many cases house treasures to which the public has no access as there is no drive to publicize them today. Secondly, digital technology, via the semantic web, can be used today to give these items greater prominence in several ways and forms. Wikimedia France makes every effort to meet its partners’ needs. For example, an archive department is interested in disseminating metadata describing its resources; others may be interested in the uploading of outstanding collection images to enrich Wikimedia Commons, while others will be attracted by text enrichment projects for projects such as Wikisource and become involved in the transcription of manuscripts that have fallen into the public domain. For example, in the 2013-2014 campaign, two workshops were organized in the Rennes Municipal Archives to encourage beginners to contribute and use an upload to Wikimedia Commons to open up documents kept and digitized by the Archives. 82 high-resolution files were uploaded and were used 76 times for the projects. In February 2014, a second upload of 32 files reproducing major documents from the National Archives was completed, bringing the total number of files uploaded under the partnership with the National Archives to 78. In addition, the level of re-use of the National Archives files is over 80%. |
Wiki Loves Monuments
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As every year, Wiki Loves Monuments took place in September with the aim of giving prominence to historic monuments via the Wikimedia projects. This year, the competition had an impact on at least levels. In terms of impact on the Wikimedia projects, 21,000 images were put online on Wikimedia Commons, compared to 25,000 in 2011 and 27,000 in 2012; 650 participants were counted, including 269 new contributors, and the competition managed to illustrate 1,600 monuments that did not at the time have an image on Wikipedia. Concerning the impact on Wikimedia France, the competition required over 450 hours of volunteer work involving fifteen people. |
CIUP contest "La vie de la cité
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We organized a photo contest on life in the "Cité international universitaire de Paris". 219 free media were uploaded during this contest. |
“Vosges Operation Libre”
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This is an “Open Source” operation organized in Gérardmer (Vosges) on 17 and 18 May 2014, on the initiative of Christophe Masutti, chairman of the Framasoft association, and in partnership with several organizations working on open source content, data, tools and licences. This new event for the Eastern Region focused on digital usages, their acquisition by individuals, their potential for creativity and their economy, and aimed to promote open source software, open source culture and the opening-up of data by organizing theme-based initiatives such as stands, participative workshops and talks. Members of Wikimedia France ran Wikipedia introduction workshops throughout the two days. The weekend included 9 talks, 8 workshops, and stands run by all the partners to the operation. |
Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres
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This partnership was initiated just over a year ago and is an example of an ongoing action. Two photography sessions took place this year and, at the end of the campaign, a Wikipedia contribution awareness workshop took place over a day for twenty craftsmen and employees from the Manufacture de Sèvres. A video was also shot and put online on Wikimedia Commons. |
Rennes Institutions
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At the end of 2013, the Rennes members organized a conference to obtain feedback on the projects run between the Rennes cultural institutions and Wikimedia France, with a view to encouraging other institutions to participate. Two representatives, from the library and the municipal archives, and the director of Wikimedia France and several volunteers spoke at the conference. There was an audience of fifteen people, including staff from other cultural institutions in Rennes. |
Public Domain Remix Competition
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This project was devised during the 2012-2013 campaign and took place during the 2013-3014 campaign as part of Public Domain Day, organized by Wikimedia France and the Open Knowledge Foundation France. The principle was to encourage artists, designers and others aware or not of licence and public domain issues, etc., to use the public domain as a background to the creation process. The aim was to organize a very wide-ranging remix creation competition in which literary, visual and audio creations, cinema and photography were used and mixed, all having the characteristics appropriate to the public domain. The creations themselves had to be available for dissemination under open licence (CC-0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA or LAL) |
Results
Evaluation
Progress of the different targets
During the last year, Wikimedia France took part in a number of conferences, working days, workshops and trade shows at which the association’s different subjects and themes were publicized and professional contacts were made.
Wikimedia France was able to target and raise awareness among different groups by organizing Public Domain Day and the Public Domain Remix Competition. Our initial target was to have at least three mass upload projects releasing content. 7 mass upload batchs were completed this year thanks to partnership with 5 institutions
- the National Archives (77 documents — 2 batchs: during Q1 and Q3),
- the Toulouse city archives (281 documents — 1 batch in Q2)
- the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse fine arts museum (580 documents — 2 batchs in Q1 and Q2)
- the Rennes city archives (82 documents — 1 batch in Q2)
- the Musée de Bretagne (56 documents — 1 batch in Q4)
We have had 4 projects to free content or create free content:
- Wiki Loves Monuments (Q1)
- CIUP photo contest (Q4)
- Projet Phoebus with Museum de Toulouse (all year)
- Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres (all year)
Indicator Tables
Metrics | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Year-to-date | Objective
| ||
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Mass Uploads | ||||||||
Number of mass upload projects (233.3%)
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2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 3 | ||
— | — | — | — | — | — | |||
— | — | — | — | — | — | |||
% de Files (mass upload) re-used | — | — | 173 (6.70%) | 365 (22.41%) | 22.41% | 10% | ||
Number of blog posts (0%)
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0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | |||
GLAM toolbox | ||||||||
Project online | no | no | no | no | yes end Q2 | |||
Content creation actions | ||||||||
Number of files put online (257.2%)
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21656 | 491 | 772 | 409 | 23147 | 9000 |
Please note that number of files used is a global indicator which gives the value since the start of the project and not only on the year. It has been updated on September 28th, 2014.
Volunteer involvement
Volunteers carried out and monitored uploads from institutions, generally by being in direct contact with them. Volunteers (association members or not) also took the photographs in the institutions with which we are partners.
Employee involvement
Employee involvement was mainly through the director of programmes who coordinated the partnerships with the institutions and monitored the progress of initiatives; this work was taken over in the final quarter by the newly-created Development department. The same applied to the awareness operations, contact coordination and links between partners and volunteers to help towards defining and monitoring the projects.
What worked?
In September 2013 this year, Wiki Loves Monuments in France recovered over 21,000 cultural heritage images. We were able to illustrate over 1600 monuments which still had no illustration, and to publicize Wikimedia Commons to over 260 users. Uploads of GLAM contents are working well and the related working party is using feedback to improve its upload techniques. The local communities are keen to organize awareness actions. The association’s efforts to encourage institutions to open up their content are bearing fruit; several structures have seen the advantages of placing their content on open licence and respecting the public domain. The GLAM institutions are increasingly convinced by the Wikimedia projects and aware that they must take responsibility for the publication of their content on the projects. The fact that GLAMs that have tried the experience are talking to other GLAMs is an encouraging sign.
What did not work?
The Public Domain Remix competition was not given sufficient internal or external support. We did not dedicate enough resources to promoting it. We are having difficulty in finding institutions prepared to experiment with the GLAM-Wiki Toolset, mainly due to the limitations of the tool, which, in its Beta phase, requires a significant technical investment on the part of the institution. The institutions must not only agree to release their content but must also supply this online so that it can be used by the tool, and in the format currently supported by the GLAM-wiki Toolset. During the test phase, this requires close monitoring on the part of Wikimedians. The other critical point is the tool’s technical sophistication and the lack of internal training in the tool: the knowledge is concentrated between one or two Wikimedians, which represents a huge workload.
Which publications resulted from the programme?
- Articles on the partnership with the Pompidou Centre: Wikimedia signs a partnership with the Pompidou Centre http://www.01net.com/editorial/603478/wikimedia-signe-un-partenariat-avec-le-centre-pompidou/ (18/09/2013, 01net.com) http://www.20minutes.fr/web/1224607-20130918-centre-pompidou-wikimedia-france-partenaires-ameliorer-wikipedia (18/09/2013, 20minutes.fr)
- Article on the partnership with Sèvres, thea Cité de la Céramique (award of a prize to promote the partnership): Sèvres and Wikimedia France receive an IDCA Award (2013) http://www.sevresciteceramique.fr/site.php?type=P&id=619
Further information
Action | Number of media | Usage on Wikimedia projects | References |
---|---|---|---|
Archives municipales de Toulouse | 0 on the quarter and 281 since the beginning of the year, 458 in total | 43 used 58 times | Glamorous |
Archives Nationales | 0 on the quarter and 77 since the beginning of the year, 142 in total | 131 (92%) used 389 times | Glamorous |
Action | Number of media | Usage on Wikimedia projects | References |
---|---|---|---|
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse | 1 on the quarter and 580 since the beginning of the year, 882 in total | 127 used 229 times | Glamorous |
Archives municipales de Rennes | 0 on the quarter and 82 since the beginning of the year, 82 in total | 48 used 80 times | Glamorous |
Musée de Bretagne | 56 on the quarter and 56 since the beginning of the year, 56 in total | 14 used 16 times | Glamorous |
Action | Number of media | Usage on Wikimedia projects | References |
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Cité de la céramique - Sèvres et Limoges. | 1 on the quarter and 1299 since the beginning of the year, 1868 in total | 43 used 52 times | Glamorous |
Action | Number of media | Usage on Wikimedia projects | References |
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Projet Phoebus - Museum de Toulouse | 109 on the quarter and 596 since the beginning of the year, 2809 in total | 2380 (84%) used 303800 times | Glamorous |
Strategy
How does this programme fit in with the foundation’s strategic priorities?
This programme is essential for an association such as Wikimedia France and for the Wikimedia movement in general. One of our key priorities is to increase the number of contributors and enrich the content by raising awareness among and training different target groups. This is mainly achieved through the partnerships presented in this section, but also by giving autonomy to the people with whom we work in the GLAM, in education and, in future, in other domains.
What strategy was deployed?
There have been few strategic decisions concerning the choice of actions: the result has been a certain fragmentation and a real difficulty in responding to requests due to a shortage of volunteers. The actions have become recurrent for the volunteers and the Wikimedia France volunteer community is faced with the fear of “battle fatigue”. There appears to be a need to create more dynamic contacts between volunteers, institutions and outsider groups so that they have a firmer understanding of the concerns of the different parties involved, and also to have more impact.
What is the future for these actions?
Some of the avenues to be pursued in order to return to a positive dynamic are the arrival of new members in the GLAM working party as a result of an awareness campaign, the opening-up of discussions to the GLAM partners themselves, strategic thinking about the partnerships that would have the most impact and the sharing of experiences between GLAMs.
Any additional details:
Programme 4: Recruiting new contributors
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Presentation
Wikimedia France has an initiative aimed at increasing the number of contributors to Wikimedia projects. It is mainly focused on two sectors: the cultural world (GLAM) and the academic world. To achieve a greater diversification of contributors, Wikimedia France is also seeking to raise awareness among new profiles that have been less evident on Wikipedia up to now.
Programme aims
The overall aim of this programme was to increase the number of contributors to the different Wikimedia projects. It is, by its very nature, closely linked to the programme aimed at increasing the amount of open source content. For the cultural institutions, partnerships are often made up of two aspects: training in contribution and uploading open source content in the form of an Editathon. The main aim at the contribution learning workshops was to give the new contributors greater autonomy so that, at the end of the workshop(s), they would be able to contribute to the Wikimedia projects on their own. For the workshops organized in the GLAM or educational environments, the annual target was to train 500 people, with an average of 4 contributions per trained person, 15 % of people autonomous on leaving the workshops and 80 % of their content maintained.
Actions carried out
Training for young researchers: Partnership with the “Université Lille Nord de France”
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We ran this training project in partnership with the university in order to encourage young researchers and doctoral students to contribute to Wikimedia projects in their field of expertise. As part of the training courses recognized by their university, the doctoral students validated hours of training or credits essential to the presentation of their thesis by contributing to Wikimedia projects. The doctoral students were trained during two 3-hour workshops then contributed individually for 2 months, monitored at a distance by the staff. Their involvement in the project was included in the marking for their doctorate. |
Training for teachers
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Support for the last two partnerships was mainly through training sessions in contribution run by Wikimedia France members and employees. The teachers ran their own projects themselves in close consultation with Wikimedia France, which was also on hand to provide help and extra training where necessary. |
Training for the people involved in a national federation: the rural community centres
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This training session was for regional organizers across the country to enable them in their turn to train their members in how to contribute content to Wikimedia projects and more particularly to put traditional local recipes online on Wikibooks. The project began this year and has led to the production of a tutorial on how to contribute content on Wikibooks. 6 recipes have been put online on Wikibooks. To take this further and increase the number of contributors, the national federation of rural community centres was asked to identify the regional organizers across the country so that a national training session could be organized in the autumn 2014. |
Training sessions in local groups: Rhône-Alpes
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A training session for 8 employees of the “Villes et Pays d'art et d'histoire” network was run by the Lyon Wikimedians as part of a partnership with the Regional Department of Cultural Affairs in Lyon. The aim of the partnership was to teach network employees to provide quality information and resources directly linked to the region. |
Training sessions in local groups: Brittany
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Contribution workshops were organized every month by the Rennes Wikimedians group. A theme-based approach attracted different people to each new session. Five workshops were run this year on a wide range of themes: “Rennes and common resources”, “Literature”, “GLAM”, etc. There was also, as part of French-language Contribution Month, a workshop on the city’s history organized in the municipal archives and a workshop on the commune of Argenté-du-Plessis. |
Training sessions in local groups: Midi-Pyrénées
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Following a request from the local council, a series of four workshops was run by Toulouse Wikimedians at the Saint-Etienne de Tulmont media library (near Montauban). |
Training sessions in local groups: Alsace
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The Alsace Wikimedians set up a project for regular workshops with the André Malraux media library in Strasbourg: L@pplipedia. The first workshop took place in November 2013. This offer supplements the workshops organized once a month at the University of Strasbourg Digital Culture Centre by the StrasWeb association and the Alsace Wikimedians. |
Pompidou Centre project
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The aim of the Pompidou Centre project was to train a group of contributors interested in contributing to Wikipedia on the themes of modern and contemporary art. It involved a number of Centre staff (education officers, librarians, curators, etc.) who helped new contributors to write articles on the works or artists to be found at the Pompidou Centre. Alongside this, and to add to the project, a series of public lectures covered cultural and digital topics. The contribution workshops at the Pompidou Centre ended in late March. In addition to the initial project there were three workshops with contributors from the Kandinski Library who worked specifically on articles relating to Pompidou Centre exhibitions. |
Wikicristallo
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Its aim was to bring these institutions together to draw up encyclopaedic and educational content on Wikipedia and Wikibooks during 2014. The chosen theme was Crystallography (Unesco has proclaimed 2014 as International Crystallography Year). The subject encompasses physics, chemistry, material science, metallurgy, mathematics, biology, medicine and earth sciences. |
“Vosges Operation Libre”
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“Vosges Operation Libre” was organized in Gérardmer (Vosges) on 17 and 18 May 2014, in partnership with the Framasoft association and a number of organizations working on open source content, data, tools and licences. The operation is similar to the one run in Brocas (Landes) in April 2013. Members of Wikimedia France ran “Introduction to Wikipedia” workshops throughout the two days. |
Edit-a-thon: women in science
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The Women in Science project emerged from the L'Oréal Foundation’s wish to pursue its awareness initiative under the international “French Scholarships for Women in Science” project. The L’Oréal Scholarships for Women in Science aim to reward young female researchers for the quality of their research work and to encourage them to pursue a brilliant career in science. Over the last 15 years, the Women in Science programme has acquired a considerable international reputation, offering scholarships to over 1700 female scientists from 108 countries. This project was initiated to raise awareness of the low numbers of women present on Wikipedia as contributors and as the subject of articles. It has been in preparation since August 2013 with the L'Oréal Foundation for Women in Science, which selected fifteen doctoral and post-doctoral students who had benefited from its scholarships, and has been hosted and supported by the history of science library at the “Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie”. Two “Edit-a-thons” have been organized, each for some twenty new contributors and experienced Wikimedians: supervised by Wikimedians, the contributors worked all day on a series of biographies of women of science from Antiquity to the present day. |
Fashion Edit-a-thon
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The aim of this Edit-a-thon was to add to the knowledge of fashion in the Wikimedia projects in French and other languages. A list of topics was put forward linked to the putting online of the decorative arts fashion and fabric collections on the Europeana Fashion portal; however, participants were free to choose another topic. The Editathon was organized around the Europeana Fashion project, which contacted Wikimedia France and the Museum of Decorative Arts to organize a contribution day following on from those organized in Antwerp, Utrecht, Stockholm and Stra in 2013. We prepared the event with the Museum of Decorative Arts library and museum documentation. The participants for the day were students from the “École du Louvre” (a history of art higher education college), members of the fashion world and researchers. They contributed mainly to the history of costume and to topics such as Visual Merchandising or smart fabrics. A week before the Editathon, a two-hour workshop was run for the invited participants to present the Editathon and the Wikimedia projects. This gave them an advance idea as to how the day would be organized and of what they were going to do on Wikipedia. 23 people took part, 243 contributions were completed and 199,750 bytes of text were added. |
Results
Evaluation
Training for teachers
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Support for the last two partnerships was mainly through training sessions in contribution run by Wikimedia France members and employees. The teachers ran their own projects themselves in close consultation with Wikimedia France, which was also on hand to provide help and extra training where necessary. |
Training for members of a national federation: the rural community centres
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Although it was initiated some time ago, the partnership has taken some time to get up and running. |
Training sessions in local groups: Rhône-Alpes
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8 staff members were trained. |
Training sessions in local groups: Brittany
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Over the whole year, the Rennes Wikimedians trained some thirty people with varied profiles. These trainings lead to a collaboration with major GLAMs in Rennes for 2014-2015. |
Training sessions in local groups: Midi-Pyrénées
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10 people were trained during the series of four workshops in the media library, supervised by 5 Wikipedians |
Training sessions in local groups: Alsace
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New contributors have been trained every month at the sessions held in the media library. |
Pompidou Centre project
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Over the whole year there were 25 regular participants in the workshops, 21 contributors (+1 on an IP who does not want to register). Over 10 workshops were organized between 1st October and 15 December as a result of the support of the 3 employees involved and 5 volunteers. The sessions produced 318 contributions, 7 articles were created and 21 active contributors were trained. The average number of contributions was 15.14 per person. In the end, this will be 13 totally autonomous contributors for whom 100 % of the content is accepted by the community. 159,679 bytes of text added. Finally, the staff of the Pompidou Centre involved in the project were pleased with what they learned about the Wikimedia projects. See all the articles. In all, 38 new contributors have been trained since September, with a total of 1338 contributions. 17 articles have been created and several dozen improved. Over 830,000 bytes of text have been added. |
Wikicristallo
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A few people were trained, but Wikicristallo was a very good first step for a global collaboration between the Wikimedia movement and scientific institutions (science museums, science fairs...) |
“Vosges Operation Libre”
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“Vosges Operation Libre” was organized in Gérardmer (Vosges) on 17 and 18 May 2014, in partnership with the fr:Framasoft association and a number of organizations working on open source content, data, tools and licences. The operation is similar to the one run in Brocas (Landes) in April 2013. Members of Wikimedia France ran “Introduction to Wikipedia” workshops throughout the two days. |
Edit-a-thon: women in science
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Two “Edit-a-thons” were organized, each for some twenty new contributors and experienced Wikimedians: 17 people were trained and 304 contributions recorded from the day, with 257,600 bytes of text added. |
Fashion edit-a-thon
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23 people took part, 243 contributions were completed and 199,750 bytes of text added. |
Progress of the different targets
The numerous workshops organized by volunteers have trained a large number of new contributors throughout the year. The Editathons have been used to target contributors on precise topics and make them autonomous in producing their contributions. The open source operations have also provided opportunities to go out and meet new audiences, and the local dimension means that people can acquire resources close to home.
Volunteer involvement
Volunteers have been involved throughout the year across the country. They are essential to the association, have regularly attracted new partners, run workshops and thus helped to train new contributors to the projects.
Employee involvement
The employees have regularly worked to help members carry out their ideas for action, providing financial support or on occasions making contact with partners. They have also run certain workshops with partners.
What worked?
The demand for contribution workshops is very high; the cultural, educational and public institutions are looking for help so that they can learn to contribute to Wikipedia. We are responding to that demand.
The project with the Pompidou Centre is a real success in terms of the involvement of participants and the content that has been written. The project has been run with a very tight schedule of workshops (one a week) and with a dedicated group for the year, which has built up a real momentum. As the workshops have continued, the group has become increasingly autonomous and understood the issues involved in Wikimedia projects. The content they have proposed has also been of high quality. The two Editathons were a success in terms of the organization of the days and how they went, the motivation of the contributors, the quality of the contributions and the media reception. The targeting of contributors and an in-depth presentation of the project before the event meant that the contribution days were attended by motivated people who were very quickly at ease with contribution and capable of providing high-quality content.
The Alsace and Rennes Wikimedian groups maintain a regular rhythm of workshops organized once a month, which means that new contributors can keep to a regular, identifiable appointment, which greatly facilitates communication about these events. The contribution workshops organized by the members and volunteers in the regions are continuing successfully. The volunteers are keen to organize and follow them, and at a local level the institutions are interested in pursuing this type of project and being trained in contribution.
What did not work?
The regular workshops project requires constant commitment throughout the partnership. Generally, once a week, volunteers may be faced with timetable problems and it may be difficult for them to keep up the pace. Despite the fact that the schedule is worked out in advance, the project often depends on one or two committed people and that is sometimes not many when it comes to training twenty contributors. Also, the people who have trained over 6 months tend to abandon the workshops once they have learned to contribute autonomously. The single workshops (non-recurrent) do not make the people they train autonomous enough. There are too few of these people coming back to contribute autonomously to Wikipedia. We therefore need to think about increasing the number of workshops. It is difficult to provide effective monitoring of people who come and take part in a single contribution workshop: it is often not enough to give them enough motivation to carry on contributing. This may seem just as true with the professionals, who are not necessarily able to find extra time to contribute to Wikimedia projects while they are working. Finally, the partnership with the rural community centres federation has taken time to get off the ground as a result of the discussions initiated by the partner and the time required to mobilize all the regional delegations.
Which publications resulted from the programme?
- http://alsace.france3.fr/2014/03/09/lpplipedia-latelier-de-contribution-wikipedia-413319.html: “introduction to Wikipedia” workshop
- http://blog.wikimedia.fr/?s=l'oréal: articles on the “women in science” project
- http://www.vosgesmatin.fr/vosges/2014/03/23/pour-le-libre-acces-a-l-information: open source operation in Gérardmer
- http://gerardmerinfo.fr/?p=28821: Gérardmer information
Strategy
How does this programme fit in with the foundation’s strategic priorities?
By developing targeted partnerships, identifying future contributors and training them, the chapter’s approach is totally in keeping with the strategic priority of recruiting new contributors. By going out to meet the people who hold knowledge, the association assists them in disseminating that knowledge. In addition, certain projects have enabled us to go out to meet people who have perhaps not thought of contributing and we have encouraged them to contribute by training them and have therefore broadened the base of contributors to Wikimedia projects.
What strategy was deployed?
The combination of staff and volunteers has made it possible to share out the tasks across the country. The volunteers who are most at ease with training have thus been able to give the general public the benefit of their expertise in Wikimedia projects. They have also often been involved in developing new partnerships. For their part, the employees have been a source of ideas for other projects with volunteers involved in the initiatives.
What is the future for these actions?
New actions will take place during the coming year as a result of contact with new organizations. Training of young researchers: Partnership with the “Université Lille Nord de France”.
Any additional details:
Programme 5: Dissemination
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Presentation
Programme aims
The aim of this programme is to raise public awareness of the importance of sharing knowledge and Wikimedia projects, including off-line. In this programme we have set targets for our actions mainly in the educational environment. We wanted to help members of the teaching profession (mainly teachers and archivists) to learn how to make good use of Wikimedia projects as open source educational resources. We also wanted to publish brochures about making good use of Wikimedia projects and contributing to Wikipedia grouped together on a website with other resources, the whole taking the form of an educational kit. We also set targets for a project for the off-line dissemination of Wikipedia with the open source education association Framasoft: the Framakey Wikipedia.
Finally, we wanted to improve the organization of our conference activity and our presence on stands and at events in order to cover France more equitably; we also wanted to raise awareness among new audiences through Wikimedia France’s participation in various conferences.
Actions carried out
56 Kast
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Training sessions in contributing to Wikipedia for teachers
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Training in contributing to Wikipedia for librarians
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Training in contributing to Wikipedia for people involved in local communities
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Training for our GLAM partners
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Participation in conferences and awareness actions
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Here is a list of conferences and working days in which we have taken part:
Distribution of 250 booklets on secondary and higher education during different training sessions and at the Education Show. The booklets were handed out on various stands during contribution training conferences. Deployment of the “Wikiconcours Lycéen” competition which took place from October 2013 to March 2014 involving secondary schools from 5 different authorities. In all, 113 user accounts were set up, 110 of which contributed. The results were announced on 28 March by CLEMI, the joint organizer of the project. Organization of a photography competition in partnership with the “Cité Internationale Universitaire” in Paris, aimed at highlighting the Cité’s buildings. Organization of Public Domain Day in Toulouse in January 2014. Running a number of features on the radio, re-broadcast as podcasts (9 in all). 1 support for educational projects in partnership with the DGESCO (directorate of school education) with the aim of accompanying them through the digital changes in the curriculum. Focus on an awareness action in Pantin on 24/05/2014, on behalf of the “Est Ensemble” conurbation council, which was organizing a cultural cycle "Le grand partage": A Wikimedia France member spoke during this cycle of talks. The idea was to get Wikipedia re-involved in collaborative practices, which are reputed to have increased in recent years as a result of the development of web platforms that put people in touch with each other so that they can exchange tools, cars, apartments and sometimes knowledge. As the talk was focused on the economy, the public’s attention was attracted to the fact that Wikipedia is a huge asset of immense value and therefore, like many other things, cannot be given an economic value. |
Results
Evaluation
Progress of the different targets
- 41 teachers were trained (compared to a target of 350)
- 1144 Wikipedia framakeys were downloaded (compared to a target of 3000)
Volunteer involvement
Volunteers were called upon according to their individual expertise for the various contribution training and conference participation sessions. At the training sessions at URFIST, for example, there was a real collaboration between a volunteer and a Wikimedia France employee who worked together during the sessions. Generally speaking, volunteers were mostly present at the training sessions, but also at the competitions in order to select photos, take part in a prize award ceremony, contribute to the logistics, etc. They take part in the various initiatives run by the association.
Employee involvement
The employees were initially mostly involved in setting up partnerships and subsequently worked with volunteers to run training and awareness sessions. On occasions, an employee has been alone in training groups of participants (e.g. taking part in ministerial working parties).
What worked?
The involvement of the volunteers, mainly at conferences and running stands. They were called upon as many times as possible. The stand at the Education show was a success: we made a number of contacts and involved several volunteers over several days. As a result of our initiatives in the field of education, we have obtained an approval by which the association is recognized as an approved partner of the Ministry of Education.
What did not work?
- The “Wikiconcours Lycéen” did not have the expected effect as a result of poor coordination between volunteers and employees at a regional level. In the end, only a small number of students really contributed, as their teachers preferred to publish instead of them.
- The educational kit never got off the ground. Two brochures were published relating to the use of Wikipedia in secondary and higher education, but there was no dedicated website and, in the end, no online educational kit that could be re-used by the teachers.
- Not enough teachers were trained over the months. This may be because we did not deploy a proper programme of training sessions for the secondary and higher education establishments. We also realized that, in most of the training sessions, the time was mainly given over to a demystification of Wikipedia. For future actions, it would be useful to clarify how the training sessions should be organized, for example by having two sessions close together rather than just one.
- The Framakey project has not moved forward since December 2012. No keys have been sold and we are well below our download target (1100 compared to a target of 3000).
Which publications resulted from the programme?
- Presentation of the “Wikiconcours Lycéen”: http://www.ac-bordeaux.fr/pedagogie/education-aux-medias-clemi/concours-academiques/Wikiconcours-lyceens-2013-2014.html (Bordeaux Education Authority)
- http://www.clemi.org/fr/concours/Wikiconcours_2013/ (CLEMI)
- Year 11 pupils from Brisson take part in the “Wikiconcours” (Leberry.fr, 15/02/2014)
- http://www.leberry.fr/cher/actualite/pays/pays-de-vierzon/2014/02/15/des-secondes-de-brisson-participent-au-Wikiconcours_1874411.html
- The region’s secondary school pupils tackle Wikipedia (Jeunesocentre.fr, 17/04/2014)
- http://www.jeunesocentre.fr/face-de-jeune/des-lyceens-de-la-region-a-l-assaut-de-wikipedia.html
- Wikimedia visits Sèvres and Versailles, 56kast extract, a monthly podcast in which Wikimedia is invited on to Ecrans.fr (11/2013).
- http://ecrans.liberation.fr/ecrans/2013/11/08/le-56kast-3-facebook-wikimedia-buzzfeed_945597
Strategy
How does this programme fit in with the foundation’s strategic priorities?
This programme is in line with two of the foundation’s strategic priorities - Increasing the number of contributors and Enriching the content – by raising awareness among and training various target groups and making the environment favourable to Wikimedia projects. Here, the target group was mainly teachers and, more widely, educational professionals. The conferences and contribution training sessions in the school environment always include a section in which the Wikimedia projects are presented. The various target groups were therefore made aware of the projects.
What strategy was deployed?
No real strategy was deployed to respond to the different targets. This lack of strategy will be corrected for the next campaign in order to clarify our training services offer.
What is the future for these actions?
These actions need to be coordinated in advance by the employee team, volunteers and partners. For example, we need to produce framework documents setting out the parties’ obligations during an event. Similarly, a strategy for the year will enable us to prioritize actions and define new target groups. With regard to participation in conferences, study days, etc., we note that requests arrive regularly. However, the quality of the speakers is the key to increasing the association’s visibility.
Any additional details:
Programme 6: Afripedia
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A year of Afripédia support |
Presentation
Programme aims
Afripedia is a project with a dual aim:
- To technically permit the off-line consultation of Wikimedia projects (and particularly Wikipedia) in regions where Internet connections are rare or of poor quality (dissemination of knowledge)
- To provide training in contribution to Wikimedia projects for African groups who are currently under-represented and thus encourage the setting-up of Wikimedian communities in French-speaking Africa (dissemination of skills)
The Afripedia project is mainly deployed in French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa. It is run in partnership with the University Agency for French-language Communities (AUF), the French Institute (IF) and Wikimedia France, with the technical support of Kiwix (a software package that allows users to consult Wikipedia off-line) and the indirect financial support (to the French Institute) of the Orange Foundation. The project was defined in 2011 and began in mid-2012. Since then, it has been implemented via training sessions organized with university lecturers, archivists, librarians and AUF trainers. The sessions are used to provide the equipment needed for off-line consultation. We also give instruction to trainees in technical installation, contribution and the training of new contributors. The aim is to set up, maintain and support communities of new contributors to Wikimedia projects.
Actions carried out
The 2013-2014 campaign began with the presentation of the Afripedia project at Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong. During the 2013-2014 campaign, only one initial training session was run, in Yaoundé, Cameroon, from 14 to 18 October 2013. It was the third training session organized jointly by the partners since the beginning of the Afripedia project. 15 people from 5 different countries (Cameroon, Mali, Guinea (Conakry), Gabon, Central Africa), staff from the local University Agency for French-language Communities and the French Institute in Douala (among others), were trained and 3 articles written. Alongside these training sessions, the year was essentially marked by the organization of contribution workshops and conferences by the people who took part in the October 2013 training session: fifty people were trained between January and March 2014 in Cameroon, Gabon and Mali, which suggests that the trainees learned well from their initial training and that there is potential for repeating the exercise. The fourth quarter was marked by significant difficulties in moving the project and the partnership in place forward.
Results
Evaluation
Following the various training workshops run as part of the Afripedia project, a summary document was produced in the form of quantitative and qualitative results. We have taken from it the following data concerning the number of people trained:
- at training sessions organized by Wikimedia France and its partners: 42
- at autonomous training sessions organized by trainees: 87
- 191 active accounts (at least one modification on Wikipedia) and 14 inactive accounts have been counted.
- Various quality indicators have enabled us to evaluate the programme and draw out conclusive evidence and areas for vigilance:
Conclusive evidence
- Strategic focus: international project
- Public relations: significant press cover and project promoted to partners
- Autonomy of the trainees: over a week they were given all the basics and the knowledge to enable them to work autonomously thereafter.
- Local momentum: a real local momentum was created in Mali as a result of one trainee who was particularly committed (Boukary Konaté). He is the driving force in the Afripedia project and the projects linked to the open sharing of knowledge, cf. "When the village wakes up". The project, which is just starting up, plans to set up a space for collecting and sharing information about traditional culture in Mali.
Areas for vigilance
Aims: the training sessions run by trainees seems to be a one-off occurrence.
- Motivation: certain trainees do not follow the whole training course and abandon it during the week.
- Follow-up: we have too little feedback from trained people. They do not communicate when they organize workshops or training sessions.
- Relations with partners: the partnership agreements are not clear and specific enough about everyone’s commitments (discussions and updates of these in progress with partners during 2014).
Progress of the different targets
Wikipedia is available off-line in 27 universities, schools and public access points in French-speaking Africa, in 14 different countries. The systems are installed by trainees and the off-line dissemination points and methods (plug computer, server or installation on computers) are defined in consultation with the trainees depending on local infrastructures and needs. Once the first installations are completed, the trainees are invited to continue deploying them and identify new needs. For example, the universities in Niger have asked Wikimedia France for 10 new plug computers to equip every university in the country.
Volunteer involvement
The volunteers involved in the project are mainly Wikipedia contributors who support the people trained under the Afripedia project through a system of remote mentoring, helping them with their initial contributions. Fourteen volunteers are involved.
Employee involvement
Employees have been involved in the project in two ways: the director of programmes coordinated the whole project until April 2014, with the partners (Kiwix, University Agency for French-language Communities, French Institute, Orange Foundation) and the Afripedia trainers. She organized and ran training sessions in Africa and monitored the project. The network and system administrator worked with Kiwix to coordinate the provision of off-line versions of Wikimedia content, and was responsible for all the associated logistics (ordering and configuring the equipment). The new employee team (and particularly the Wikimedia France Development department) took the project over in April 2014. A certain number of blockages and problems were observed and a number of negotiation meetings took place with the other partners during the last quarter of the campaign.
What worked?
The training course in Yaoundé went well and the trainees undertook to introduce the action plans for following up on the project (type of action, schedule, means required). The trainers who organized contribution workshops were highly autonomous in their action. They prepared and reported on their preparations on the Afripedia discussion list, which allowed for an exchange of information between the people taking part in the project.
What did not work?
Concerning the training sessions:
There is currently too little volunteer involvement in the association. We are therefore thinking about evolutions that might allow more members to become involved in the project and offer their skills and support to the trainees and new contributors. Not all those who took part in the October session have provided feedback on their activities. In particular, we have no news from the participants who came from the Central African Republic. We always have difficulty in monitoring and motivating participants; some trainees do not follow the full training course and abandon it during the week without telling anyone. 4 or 5 people have given up each training course since the start of the project, without providing an acceptable explanation (reported statements).
Concerning the partnerships:
Relations with partners on the Afripedia project went through a period of adjustment, following which it was decided to maintain the last two planned sessions, which will take place in September and at the year-end 2014.
Which publications resulted from the programme?
- Afripedia, le jumeau africain de Wikipedia, poursuit sa conquête du continent, Mathieu Olivier, Jeuneafrique.com, 23/09/2013
- Wikipedia: Le Burkina Faso, grand absent en terme de contributeurs, Julien Yarga, Burkina24.com, 11/11/2013
- Afripedia: Un programme pour l’accès et la production de connaissances libres en Afrique francophone, AUF, auf.org, 14/02/2014
- “100 000 professeurs pour l'Afrique » afin de prevenir le recul du français, Martine Jacot, lemonde.fr, 20/03/2014
- Communautés francophones: “100 000 profs pour l’Afrique », europe-et-formation.eu, 21/03/2014
- France & Afrique: 100 000 professeurs sur trois ans pour relancer la Communauté francophone, Thierry Barbaut, info-afrique.com, 22/03/2014
- Opportunités de formation à l'AUF - Afripedia: appel aux enseignants, Focacom.com (Cameroon Communication Forum), 23/03/2014
- Afripedia, l’encyclopédie avec ou sans internet, Dominique Desaunay, rfi.fr, 09/03/2014
- Afripedia: un programme pour l’accès et la production de connaissances libres en Afrique francophone, Aurélie Julien, Ludomag, 22/04/2014
- Several posts on Fasokan, including Afripedia, une bibliotheque virtuelle pour les enseignants au pays dogon, 27/04/2014
Other publications:
- The production of a re-usable training booklet for training sessions comprising a technical guide to using the equipment and a clear, detailed training programme.
Strategy
How does this programme fit in with the foundation’s strategic priorities?
The project is one of the few that is currently in line with the strategic focus “Encouraging international links”. It is an obvious way for the association to position itself on the “French-language communities” focus, which has not really been exploited up to now.
What strategy was deployed?
The Afripedia project is a pilot project that has run for nearly two years, reaching out to the different countries of French-speaking Africa, which have very specific local contexts. In its current form, the project has a limited impact, due both to the chosen model (training of a small number of people) and the methods used to monitor the project (few or none). The strategy implemented was that of an experiment, with a view to deploying or transforming the project on the basis of feedback from this pilot phase.
What is the future for these actions?
Lessons have been learned from this pilot phase, particularly concerning trainee motivation and involvement. For example, it would be helpful to recruit people by placing more emphasis on motivation, with a selection process based on a CV and a cover letter that would be approved by the partners to the project. The question of monitoring is crucial and requires attention in order to sustain the project over the long term. One solution could be to recruit a local community manager, who would act as a representative and pivot in Africa to coordinate training sessions, orders for plugs and Wi-Fi repeaters and identify future trainers. He would also be a vital aid to monitoring and evaluating the project.
All these questions are also tied in with the project’s local integration: we could imagine a project in which local organizations would be involved, providing better monitoring and dissemination. Target groups could be diversified. In terms of impact, we could consider integrating these training sessions into transnational programmes that already have an established structure in order to maximize the impact and profile.
Other partners could also be associated with the project to give it greater influence. We will be taking steps in this direction in the new 2014-2015 campaign.
Any additional details:
Programme 7: Territorial development
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Presentation
In a context in which the notion of territory is a crucial importance, it is a priority to enable association members to become involved locally in order to help sustain the movement with the support of the employees. Wikimedia France already enjoys strong territorial representation through local groups of volunteers and contributors, based in cities such as Toulouse, Rennes, Grenoble, Lyon, Strasbourg, Lille, Brest and Paris. These groups form a solid foundation for the future, given the expertise available in each one. The work for the coming year will therefore focus on developing the groups by trying to launch new strategies. This is why Wikimedia France is encouraging the setting-up of a relay group in each region.
Programme aims
The overall aims of the project are:
- To develop initiatives and increase the visibility of local projects across the whole country and facilitate the creation of a network of potential partnerships;
- To provide support to increase the involvement of members and thus increase the number of supporters and active members;
- To facilitate recognition by local political authorities;
- To produce a constant interaction between local and national activity;
- To encourage the sharing of experiences between regions.
The start of the year was an opportunity for the Wikimedia France executive board to think about a new regionally-based approach. The strategy was voted on and adopted. The first task was to redesign the initial project, placing greater emphasis on voluntary organization. This is why, initially and before thinking about the deployment of dedicated employees, we were keen to support the setting-up of a relay group made up of members in each region.
The relay group will be responsible for the following tasks:
- Mobilizing members in the regions;
- Drawing up local strategies (relating to partnerships, communication and financing, etc.);
- Setting up a local network of stakeholders and initiatives;
- Relaying the proposals and tools developed at a national level and vice versa;
- Drawing up an annual action plan;
- Identify relevant contacts for the different themes proposed at a national level;
- Select the projects for which the association might provide financial support;
- Once a year, organize a meeting for volunteers/members/contributors.
The second activity was to recruit a territorial organization representative with responsibility for the association’s network department.
The network department’s approach through a local strategy:
We first of all planned to carry out an inventory in order to closely target the expectations and projects of the members of each local group. The different points covered were focused on the history of the local group, the motivations, wishes and needs of its members, how it operates, its past actions, its expertise and know-how, its financial, human and logistical needs and its existing and potential future partnerships.
If there is not yet a local group, the network department works with the members and/or contributors on rallying projects in interaction with the stakeholders in the region.
An action plan proposal linked to members’ aspirations:
We would like to see the inventory lead to a collectively written action plan. The writing of the plan is intended to give greater consistency to projects in the regions. Having clearly expressed the issues and aims, the local group then proposes actions to respond to them, thereby using targeted actions to introduce a local strategy.
The appointment of a referent in each group to facilitate dialogue between the employees and the local group:
The referent is a volunteer who sees that the group runs smoothly and passes on priority information to the network department. He feeds back urgent needs and makes sure that locally-run projects are coherent.
The organization of key events between local groups:
The referent is invited to a gathering of local relays (whole of France) where experiences are shared and needs are expressed. The aim of these meetings will be to talk about good practices and any problem issues, welcome the new referents, train them and draw up an evaluation of the actions carried out.
An annually reviewed action:
An evaluation of the actions carried out is drawn up every year with the territorial organization representative. A fresh round of discussions then takes place with the aim of writing a new action plan for the following year. It may well be an extension of the previous one, following the same strategies and themes, or it may take a totally new direction depending on the evaluation of the previous action plan and the members’ wishes.
Actions carried out
From the analysis of needs to action plans
As a result of a checklist designed for the occasion, the “Tour de France” of the existing local groups was used to analyze local realities, wishes and needs. The checklist was structured around the following points:
- Know the history of the local group, its members and how it operates.
- Learn about past actions and project ideas for the future.
- List all the needs (logistical, financial or technical).
- Know about past partnerships (those currently under discussion or simply the contacts made by members).
- Analyze the territory and its resources.
The construction of action plans in several towns/cities with a local group
The Tour de France of the regions led to the emergence of 9 major action themes:
- Conviviality: Create and unite a community around our actions.
- Representation: Represent our association at events.
- Local lobbying: Persuade local authorities to support our actions.
- Local reputation (attracting new members): Organize initiatives to attract new members.
- Partnership development: Meet and organize actions to increase the number of local partnerships.
- Communication: Enable the local group to publicize its existence and actions.
- Expertise: Train local people to become trainers in their turn
- Tools (acquiring new tools): Members may have specific technical needs: producing posters, processing metadata, etc.
Action sheets are used to structure actions
- Available on Wikimembres, they are used to prepare the action in advance with local groups and have a global view: aims, partners, budgets… It thus makes it easier for members and employees involved in the action to gain a precise idea of the goals and share out the tasks.
- Below is a model action sheet for collaborative work between members and employees:
Action sheets
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- Groups that have already formalized their action plan
The Rennes action plan
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The Toulouse action plan
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The Bordeaux action plan
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The Grenoble action plan
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The Nantes action plan
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The Brest action plan
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The Lyon action plan
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- Discussion groups
Lille
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Quite a long-standing group but dormant over the last few years. The aim is to give a new impetus to the local group by integrating new members previously identified locally. A meeting will therefore be held in September 2014 to discuss and draw up the local action plan. Various projects will then be run concurrently in line with the wishes of different members. |
Strasbourg
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The local Wikimedia dynamism has petered out. The aim over the next few months will be to re-mobilize members around a unifying project. |
- Initiatives in progress
Saint Étienne
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Following the arrival of new members living in Saint Étienne, the action plan is now under discussion. Ideas are already being examined: training to be organized for the general public at an third place, partnership with a local museum, etc. The proposed action plan is as follows:
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Montpellier
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New members have just joined the association with the aim of setting up an third place dedicated to collaboration and knowledge and to organize training for the general public there. The idea is also to make it a venue identified by the public, a starting point for new, original initiatives. The proposed action plan is as follows:
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Reims
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Active members of the association are seeking to launch a local initiative. The proposed action plan is as follows:
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Vosges Region
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Former Strasbourg members wanted to launch an initiative closer to home. The proposed action plan is as follows:
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- Future initiatives
PACA Region
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The budding strategy is more institutional than in other regions. In September 2014 we are meeting local elected representatives and key figures in the cultural world (museum directors, etc.) to discuss the possibility of launching a partnership locally between Wikimedia France and these local stakeholders. |
Limousin Region
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A member is keenly interested in how to go about launching a local initiative in Limoges, where there is no local group as yet. |
Annecy
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A member of the association is looking to launch an initiative in his town. To do this, he would like to work on two themes and hopes to mobilize more globally in the town. The two themes are :
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Dijon
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Wiki Loves Monuments is the starting point for setting up a small open source community. |
- Discussions with Third Places
The third place is a flexible space that is currently developing. It offers a physical and/or symbolic venue to a community of users. It responds to the need for visibility and the collective acquisition by regions and their inhabitants of knowledge for all and, more globally, open source culture. What are the complementary features? How can these places become central for our local groups? How do we support local communities? How do we add to our visibility and increase the number of members of the Wikimedia association?
With the possibility of using these places, local groups can benefit from the many opportunities they offer: organizing sessions (training, contributions), organizing public meetings to raise awareness of Wikimedia projects, occupying a place to devise regional action plans in new cities.
In Saint-Étienne and Montpellier, moves are afoot to set up local groups and focus people’s minds on the issue of knowledge for all. Members who joined the association recently have expressed a wish to turn these places into a testing ground.
- Partnership with la National Federation of Rural Community Centres
The aim of this unifying, collaborative project was to involve the Community Centres and local associations by encouraging them to run educational and pedagogical initiatives, accompanying the development of these initiatives and helping to promote them. The chosen themes are food and local heritage, tangible and intangible. With its regional relays across France, the national federation, through its local recipes project on Wikibooks, is looking to train local coordinators to master Wiki technology in order to use it with their groups. As it happens, the first project is for regional delegations to work on local recipes. The idea is to involve the federations and local associations in a project that focuses on local treasures and knowledge, and also to contribute towards an understanding and recognition of the regions, customs, products and heritage through meaningful actions and the values of popular education, openness to others, dialogue and sharing. All of this should lead to the publication of recipes in Wikibooks.
- An awareness-raising initiative on the part of the local authorities
Local authorities are key players in the regions, at a communal, departmental and regional level. The overall aims are therefore to encourage elected representatives to support these issues, help local people to promote their locality by using the Wikimedia projects and urge them to disseminate content under free licence.
The cities:
Agreement signed: The association is currently finalizing a partnership with Bordeaux City Council which includes plans for collaboration over the years to come.
Partnership under discussion:
Rennes: Although it is quite progressive in France on digital issues and culture, Metropolitan Rennes still has no agreement with the association.
Toulouse: following the success of the first collaboration between Wikimedia France and Toulouse City Council, the members and the Council have planned to meet to discuss a new agreement.
Grenoble: the Council has just appointed an elected representative responsible for digital and open data issues. A partnership has already been mentioned. Local institutions are ready to collaborate and experiment with joint actions.
Brest: the Council is quite a special example in France, having been involved in a Wiki territorial project for several years. However, few local contributors have dared to become involved in the Wikimedia projects. A partnership would become particularly meaningful if it was based on training in Wikimedia projects.
The departments:
The departments are involved in regional development: rural facilities and land use. The departments also have responsibility for cultural affairs: setting up and running departmental lending libraries, departmental archive services, museums and heritage protection.
Agreement signed: The association has finalized a partnership with the Loire Atlantique department. This one-year, renewable agreement will give members of the local Nantes group access to resources that have not yet been disseminated. In exchange, the Wikimedians will train departmental officers in contributing to the Wikimedia projects.
The regions:
The regions are involved in the field of economic development, education and vocational training.
No agreements have been signed with the regions for the moment
Partnership under discussion: The Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur region is interested in running an experiment with the association. Meetings are planned for the start of the year. Possible options for the moment are tourism and, in particular, promoting local heritage.
Results
Evaluation
Progress of the different targets
Local groups:
Regional initiatives are gradually being put into place in order to discuss what action may be taken and how it may be structured. Some of the more long-standing groups have drawn up their action plan and are beginning to fill in the action sheets so that everyone can become involved. The emerging groups are discussing the wide range of options for local initiatives linked to the Wikimedia projects.
Third places:
Two third places are interested in experimenting with a Wikimedia initiative.
The local authorities:
Two agreements have been signed and others are under discussion. These partnerships are the result of the dynamism of local groups.
Volunteer involvement
Regional initiatives are based entirely on the will and commitment of local members. It is therefore important to try and channel this energy to prevent it from being spread too thinly. The volunteers have understood the approach and nearly a hundred of them have been met over the last few months. ]
Employee involvement
An employee is specially dedicated to supporting local groups.
What worked?
Although the process has been difficult to put in place, local groups have accepted the proposed methodology.
What did not work?
The members use their spare time to take part in these initiatives; it is not always easy to mobilize them for large-scale projects.
Which publications resulted from the programme?
- http://blog.wikimedia.fr/cabale-lyonnaise-en-route-pour-la-diffusion-libre-de-contents-2-6455 Visit to the local Lyon group.
- http://www.sudouest.fr/2014/06/16/les-petites-mains-bordelaises-de-wikipedia-1586029-2780.php: meeting with two Bordeaux Wikimedians
- http://www.wave-innovation.com/wiki-brest.html: Wiki Brest and Wikimedia France
- http://www.lacantine-rennes.net/events/atelier-wikipedia-autour-de-rennes/: Wikipedia workshop in the Rennes canteen
Strategy
How does this programme fit in with the foundation’s strategic priorities?
This programme is in line with two of the foundation’s strategic priorities, which are: encouraging innovation and development and increasing participation. Encouraging innovation: this programme seeks to encourage innovation by bringing together local stakeholders and devising new projects consistent with each group’s ideas. This is how we intend to encourage innovation within the Wikimedia projects. Increasing participation: by going out to meet contributors, finding out what they want and recognizing their efforts via unifying action plans, the association’s new territorial development programme is helping to increase volunteer activity. Over the past few months, members and contributors have focused on initiatives with an evidently local scope, have gone out to meet new audiences, have trained them, have made contact with partners who have resources useful for Wikimedia projects and have set up partnerships with local authorities which very often have wide-ranging expertise in cultural and educational matters.
What strategy was deployed?
Over the first few months of the association’s territorial development, the strategy that was used was to go out and meet existing local groups, listen to them and highlight their needs and ideas for action. Following on from these initial meetings, action plans were drawn up to channel the groups’ energies into unifying initiatives for the coming year. Referents were then appointed for each group to act as go-betweens, feeding back needs to the national association, etc. These first few months of territorial development were therefore focused on existing members and current initiatives. A new series of initiatives also appeared in several cities. The strategy deployed was to make contact with local stakeholders and contributors who were not members of the association and suggest Wikimedia actions in their locality. Action plans were also drawn up after these meetings.
What is the future for these actions?
For local groups with an action plan for the year to come, the association’s employees will make every effort to accompany their initiatives and give their support to ensure that actions are carried out successfully. However, the aim is also to set up initiatives and local groups in regions where currently there are none. The idea will therefore be, with the help of working parties, to launch national projects that will mobil ize Wikipedia and other contributors.
Any additional details:
Lessons learned
[edit]Lessons from the past
[edit]A key objective of the funding is to enable the movement as a whole to understand how to achieve shared goals better and faster. An important way of doing this is to identify lessons learned and insights from entities who receive funds, and to share these lessons across the movement. Please answer the following questions in 1–2 paragraphs each.
- 1. What were your major accomplishments in the past year, and how did you help to achieve movement goals?
The major accomplishment in the past year was to be able to structure ourselves in a sustainable manner. By developing a strategic plan, an action plan, a quality approach and an organizational chart, we have made reliable organization. We believe we have taken a major step in the progress goals we planned. We achieved this thanks to the joint work of different groups : employees, members of the board of trustees and volunteers.
- 2. What were your major setbacks in the past year (e.g., programs that were not successful)?
The biggest problem we had this year and we continue to work on, is the mistrust between the different groups. A lot of work has been conducted on the employee team to fit peoples and professional practices in volunteer involvement. Some employees arrived last spring and they have to learn and to adapt themselves to this very special organization. Concerning the board of trustees, they began to refocus their operational activities into strategic activities. This work will be consolidated this year with the support of a consultant. Finally a real trust must be restored with volunteers. The clarification of the organization should be a good support to enable it.
- 3. What factors (organizational, environmental) enabled your success?
The good dialogue between the board of trustees and the executive director of the association allowed them to make tough decisions and implement them in a very short time. This work had a positive impact on the entire organization.
- 4. What unanticipated challenges did you encounter and how did this affect what you were able to accomplish?
Difficulties in the accounting organization caused a significant increase in workload. Today the situation is stabilizing.
- 5. What are the 2–3 most important lessons that other entities can learn from your experience? Consider learning from both the programmatic and institutional (what you have learned about professionalizing your entity, if you have done so) points of view.
- Chapters must be adapted to the work of employees, but also volunteers : A space should be devoted to them.
- We can not do without a strong accounting organization and human resources plan. These saves considerable time after implementation.
- It's essential to share as much as possible between the Board ot Trustees and the Executive Director. This creates an environment of constructive work.
Lessons for the future
[edit]The Wikimedia movement grows as each entity in the movement reflects and adapts its approaches to changing needs and contexts. The questions below encourage you to apply your thinking in the sections above of "how well have we done" and "what have we learned" to the development and execution of future organisational and program strategies. The questions below can be informed both by your own entities' learnings, as well as the learnings of other movement entities (e.g., adding a new program that appears to have caused significant impact in several other countries or communities).
- 1. What organisational or program strategies would you continue?
- Please find this point in each program.
- 2. What might you change in organisational and program strategies in order to improve the effectiveness of your entity?
- Succeed in creating a relationship of trust between the different groups to allow greater involvement of volunteers.
- 3. Please create at least one learning pattern from your entity's experiences this year and link to it here.
- Please find a learning pattern here : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_patterns/When_staff_work_with_volonteers
Stories of success and challenge
[edit]Of all the accomplishments highlighted through this report, please share two detailed stories: one story of a success and one story of a challenge that your entity experienced over the past year in a few paragraphs each. Provide any details that might be helpful to others in the movement on the context, strategy, and impact of this initiative. We suggest you write this as you would tell a story to a friend or colleague. Please refrain from using bullet points or making a list, and rather focus on telling us about your organization's experience.
Case study: success
[edit]- Please find above our project of photography by drone : Grants:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round2/Wikimédia France/Impact report#Actions carried out
Case study: challenge
[edit]- Please find above the Public Domain Remix contest : Grants:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round2/Wikimédia France/Impact report#Actions carried out 3
Additional learning
[edit]- 1. What are some of the activities that are happening in your community that are not chapter-led? What are the most successful among these, and why?
- We realized it was important to diversify the themes of actions supported by Wikimedia France.
Indeed, GLAMs do not reach all contributors' interest. So we deploy new themes like sport and offered training in photography to enrich Wikimedia Commons.
- 2. Provide any links to any media coverage, blog posts, more detailed reports, more detailed financial information that you haven't already, as well as at least one photograph or video that captures the impact your entity had this past year.
- Please find this links in each program.
Compliance
[edit]Is your organization compliant with the terms defined in the grant agreement?
[edit]- 1. As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
- 2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes
- 3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes
Financial information
[edit]- 1. Report any Grant funds that are unexpended fifteen (15) months after the Effective Date of the Grant Agreement. These funds must be returned to WMF or otherwise transferred or deployed as directed by WMF.
- 2. Any interest earned on the Grant funds by Grantee will be used by Grantee to support the Mission and Purposes as set out in this Grant Agreement. Please report any interest earned during the reporting period and cumulatively over the duration of the Grant and Grant Agreement.
Signature
[edit]Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes. Schiste (talk) 20:05, 28 September 2014 (UTC)