Grants:Conference/Africa Gender and ICT Bootcamp: Connecting the dots to close the digital gender gap
Event overview[edit]
Purpose and vision
Please give a brief description of the event you are planning. What do you hope to accomplish during the event? Why is this event important for your community?
The bootcamp is an event training course for Wikimedians in Africa, which aims to promote more effective gender-responsive policies with a mix of skill-building and public policy on data and digital life. Gender-responsive policies range from local level initiatives to national policy actions — where policies, programs and budgets in countries contribute to the effective implementation of commitments towards women’s empowerment and gender equality in targeted sectors.
Over a three-day period, participants will have time to learn, share and build their skills on gender-responsive policy, data literacy, and privacy and online security. Our objectives include:
- Offering hands-on training to participants on data literacy, online security, tech policy and gender-responsiveness
- Fostering conviviality and better communication skills for community leadership for Wikimedians as per survey responses.
- Having Web Foundation and Wikimedia communities partner with mission-aligned organizations to prioritise and address tackling the digital gender divide on current projects they are working on
- Discussing potential lines of actions and make commitments to ensure at least one action from each participant when they return home.
- Offering a mix of workshops assessing various themes relevant to ensuring that digital gender gap is narrowed - and closed - through a variety of different, interconnected policy interventions.
To close the digital gender gap, it is critical that digital equality, women’s rights, and digital rights advocates are able to present decision-makers in governments and companies with clear, evidence-based policy recommendations, and to monitor progress towards implementation and impact.
Important details
Please add key information to the table below. The dates, location and number of participants can be estimates and do not need to be finalized at this time.
| Proposed date(s) | February 2019 - July 2019 |
| Proposed location | Accra, Ghana |
| Number of participants | 20 |
| Event page | https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grants:Conference/Africa_Gender_and_ICT_Bootcamp:_Connecting_the_dots_to_close_the_digital_gender_gap |
| Primary contact person | Nnenna Nwakanma |
Background[edit]
Community input[edit]
Use the results from the community engagement survey to fill in the table below. Since you cannot cover all topics or meet all needs at one event, prioritisation is important. Please rank the priority of each topic, skill, project or problem as high, medium or low. Finally, please answer the questions below the table.
| Description | Priority | |
|---|---|---|
| Strategic discussions:
What are the top issues affecting your community that need to be discussed in person? |
Online security and data literacy training.
People that are currently within the community are aware of the issues surrounding gender imbalance. However, the community is growing - and if things are working to plan, they should be growing fast, soon. To develop responsive policies and actions now is the best time for this to happen. It is far better to understand the context of the situation and plan actions that integrate measures to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment, foster women’s inclusion and provide equal opportunities for women and men within the community and during outreach and other programmes conducted by that communit |
3 |
| Capacity development:
Are there important skills that many people in your community need to learn? |
Hands on skills on basic programming and editing skills, data literacy and open data, leadership and training. Also how to target and invite the right people that will potentially be active editors.
Through critical data literacy – "to understand and critique how the beliefs and values of people and groups (including government) influence what data is created, how it is shared and how it is used to tell compelling stories. And how to create and tell one's own stories using data." – participants of all Wiki-based projects to understand how data can be an effective way of illustrating a problem or issue. It is also best to be aware of how data can be manipulated or mis-presented in order to tell a different story. |
4 |
| Working groups:
Are there joint projects that need to be planned in person? |
The Web Foundation has received requests from affiliates to help them discuss the implementation of a toolkit to facilitate women's internet access and digital literacy and workshop the essential elements and requirements for the event toolkit to help support other gender /Wiki events across the region and beyond. The bootcamp will also be a good space for people to learn about how to avoid potential threats to the work of Wikipedians and Wikimedia communities. |
2 |
| Community building:
Are there other in-person activities are important for community building? |
Other in-person activities important for community building include editathons, community meetings with women with Wikipedia editors on how to upload profiles and make maximum use of Wikipedia/interact with other Wikipedia network. Another important activity is training on facilitating policy initiatives and engaging government officials on gender-responsive policy with regards to internet access and closing gender digital gaps. | 1 |
Survey analysis:
- How many people did you send the survey to? How many people responded to the survey?
- The survey was sent to 500+ people, including members of the Wiki Indaba Facebook group chat, Wiki Loves Africa, Whose Knowledge, Wikimedians of Cameroon, Wikimedians of Uganda, Wikimedians of Ghana, Wikimedians who applied for the Web Foundation and Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI)’s Africa Summit for Women and Girls in Tech, Wikipedia Women, and Women in Red.
- We received 15 completed responses.
- Did you see consensus around shared goals that this community wants to focus on in the next 12 months? What were the top 2 goals?
- Yes, there is consensus around shared goals that the Wikimedian community working in Africa wants to focus on in the next 12 months. Goal 1 - Online security: online safety, data protection, gender based violence awareness, cyber crime/cyber bullying prevention. Goal 2 - Digital/data literacy training, including open data and access to information.
- Based on survey responses, what are the most important things your community should do at the conference to achieve those goals?
- The community should prepare and present summaries of the topics covered to be able to take back and share the learnings with their respective communities. The most important topics include:
- learning about policies that affect women in ICT and what kind of positive impact a gender-responsive lens would have. This includes scenario planning.
- learning how to do data analysis, data visualization, data protection, online security, advocacy, and capacity building using training materials like toolkits. Specific policy gaps the training will help close are i) multi-stakeholder principles, techniques and practices, and ii) community communication good practices The Policy goals we hope to achieve in the long-term are:
- For Wikimedia communities in Africa to attend and create relationships with activists to help the Wikimedia movement move to/engage in policy advocacy work in emerging regions and build activism among community members;
- To build awareness of Wikimedia projects especially among activist women and possibly encourage them to join our movement and grow our reach in their countries, and
- To involve in the process Wikimedia’s African community members who may be local collaborators. For reference, the survey link is here
- The community should prepare and present summaries of the topics covered to be able to take back and share the learnings with their respective communities. The most important topics include:
Context[edit]
It is helpful to get an understanding of why this event is important to your community, and what experiences you have had in the past. Please answer the applicable questions below.
- 1. What inspired your community to begin planning this event?
- Web Foundation has a track record of building successful multi-stakeholder coalitions and networks and managing large multi-country projects with active participation of local partners. We hope that this event will encourage civil society across the continent to become active members of Wikimedia movement, take the knowledge and experience from the bootcamp back to their home community.
- 2. How does this event relate to other activities that your community is working on?
- The bootcamp will be a follow-up to the Gender Gap meet up at WikiIndaba 2018 in Tunis. This will bring new collaborations between communities of different expertise (e.g. data, policy, activism). The Africa Summit for Women and Girls in Technology Our ongoing Women’s Rights Online (WRO) research and advocacy network works to create an evidence-base to push for digital policy reform. The WRO network currently comprises women’s rights and digital rights groups across 19 countries across Africa, South East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. These groups are all working locally and regionally to bridge the gender gap in technology, data, and policy making. The Web Foundation has open data and policy training modules that would help in skilling and introducing participants to policy engagement avenues for digital gender equality. These trainings can extend and be useful to multiple audiences. For example, both civil society representatives and policymakers can benefit from data literacy, gender responsiveness and online security, and multi-stakeholder processes and policy advocacy .
- 3. Please list the priorities identified in the report from the last conference organized by this community. What progress have you made in those areas? - Not applicable
- 4. If your community has hosted a similar conference in the past, what key lessons were learned, and what would you like to improve on?
- The Web Foundation has experiences on how to build country based action alliances (e.g. Alliance for Affordable Internet - A4AI), action-based campaign alliances (e.g. “FastAfrica”), thematic-based alliances (e.g. “Net rights Coalition”), issue-based coalitions (e.g. TechMousso), and time-specific national actions. We also advocate for gender-responsive ICT policies in a participant’s respective country (see A4AI’s detailed work in this area). In addition, the Web Foundation has co-hosted the Gender Gap meet up with Wikimedia Foundation at Wiki Indaba in Tunis in March 2018. Key lessons learned are that the event program should be meaningful to the community and to allocate enough time for in-depth discussions. More of such training/collaborations would still be needed to maintain the momentum so as to continually and rightly recognize and document the efforts of African women exceeding against the odds).
Plan[edit]
Proposed program[edit]
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
| 9:00 - 10:30 | Ice breaker. Team building activities | Data track 2 | Planning for the future |
| 10:30 - 11:00 | Break | Break | Break |
| 11:00 - 12:30 | Communities | Data track 3 | Team activity |
| 12:30 - 14:00 | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch by teams |
| 14:00 - 15:30 | Data Track 1 | Policy Track 2 | Team project activity |
| 15:30 - 16:00 | Break | Break | Break |
| 16:00 - 17:30 | Policy Track 1 | Policy track 3 | Team presentations and closing |
Venue and Logistics[edit]
- 1. If the venue is more than 1 hour away from a major airport or transportation hub, how will participants travel to the event venue?
- The venue is 1 hour away from Kotoka airport.
- 2. Is the event venue within walking distance from the hotel? If not, how will people travel between the two locations?
- Event venue and hotel are in the same place.
- 3. Is the event venue and hotel accessible for people with physical disabilities?
- Yes
- 4. Do you anticipate any challenges with using the space for the event you are planning?
- No
Friendly space policy[edit]
Please link to the friendly space policy that your community will be using for this event. Friendly space policy - Space will be created on the Wikimedia platform after grant approval.
Participation[edit]
It is crucial that most participants have a minimum level of Wikimedia experience so that they can engage actively in workshops and discussions. Please answer all applicable questions below.
- 1. Please describe the target audience for this conference or event.
- We are targeting young, active, policy-level Africa-based Wikimedians. At least, 50% being womenAll participants will have some Wikimedia experience (e.g. Wikipedia). There will be a maximum of 20 participants from civil society across African continent. Focus would be on English-speaking countries to allow for better interaction/collaboration/follow-up among participating countries. Participants would be drawn from the Wikipedia and gender digital rights communities. The Web Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation will develop the criteria together, specifically seeking to find participants from across different African countries working in different digital and digital rights contexts.
- 2. If your conference has an outreach component, how will you ensure engagement with these participants after the conference, and what impact do you see them having on the projects?
- We will set up a agreed social media channels where bootcamp participants can exchange learnings and share updates on their projects. In this group we will share notes and takeaways from the team project activities. The outreach component will help achieve the bootcamp’s long-term goals of connecting the volunteers to a higher level of policy activism, better data literacy, improved data advocacy capacities, improved community leadership, and extended alliances.
- 3. Are you thinking about inviting WMF staff to attend or participate in the event? If yes, please list individuals or teams who you may want to invite, or describe how you would like WMF staff to be involved in the event.
- Yes. We would like to invite folks from the Partnerships & Global Reach team, the Public Policy team, and the Community Resources team. We would like WMF staff to assist us with developing the agenda and materials for the bootcamp to ensure it is relevant to the needs of Wikimedians attending; we would like WMF staff to assist us with facilitator/trainer and participant selections; and lastly, we would like staff to offer suggestions as needed for planning, logistics and scholarships administration.
Scholarships[edit]
- 1. How many scholarships would you like to offer?
- 15
- 2. What expenses will the scholarship cover?
- Scholarship will be provided by affiliates which will cover visa, travel, accommodation and food expenses.
- 3. How will scholarship recipients be selected?
- Web Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation will do the selection.
Resources and risks[edit]
Describe the resource potential for successfully executing this project and the key risks/threats.
Resources[edit]
- Organizing team
| Team | User Names |
|---|---|
| WMF Liaison | Georgina Bukenya Fields |
| Logistics | Anabmap |
| Conference Program | Nne75, Anabmap, Nanjira Sambuli |
| Scholarships | Web Foundation |
| Communications | Mara Silvestri |
| Volunteer Coordinators | Ursula Sage, May Hashem |
| Other team members | Jan Gerlach, Alex Wang, Jack Rabah |
Risks[edit]
Examples of risks, along with how you would minimize or overcome them, are: Each wikicamp brings many new editors and we need more creative activites to keep the army of editors to continue the way they started and even do much more.
- Skill gaps in basic use of the Computer. Some participants may be mostly mobile phone friendly
- Low level of ICT and policy knowledge
Examples of how to minimize these risks include:
- Require each participant to own and come with personal computer
- Include question on level of education during selection
Budget[edit]
Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here. See Budget Guidelines.
- Event budget table
| (in USD) | Units | Cost per Unit | Cost to WMF | Total |
| Project Management
(Months) |
||||
| Data Officer | 2 | $3,000 | 0 | $6,000 |
| Policy Director | 1 | $4,200 | 0 | $4,200 |
| Admin and finance | 2 | $2,000 | 2000 | $4,000 |
| Subtotal | 2000 | $10,200 | ||
| Bootcamp (Persons) | ||||
| WF team | 3 | $2,500 | 5000 | $7,500 |
| Participants | 15 | $2,500 | 30000 | $37,500 |
| Venue costs | 1 | $5,000 | 2000 | $5,000 |
| Subtotal | 37000 | $45,000 | ||
| Facilitators and Trainers | ||||
| Trainer 1 | 1 | $5,000 | 0 | $5,000 |
| Trainer 2 | 1 | $5,000 | 0 | $5,000 |
| Trainer 3 | 1 | $5,000 | 5000 | $5,000 |
| Events Manager | 1 | $2,000 | 1000 | $2,000 |
| Subtotal | 6000 | $17,000 | ||
| First Total | 45000 | $72,200 | ||
| Indirect costs | 1 | (10%) 15% | 4500 | $10,830 |
| TOTAL | $49,500 | $83,030 |
- Total cost of event
- 83,000.00 USD
- Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program
- 50.000USD
- Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this event, and amounts funded
- Program and organisational support from Web Foundation and other potential partners
- Please confirm that you are aware that changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.
Yes.
Discussion[edit]
Endorsements[edit]
Do you think this project should be selected for a Conference Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.
Support A great idea Mounir Touzri (talk) 18:17, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
