Grants:PEG/Wikimedia Ghana User Group/Wikineedsgirls/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY Pending has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/Wikimedia Ghana User Group/Wikineedsgirls.

• You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
• You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

A group photo at Accra High School after the Wikineedsgirls campaign.

Project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

YES

Is your project completed?

Partially, since this report covers only 2 out of 3 activities planned in the initial proposal.

Activities and lessons learned

Activities

There project was designed to cover visits to two (2) female high schools and a Wikimedia Clinic in Accra opened to all females. Unfortunately we were able to do just a visit to one Female High School and the Wikimedia Clinic.This was due to the schools writing their final exams and closeness to vacation. It caused as to give the school we planned to visit up north. Find a list of the activities and places visited for the project below;

• Training at Accra High School (3 Days)
• Wikimedia Clinic in Accra for all girls/women (2 Days)

Lessons learned

What worked well?

Training at Accra High School

• Massive turn up and active participation of the students.
• Highly motivated and zealous volunteers who supported throughout the entire project.
• Cooperation and support from the teachers (especially the IT teacher) throughout the project duration.
• Cooperation of parents for issuing out consent to enable the participation of their wards.
• The school for their permission to use the schools premises even on a non school day.

Wikimedia Clinic in Accra for all girls/women

• Even though the participants turn out were not as expected, those who made it were zealous and helped us achieve our targets.
• We were once again able to secure a free venue for the event due to our healthy relationship with the Linux Accra Usergroup.
• Promptness of participants allowed enough time to operate.
• Encouragement by the organizers to research prior to the training, was highly heeded by the participants which helped on the topics to be written on.
• We got the venue for this event at no cost, following our early partnership with the Linux Accra User Group.
• The venue came with a projector as well so we had that too at no cost.

What didn't work?

Training at Accra High School

• Lack of basic IT knowledge and (or) skills (students didn't have basic skills such as typing, identifying some basic tools, even common right clicks).
• Timing was not to favourable as students were preparing for exams and break for the summer holidays.
• PCs in their labs were in very bad shape, so we mostly had to put 2 - 4 students together behind a PC. (This wasn't very convenient as the slow ones kept retarding the progress of their groups).
• Constant blackouts marred some of our training sessions (we mostly resorted to offline training in such situations)

Wikimedia Clinic in Accra for all girls/women

• Low turn up of registered participants.
• Lack of logistics to complement training (only a few attendees present had their own devices for a hands on training). This affected productivity and the pace of work.
• Links to adequate references were not readily available, this hindered our quest to create some more articles.
• Connectivity issues on the day.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Training at Accra High School

• Train students well on basic it skills as the Ghanaian system is currently failing in this area and to ensure maximum participation.
• Always plan for 80% of registered participants as not all may attend.
• Check a day before to ensure logistics are in place.
• Have back up generators to make up for black outs.
• Rent back up logistics (laptops) for participants who may not have editing devices.

Wikimedia Clinic in Accra for all girls/women

• We will advertise projects and open calls way ahead of time.
• Ensure mechanisms that will reduce possible change in venues.
• Rent back up logistics (laptops) for participants who may not have editing devices.
• Sending program details or editing manuals to participants a day or two before the program to familiarize themselves with what to expect.

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

Provide the original project goal here.

• Introduce female students to Wikipedia and its sister projects.
• Train female students about how to edit Wikipedia and be contributors of Wikipedia and its sister projects.
• Increase in the online and offline activities and participation of females on Wikipedia and its sister projects.
• Improve or create new articles for some female schools in Ghana.
• Groom female students to edit articles about their schools and respective communities.
• Mentor female students interested in volunteering for Wikipedia.
• Train female students to help translate and increase content on Akan and Twi Wikipedia.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 short paragraphs.

Yes, we set out to promote Ghanaian women contents on Wikipedia and its sister projects through women participation. We can convincingly say we were able to reach out to a lot of women and female students who got the awareness that there was a little in terms of female contents on Wikipedia and they could also contribute to offset that imbalance. Again they even started by creating some non existent content on Wikipedia.

Progress towards targets and goals

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
To make Wikipedia a household name and an online encyclopaedia known to the average female student in a female senior High School in Ghana.	Students and participants from both sessions have been and in contact to find out about what they don't know or have seen as a result of their usage.	Some participants have been editing from time to time after the sessions. Some have been in touch with questions and other concerns.
To get at least 15 new active female contributors for Wikipedia.	We have about 7 who are active and constantly in touch with us.	This was a target set for both the pilot and subsequent phases.
To form partnerships with each school for subsequent Wikipedia activities in the near future	Our training at the senior high school has yielded the opportunity to create a club to that effect.	The school sees this program as an opportunity to widen the horizon of the students in matters relating to IT.
Create articles for at least 10 notable Ghanaian women	15 articles were created within the time of training	Even though the number of participants were not up to the expected number of participants, we were still able to meet the above mentioned target due to the commitment of the participants who attended. Also we monitored their performance till about the end of the month *August( and realised that even after the training, some more articles (6) were created.
Improve the existing articles of at least 15 notable Ghanaian women.	10 articles were improved within the time of training	Even though the number of participants were not up to the expected number of participants, we were still able to achieve an appreciable fraction of the set target due to the commitment of the participants

Measures of success

• To make Wikipedia a household name and an online Wikipedia known to the average female student in a female senior High School in Ghana.
• To get at least 15 new active female contributors for Wikipedia.
• Create Wikipedia articles for all existing female High Schools we visit and the town the school is located that is if they don't have articles on Wikipedia.
• To form partnerships with each school for subsequent Wikipedia activities in the near future
• Create new articles and develop existing stubs or articles for every Girls Senior High School in Ghana as well as the towns of their location.
• Upload at least 300 images from towns and schools we will visit on Wikimedia Commons.
• Celebrate women achievers in Ghana by nominating and creating articles for at least 10 notable Ghanaian women, improve the existing articles of at least 15 notable Ghanaian women.

Global Metrics

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees. In addition to the measures of success for your specific program (in above section), please use the table below to let us know how your project contributed to the Global Metrics. We know that not all projects will have results for each type of metric, so feel free to put "0" where necessary.

1. Next to each required metric, list the actual outcome achieved through this project.
2. Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome. For example, if you were funded for an edit-a-thon which resulted in 0 new images, your explanation might be "This project focused solely on participation and articles written/improved, the goal was not to collect images."

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	5	Most of the students even after the training kept contact, they expressed their concerns on how to actually edit without the necessary resources (internet enabled devices and accessibility to the internet) to do so. Even though we directed them to their school's computer lab they expressed the inconvenience that created. However from the few numbers of participants at the training for female event we have gained 5 new editors who have shown signs of commitment and activeness.
2. # of new editors	45	A minimum of 45 new editors were registered from both events.
3. # of individuals involved	50	An anticipated total number of participants who passed through. We however are aware that not all of them registered as new editors
4a. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	1	A number of pictures were uploaded about the event and just about one was used. our main focus was to achieve our target to write new and improve some existing articles. This focus somewhat drifted our attention from usage of pictures as contents (written text) was the focus of the day.
4b. # of new images/media uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (Optional)	140	These were pictures taken during the campaign. It includes pictures of activities and places visited.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	25	Even though we couldn't meet our targets on the number of articles to be improved, we are certain a great job has been done in this respect as the number of actual participants used to achieve this fraction of that target is quite applaudable.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	56142	Total absolute value of bytes added to or deleted

Learning question

Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?

Most certainly, we can humbly inference from this project that ladies feel IT related stuff is not their interest and mostly felt it was ok not to understand some things. Most of the time we spent some time explaining the need for women to join in the tech world and steer activities to suit them as women or else stay quite and have the web/internet populated by men inspired subjects or topics. This stood them up for the challenge to contribute to diluting the base for contents.

Impact

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities?

Option A: How did you increase participation in one or more Wikimedia projects?

We increased participation on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia. During our trainings content were pushed into the mentioned platforms through edits, creation of articles and uploads of the pictures taken during the events.

Option B: How did you improve quality on one or more Wikimedia projects?

We improved some existing articles on Wikipedia and added some quality pictures to ensure it complemented some of the articles created.

Option C: How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects?

Having the opportunity to share Wikipedia and other sister projects with the underrepresented in the community is one of the biggest reach we have ever achieved. We hope that getting more of women/girls on board will breed conversations around Wikipedia and technology in their circles and possible ripple through their networks.

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Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".

Yes

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.

Description	Quantity	Unit cost GHS	Budget GHS	Actual Expenditure GHS
EXPENDITURE (VISIT TO ACCRA HIGH SCHOOL)
Rental car	1 car x 3 trainings	200 per day	600	600
Snacks for participants	40 people x 3 trainings	15 per head	1800	1800
Feeding (Volunteers)	8 People x 3 trainings	60 per day	1440	1440
Projector	1 x 3 trainings	100 per day	300	300
Internet	1	205	205	224
DETAILS OF 2 TRAINING SESSIONS FOR FEMALES IN ACCRA
Venue	2 events	200 per day	400	-
Projector	2 events	100 per day	200	-
Transportation to venue	8 people	30 per day for 2 schools	480	480
Lunch for volunteers	8 people	20 per day for 2 events	320	320
Snacks for participants (Day 1)	30 people	20	600	600
**Snacks for participants (Day 2)	15 people	20	-	300
Internet	1	205	205	224
**Phone Calls	-	-	-	200
**Volunteer Meetup and conclusion talks on project	-	-	-	54
Total	-	-	6550	6542

SEE INSTRUCTIONS AT Grants:Index/Create financial report.

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission)

$2,596.17 = GHS 9,995

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if PEG is your only funding source)

GHS 9,995

Total amount spent on this project

GHS 6,542

Total amount of Project and Event grant funds spent on this project

GHS 6,542

Are there additional sources that funded any part of this project? List them here.

Venue was provided during our Wikimedia Clinic thus removed the cost allocated for venue and projector totaling GHS 600

Remaining funds

The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of GHS 3,453 / US$865 were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:PEG/Wikimedia Ghana User Group/GLAM GHANA.

Are there any grant funds remaining?

Answer YES or NO.

YES

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)

GHS 3,453

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.

Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.

We intend to keep this for our next project. That this remaining amount may be subtracted from the total amount of any future project.