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Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Centre for Internet and Society's annual work plan for 2023-2024

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statusFunded
Centre for Internet and Society's annual work plan for 2023-2024
start date2023-07-012023-07-01T00:00:00Z
end date2024-06-302024-12-31T00:00:00Z
budget (local currency)17582400 INR
amount requested (USD)212677 USD
amount recommended (USD)212635
grant typeNonprofit organization with Wikimedia mission
funding regionSA
decision fiscal year2022-23
funding program roundRound 2
applicant and people related to proposal* Subodh (CIS-A2K)
organization (if applicable)The Centre for Internet and Society

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Applicant details

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Wikimedia username(s):

Organization:

The Centre for Internet and Society

G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?

Applied previously and did receive a grant

H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?

Yes

H.1 Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?

Centre for Internet and Society has received funds from Privacy International, International Labour Organization, Omidyar Network, Internet Society, Wikimedia Foundation, Mozilla Corporation et cetera.

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

No

M1. Fiscal organization name.

N/A

Additional information

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R. Where will this proposal be implemented?

India

S. Please indicate whether your work will be focused on one country (local), more than one or several countries in your region (regional) or has a cross-regional (global) scope:

Local

S1. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

T. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)

Official website and social networking service:

Website; Facebook; Twitter; YouTube Instagram

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

No

M1. Fiscal organization name.

N/A

Proposal

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1. What is the overall vision of your organization and how does this proposal contribute to this? How does this proposal connect to past work and learning?

The Centre for Internet and Society
LocationIndia
ReportsA2K reports
(or read the organisation's annual reports, newsletters)
Websitecis-india.org
E-mail addressprogram(_AT_)cis-india.org

Access to Knowledge (A2K) program run by Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), is working with the mission of catalysing the growth of open knowledge movement in South Asia and in Indic languages. To pursue this mission over the course of the past decade, A2K has employed various strategies, such as the capacity building of volunteers, building partnerships with organizations, and working closely with communities towards their stable and sustainable growth. A2K has developed this proposal taking into consideration various factors such as current conditions of the Indic communities, past work of the A2K team, feedback that we have received, and opportunities that are available for engagement. Additionally, we have made an effort to incorporate the grants committee's feedback to think of new and innovative approaches to learn, reflect, and build initiatives. However, A2K is currently facing a challenge in terms of the capacity as some of our key team members have left the team. To address this issue effectively, A2K is taking the following approach:

  • Building Capacity: A2K will invest in hiring and mentoring new team members, improving collaboration with existing community leaders and nurturing new leaders.
  • Partnerships: A2K has built a strong network of collaborative partners and has the ability to forge and sustain healthy partnerships. We will utilise this strength as a key component in our plans, as their resources, abilities, and experience will complement our work.

A2K has created a proposal that builds on successful activities and projects from previous program years and is committed to improving them with innovative approaches. A2K has also reshaped projects that have not yielded desired outcomes.

2. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important?

A2K is trying to have positive impact across four objectives:

  • Build stable and sustainable models of community leadership across Indian Wikimedia projects.

Across many global conversations organised by Movement Strategy team and other WMF teams the point building stable and sustainable communities has emerged. While the regulatory, governance issues are not easy for the A2K team to resolve, we are attempting to build sustainable and empathetic leadership models for the growth of our communities.

  • Identify and advocate for the necessary support (skills, tools, resources, networking) required for the improvement of Indic Wiki communities.

In all of our one on one training sessions, request page discussions and in person event feedback the request for support for the growth of their communities has been consistent. A2K will continue to provide this support and build on some existing initiatives at the global level to find other avenues of support.

  • Participate in global conversations and contribute to the policies and strategic discussion to ensure that Indic communities are represented in a competent manner.

There has been a dearth of voices and representation in global conversations, events and discussions from the South Asia region. We would like to work towards building this capacity and have more advocates for this region.

  • To build a program that moves away from programmatic accomplishments to think of a long term impact and widen the community (readers, editors, partners and patrons)

A deeper analysis of what the program has achieved reveals that while the A2K initiatives have been successful in growing the reach and quantitative metrics across projects, the communities have not seen steady growth in non content and non programmatic areas.

3. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.

A2K is planning to improve, reshape and scale up its successful projects to address evolving needs and strategies. We reflected on the aspects that are not working and persistent challenges in those models in order to reshape. For scaling the initiatives, we are relying on processes and planning that we developed over years.

A2K plans to conduct the flagship event Train-the-Trainer (TTT) which already had seven iterations from 2013 to 2020. This is to invest in our past project which is a considerable success. We are working on a new program model (multiple models of leadership and mentorship initiatives) and taking up new focus which resonates with the current global conversations around leadership development and addresses the current needs of the Wikimedia communities). On the same note, we are developing processes under National Digitisation Program and planning to scale up successful programs like digitisation to national level. Apart from working on successful projects, we are also investing some of our efforts in working on new projects. These include conducting a national level salon around movement strategy, collaborating with global communities to initiate working on Wikibase in India, working with some language communities to roll out projects that intend to get high retention. A2K could not do an extensive and coordinated needs assessment unlike previous program years. We are tapping into the multiple assessments done for WMF led initiatives, community led events and our experience of working with communities has helped in designing the current activities. A2K is dedicating a significant portion of the resources this program year to analyse and, reflect on various factors that affect the strategic direction of Free knowledge movement in Indian languages and the role A2K can play to arrive at a new comprehensive vision. A2K identified four thematic verticals to build this proposal on. They are:

  • Engagement
  • Capacity building
  • Global collaboration
  • A2K assessment & strategic planning

4. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

A2K’s work plan for 2023-24 outlines the following activities: (1) Engagement

  • A2K will roll out the initial phase of the national digitization program where we expand our digitization partners and centres to 2 more Indian states (A2K has 6 centres currently) to serve more language Wikisource projects.
  • A2K will conduct content creation activities such as edit-a-thons and contests focusing on addressing content gaps and long-standing issues related to quality of the Indian language Wikipedias.

We plan to collaborate with Indian language communities and the Indic MediaWiki Developers User group to map and address technical gaps in Indian language Wikipedias.

  • A2K plans to partner with organisations focused on interest groups like senior citizens,subject experts and conduct workshops, edit-a-thons, and advanced training sessions in various cities to onboard and create retention.
  • A2K will replicate successful relicensing efforts of reference books from Maharashtra and Goa in other regions and languages of India through efforts to improve awareness in literary communities.
  • We will build partnerships with GLAM institutions to expand projects in India and foster "communities of concern" around thematic areas like Water, Gender, Biodiversity, and Science, with Citizen Science communities creating free knowledge and multimedia around these topics.

(2) Capacity building

  • Train the Trainer is a leadership workshop for Indian Wikimedia community members. A2K will conduct it with a new structure exploring multiple leadership and mentorship models, emphasising experiential learning, identifying biases, and building healthy community projects.
  • A2K will conduct Wiki Advanced Training (WAT) which is a workshop for experienced Indian language Wikipedians.
  • CIS-A2K will compile a list of available training material and support at least four Indian language communities in translating these resources.

(3) Global collaboration

  • A2K plans to organise quarterly online meetups to introduce successful global projects and connect Indian language Wikimedians with global leaders. The aim is to follow-up interesting ideas and facilitate further collaboration.
  • A2K will conduct Movement Strategy related conversations in India which is an event for Indian stakeholders to discuss and contribute to Strategy 2030 through meaningful conversations, engagement, and feedback.
  • We will work with the Movement strategy team towards creating an easy to understand document and video about the current status of the Movement strategy process and work on localization of at least 5 languages.
  • In collaboration with Wikimedia Deutschland, CIS-A2K has initiated processes to develop two Wikibase pilot projects in India, one with a reputable library and another with an NGO, to build bibliographic data and data on Indian rivers.

(4) A2K assessment & strategic planning

  • A2K will conduct assessment of the current situation of Free knowledge movement in India and how these can influence the Wikimedia projects
  • We will conduct meetups with team members, experts, community leaders and other stakeholders to identify priority areas of engagement
  • Develop a multi year plan for the consideration of the South Asia Regional Funds Committee to enable us to invest and build on the outcomes of the assessment.

5. Do you want to apply for multi-year funding?      

No

5.1 If yes, provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan?

N/A

6. Please include a timeline (operational calendar) for your proposal.

7. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

Please see CIS-A2K/Team. The Access to Knowledge team of the organisation, Centre for Internet and Society will implement this annual plan. Access to Knowledge team currently has following 4 members:

  1. Subodh Kulkarni, Senior Program Officer
  2. Nitesh Gill, Program Officer
  3. Jayanta Nath, Program Officer
  4. K. N. Medini, Program Officer (Finance)

We plan to expand the team by hiring a Program Manager, one Program Officer and three Program Associates as Full-time contractors. A2K team will also benefit from the Executive Director of CIS who will be functioning as Program Director of the A2K team. As we have outlined in our strategy and other parts of this proposal, building capacity in the team by hiring new talent and mentoring them efficiently will be one of our priorities this program year. We have built this proposal taking into account the experience and abilities of existing team members and complementing it with capacities of our stable and long-term partners. For the drafting of this plan, User:Pavan santhosh.s has helped by being a thought partner and designing the flow of the activities and shaping up of the ideas that will be taken up by CIS-A2K.

8. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Geography, Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context), Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial

8.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

A2K team is working towards bridging geographical and linguistic barriers within the Indian sub-continent. North East India related information is not found extensively across media platforms, the problem is even more acute when it is analysed with open knowledge lens. Our work during this program year will try and reduce this geographical inequity and bring more content with equity and consent of the community partners. Our “Content improvement activities” are specifically centred around bridging various content gaps in Indian language Wikipedias. We are going to conduct edit-a-thons and contests to improve content in those topics.

9. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Education, Culture, heritage or GLAM , Diversity

10. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Please note, we had previously asked about inclusion and diversity in terms of CONTENTS, in this question we are asking about the diversity of PARTICIPANTS. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Geographic , Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background, Socioeconomic status

11. What are your strategies for engaging participants, particularly those that currently are non-Wikimedia?

The A2K initiative aims to engage with non-wikimedians as part of its engagement strategy. The following are the approaches that will be employed to engage and retain non-wikipedians:

  • A2K will work with focus interest groups such as senior citizens to focus on retention. Indian language Wikimedia projects have a considerable number of senior citizens who are prolific online contributors due to availability of time. A2K plans to onboard, train and follow up with this focus group to ensure structural retention.
  • A2K will focus on building movement resources and strategies to improve the onboarding process. The initiative plans to use other activities such as content improvement and capacity building to engage newly joined wikimedians and improve their retention.
  • A2K aims to maintain a retention rate of at least 10% of participants to active Wikimedians after two months of their participation. The initiative is committed to structurally integrating retention into the program and placing special focus on this goal.
  • By working with small and underrepresented language communities and activists associated with these communities (eg: Santali, Gondi, Korku, Idu Mishmi, Khasi) A2K team is attempting to increase their digital footprint and provide access to contribution towards Open Knowledge resources.

12. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants and promoting the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy, and/or equivalent local policies and processes?

CIS-A2K is dedicated to creating a friendly and supportive environment for Wikimedians by following Friendly space policies in all of our programs and events. To ensure that our efforts are in line with global best practices, we will work with the Wikimedia Foundation. We will utilise our capacity building activities to raise awareness about diversity and inclusion, Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC), and Friendly space policies for both the community and our team.

13. Do you have plans to work with Wikimedia communities, groups, or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?

Yes

13.1 If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.

Due to staffing constraints, A2K was unable to conduct a comprehensive and coordinated needs assessment as in previous program years. However, we have leveraged the results of various assessments conducted for WMF-led initiatives, community-led events, and our own experiences of working with communities to design our current activities.

A2K team has also noticed that there is a fatigue around ‘planning discussions’ in the Indic communities due to the small number of community members who are actively providing feedback. A lot of needs assessment would happen over inerson events and informal discussions with Wikimedians, with fewer events happening during the last program year our needs assessment has not been as robust as the previous year.

14. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?

Yes

14.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.

The GLAM partners like RIWATCH, Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir Library, Tarun Bharat Sangh etc. share the same vision of making the knowledge freely accessible to the society. The grassroot partner organisations like Vigyan Ashram, Ecological Society, Lek Ladki Abhiyan etc. proactively working with underrepresented groups are struggling to document the local histories, environmental issues, gender based literature, legal information, rich cultural heritage and vulnerable languages on the internet. Our previous collaborative projects have resulted in mutually beneficial partnerships. Therefore these partners are now supporting logistics, providing venues for meetings and small events, spreading the word among stakeholders for meaningful engagements and publishing the experiences in media, internal reports etc.

The educational institutions are interested in creating digital assignments and projects to integrate the knowledge creation with academic processes.

Some partners have taken initiative to engage their library networks, NGO forums to widen the information base and valuable addition of diverse approaches.

The Indian Government autonomous bodies like The North East Centre for Technology Application and Reach (NECTAR) have started collaborating with us in the CIS-A2K/Events/Digitization & Documentation of Cultural Heritage and Literature in Meghalaya|GLAM projects in the North East region]]. This will definitely inspire other Government agencies to engage with CIS-A2K and language communities in content enrichment and digitisation programs.

15. How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?

At the program level, we are approaching each activity or project as a part of a larger strategy and making plans to either scale up or improve them. This is evident in our focus on scaling up or improving our previous activities and projects. Additionally, in this program year, we are making a conscious effort to build a sustainable vision and plan for future activities and integrating it into our plan for this year. This means that sustaining or expanding the work carried out in this proposal is an integral part of the proposal itself.

16. What kind of risks do you anticipate and how would you mitigate these. This can include factors such as external/contextual issues that may affect implementation, as well as internal issues, such as governance/leadership changes.

  • The availability of appropriate human resources is a crucial factor in the program execution. As we plan to expand the team, there is a possibility of time lapses in this recruitment process. We shall try to complete the tasks through delivery based assignments. We shall try innovative ways of promotion for reaching out to appropriate candidates.
  • Some of the partner organisations would not continue working with us due to changes in their strategies, internal issues etc. We shall try to accommodate the revised approaches and explore the alternative entities as well.
  • The programs in the North East region of India may get hampered by adverse climate and natural disasters. We shall plan the background work, field activities and online sessions accordingly.
  • Security and safety risk: There have been disagreements and dissatisfaction about some of the content on Wikimedia projects regarding a few topics. In such cases the staff or Wikimedians may face anger and threats as well from the affected groups or individuals. We shall consult with the competent authorities to resolve these issues carefully.
  • Compliance and regulatory risk: The program execution needs adherence to legal compliance under FCRA and permissions from Government agencies for some activities wherever applicable. We shall follow the rules and guidelines meticulously to avoid the risk of penal action by the authorities.
  • There is possibility of overlap at the conceptual level as well as with logistics for the events led by various movement groups such as WMF, Country chapters, User groups, CIS-A2K as well as individual Wikimedians. This may result in risk of non engagement of community due to the overlap as well as volume of the programmatic activities.

17. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of three options that most apply.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Manage Internal Knowledge

18. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.  

Yes
CIS-A2K/Strategic plan 2022-2023

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

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19. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

  • Technical challenges and social constraints before the volunteer community
  • Understanding digital expectations of GLAM institutions
  • Organisational structure and process to design multi-year strategic plan
  • Emerging priorities, Effective team structure, Fiscal management and skill building, Long term impact indicators
  • Collaboration of Indian community and global movement
  • Changing engagement with languages and digital knowledge systems
  • How to address the challenges before the languages in the digital knowledge era?

20. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following space provided.

Main Metrics Description Target
Percentage of New editors retained after 2 months of account creation A2K is going to track editors who made 90 edits over a 60-day period 10
Number of team members newly hired and trained Expansion of existing team is proposed 4
Number of activities community members conducted This metric is only tracked when community members clearly identify that they initiated those events due to either capacity building or global engagement activities of A2K 8
Vision document / Research articles produced by A2K Reports, blogs published on meta, Diff, GLAM newsletter etc. 3
Number of Indic language projects mapped for technical needs This metrics is calculated separately when different sister projects with same language were mapped 8

Here are some additional metrics that you can use if they are relevant to your work. Please note that this is just an optional list, mostly of quantitative metrics. They may complement the qualitative metrics you have defined in the previous boxes.

Additional Metrics Description Target
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities Number of contributors across all A2K events and activities 420
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities Number of facilitators in facilitator program and associated event organisers. 100
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability Partnerships with like-minded institutions and mission aligned organisations as well as individuals 6
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors Feedback forms, interviews and email communications will be used to collect this. 50
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees N/A N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications Number of digital footprints on social media posts, as per their analytics 5000
Number of activities developed Events organised in collaboration with community and partner organisations 12
Number of volunteer hours N/A N/A

21. Additional core quantitative metrics. These core metrics will not tell the whole story about your work, but they are important for measuring some Movement-wide changes. Please try to include these core metrics if they are relevant to your work. If they are not, please use the space provided to explain why they are not relevant or why you can not capture this data. Your explanation will help us review our core metrics and make sure we are using the best ones for the movement as a whole.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target
Number of participants Number of participants at events, workshops and training 450
Number of editors Number of contributors across all A2K events and activities 420
Number of organizers Number of facilitators in facilitator program and associated event organisers 100
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target
Wikipedia This includes articles improved with adding over 5 thousand bytes 3500
Wikidata N/A 30000
Wikimedia Commons These include both pictures and pdfs uploaded 9540
Wikisource No. of proofread pages 15000
Wiktionary Pages for words 2000

21.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

N/A

22. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?

  • For “% of New editors retained after 2 months of account creation”, A2K is going to track editors who made 90 edits over a 60-day period by building custom queries and scripts using: Quarry and PAWS. Then use the number of new participants and retained users to get percentage.
  • For “No. of activities community members conducted” and “Recommendations that made by Indian Wikimedians incorporated into Global consultations/initiatives” A2K is going to use a combination of periodic surveys with participants and further communication to confirm the claim.
  • For “No. of Indic language projects mapped for technical needs”, “Number of team members newly hired and trained” and “Vision document / Research articles produced by A2K”, manual tracking and reporting would be sufficient.
  • For “No. of GLAM institutes participated in the survey”, we will use survey results.
  • Programs and Events dashboard for managing program in general and for metric like no. of participants.
  • WMF quarry labs to obtain newly registered users.
  • Event metrics to create new program page and add the relevant data such as event date, participants and Wikiprojects.
  • To calculate the no. of Wikipedia pages created or edited we use WMF quarry labs & Event metrics
  • GLAMorous: This will help us to obtain the no. of images uploaded during an event if the images are added in a category and also it gives data of usage on Wikipedia articles.
  • Petscan: This helps us to determine the no. of media files uploaded during a Photowalk/photo contest if a dedicated category is created and media life are linked to that.
  • Hashtag, Montage, ISA, Wiki Loves tool wherever needed.

Financial Proposal

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23. & 23.1 What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency. If you are thinking about a multi-year fund, please provide the amount for the first year.

17582400 INR

23.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

212677 USD

23.3 Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pjPJrOIBKS7ase-66VWa1UAxl6OxAi243A5KtrEnrqY/edit#gid=0

23.4 Please include any additional observations or comments you would like to include about your budget.

N/A

Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.

Other public document(s): Please see CIS-A2K/Reports and CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter for all the previous Progress reports, Impact reports and Monthly newsletters for details about the events.

Final Message

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By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes


Feedback

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