Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia Community User Group Rwanda Support Grant 2025-2026/Final Report
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Part 1: Understanding your work
[edit]Per the recent update on the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy process, Wikimedia Affiliates that are General Support Fund grantees will fulfill their affiliate reporting requirements through their final or yearly grantee report.
If you are a Wikimedia Affiliate, you will use this form for your affiliate reporting and to address the affiliate health criteria. You do not need to submit a separate report to AffCom. Follow the guidance in the green boxes to report on how you met the corresponding affiliate health criteria.
If you are not a Wikimedia Affiliate, aligning your responses with the affiliate criteria is optional and not required.
1. Please share to what extent your programs, approaches, and strategies contributed to addressing the challenges you shared in your proposal. If they did not contribute as you believed they would, please share what obstacles you faced and what, if anything, you learned from them? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 1.) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 1.1 (Goal delivery). Describe how you actively delivered on mission goals, e.g. content creation.
Our programs this year were aimed at the following challenges, and various strategies were put in place to address them:
Challenge 1: Limited Kinyarwanda Content
Strategy: Organizing consistent Kinyarwanda Wikipedia edit-a-thons and workshops to enhance the quantity and quality of articles.
Challenge 2: Limited Community Size.' 'Whereas Rwanda has a large number of young people and adults with technological skills and access to the internet, there remains a large number of people not involved but interested in the open movement. Therefore basing on the findings of our needs assessments carried out in 2022 and the pilot in schools
Strategy: Expanding the Wiki Club initiative to include more secondary schools and diverse participants, ensuring sustained growth of the Wikimedia community.
Challenge 3: Limited Partnerships
Strategy: Strengthening relationships with institutions such as Rwanda Library Services, Rwanda National Archives, and New York University Abu Dhabi to access resources and expertise for collaborative projects.
Annual Plan Objectives for 2025-2026
Objective 1: Skills and Leadership Development
Baseline: Existing training programs and resources.
Target: Conduct specialized training workshops on Kinyarwanda Wikipedia and Wikidata editing, as well as project management.
Activities: Develop comprehensive training materials, invite experienced editors as trainers, and provide mentoring opportunities.
Objective 2: Quality Community Growth
Baseline: 101 members, 50 active participants, 5 engaged secondary schools.
Target: Increase active members to 80, engage 15 secondary schools, and achieve 50% overall member participation.
Activities: Facilitate outreach programs in schools, host community engagement events, and provide sustained support to new members.
Objective 3: Promotion of Kinyarwanda Language on Wikimedia Projects
Baseline: Existing Kinyarwanda Wikipedia content.
Target: Implement the "Kinyarwanda Promotion Development for Heritage and Museums" project to expand content related to Rwandan heritage.
Activities: Strengthen partnerships with museums and cultural institutions, host edit-a-thons dedicated to Rwandan heritage, and create digital resources for Kinyarwanda content development.
Objective 4: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I)
Baseline: Existing Wikimedia initiatives and pilot projects.
Target: Fully integrate DE&I principles across all Wikimedia Rwanda programs and activities.
Activities: Establish a DE&I award to recognise contributions from women and individuals with disabilities, actively involve underrepresented groups in event planning, and implement affirmative action for women’s participation in all activities.
Cross-Cutting Strategy: Partnerships
Objective: Strengthen and expand partnerships with key institutions to enhance knowledge-sharing and innovation.
Activities: Identify new strategic partners, develop collaborative proposals, and implement joint initiatives to foster long-term engagement.
This annual plan ensures continuity from the 2025-2026 projects, scaling successful initiatives while addressing challenges. By aligning with the Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy, Wikimedia Rwanda will continue to drive impact, expand participation, and contribute to a more sustainable and inclusive knowledge ecosystem.
2. Is there a plan to build on the key successes you had? If yes, please describe the plan and if no, please share the limitations to do so. For instance, did the activities lead to any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future? (required)
Yes, we plan to continue building on this year's momentum. Among our key achievements, we significantly boosted content creation, producing 2,130 new Wikipedia articles across English, Kinyarwanda, and French within the year, while the number of articles edited climbed to 3,630.
We also expanded our community infrastructure by launching 5 new wikiclubs and formalizing partnerships through MOUs with organizations such as IFAK, UCST, Kepler, and Wikimedia Nigeria.
In addition, our active contributor base grew substantially, rising from 40 in 2023–2024 to 120 in 2026.
3. Please provide a link to reports that detail the activities that took place in the last year. This can include an annual report, Meta pages, and websites. If there are no links available, briefly describe the implemented activities and programs below or upload any files. (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 3.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.1 (Affiliate health & resilience), 4.1 (Internal engagement), 4.2 (Community connection), and 4.3 (Partnerships and collaboration):
- Describe your activities engaging new users, new members for your decision-making body(ies), and developing leaders and organizers (2.1).
- Describe your activities creating or hosting spaces to encourage greater collaboration and engagement among your members (4.1).
- Describe how you engage with the contributing community that you serve and/or support (4.2).
- Describe your partnerships with other affiliates or with non-Wikimedia entities (4.3).
Annual report 2024-2025 :[1]
4. Are you interested in sharing what you achieved or learned this year with the wider community through different peer learning programs (e.g. Let's Connect program, Diff)? (optional)
Yes, through a Let's Connect program.
5. Did you collect feedback from your community or target groups on how the activities implemented impacted them? If yes, please attach/provide information on the results (e.g. community surveys, stories, impact booklets/reports, interviews with partner institutions, etc). Did you collect other impact-specific data? (required)
For affiliates, the response to Question 5. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criteria 4.1 (Internal Engagement), 4.2 (Community Connection), or 4.3 (Partnerships & collaboration), where applicable.
6. During the fund period, did your efforts do any of the following? (required):
For affiliates, the response to Question 6. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criterion 2.2 (Diversity balance).
- 6.1 Bring in participants from the following groups: women, young people
- 6.2 Develop content about the following underrepresented topics or groups of people: women, people with disabilities
- 6.3 Support the retention of: Editors, Organizers, Partnerships
7. What, if any, effective tactics or approaches can you share that worked well when dealing with the programs under points 6.1-6.3 that you selected? (optional)
One effective tactic was being deliberate in our recruitment of new editors and mentorship of new organizers. This intentional approach led to a rise in female contributors and increased engagement from Persons with Disabilities, while also setting aside dedicated space for participants from rural and upcountry areas of Rwanda — a shift from previous years, when most contributors were male and based in Kigali City.
8. If you developed partnerships, which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors (optional):
Volunteers from our communities, Institutional support from the Wikimedia Foundation, Partners proactive interest
Part 2: Metrics
[edit]| Metrics name | Target | Result | Comments and tools used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | 101 | 325 | Dashboard : https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Rwanda/Wikimedia_Rwanda_2025-2026/home |
| Number of all editors | 50 | 150 | https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Rwanda/Wikimedia_Rwanda_2025-2026/home |
| Number of new editors | 50 | 120 | |
| Number of retained editors | 40 | 80 | |
| Number of all organizers | 15 | 10 | |
| Number of new organizers | 15 | 10 |
| Wikimedia project | Target - Number of created pages | Target - Number of improved pages | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 400 | 500 | 2130 | 3650 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 1000 | 200 | 3556 | |
| Wikidata | 1000 | 2000 | ||
| Wiktionary | 500 | 500 | ||
| Wikisource | 50 | 30 | ||
| Wikimedia Incubator | ||||
| Translatewiki | ||||
| MediaWiki | ||||
| Wikiquote | 200 | 300 | 49 | 172 |
| Wikivoyage | ||||
| Wikibooks | ||||
| Wikiversity | ||||
| Wikinews | ||||
| Wikispecies | ||||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
Tool used and comments (optional):
11. Did you set other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required): Yes
11.1. Other Metrics.
In your application, you outlined some other open metrics that you would like to measure. Please fill out the achieved results for each of the open metrics you defined.
| Other Metrics name | Metrics Description | Target | Result | Tools and comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikiclubs created | Number of wiki clubs created | 5 | 5 | |
| Social media engagement | Number of people reached via social media 5000 | |||
Part 3: Skill Development / Capacity Building
[edit]12. Reflecting on your programmatic (external) and organizational (internal) work, did your grant support you to undergo any skill development that made a difference to your success? If yes, what skill was developed, and how did it lead to success? (e.g. received coaching on public speaking, attended training on nonviolent communication, hosted professional development conversations on leadership, learned and used a new tool for project management, etc.)? Can you share any materials? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 12.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.2 (Diversity balance) and 3.1 (Diverse, Skilled, and Accountable Leadership):
- Describe actions taken to prioritize gender balance in affiliate leadership, as well as any areas of diversity relevant to your affiliate's context (2.2).
- Describe the management, financial, or other leadership skills of your affiliate leaders. If you have a succession plan, please include it here (3.1).
- Describe any training or skill development (as outlined in the question above) (3.1).
- Incorporate into the annual report a disclosure of conflict of interests (if any) from the leadership (3.1).
Due to limited resources this cycle, we were unable to organise dedicated capacity-building or skill-development activities, unlike in 2024–2025, when a consultant led a team-building workshop for our community organisers. Due to limited funds, our organizers and contributors had to rely on existing skills rather than develop new ones, which limited our capacity to grow organizer readiness and deepen community engagement. We have identified this as a capacity gap and plan to address it in our 2027 action plan to build a stronger, more sustainable base of trained organisers going forward, with capacity training scheduled every quarter with the support of our partners, such as Wikimedia Nigeria, through our planned capacity exchange initiative.
13. What is one capacity/skill area that you would like to focus on for the next year? And how do you plan to achieve this capacity? (required)
For 2027, Wikimedia Rwanda will prioritize closing two key capacity gaps: Project Management and Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E), and Grant Writing & Resource Mobilization. As we continue running multiple concurrent programs — including wikiclubs, MOUs, edit-a-thons, and grant reporting — strengthening our M&E skills will allow us to track impact more systematically and produce stronger, evidence-based grant applications and donor reports. At the same time, while we already develop grant proposals such as our 2027 GSF application, formal training in grant writing and resource mobilization would improve our success rates and help diversify our funding sources beyond WMF, addressing the resource constraints that have limited our capacity this cycle.
14. If you have additional information or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. Use the space below to upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your report.
For affiliates, also use this section (Question 14) to fulfill the Affiliate Health Criteria requirements.
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for affiliate governance, including affiliate leadership and membership with a breakdown of the demographics; how elections are conducted; how conflicts of interest are declared; and how decisions are made and communicated (2.2, 2.3, 3.1).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for activities incorporating, promoting awareness about, or enforcing the Universal Code of Conduct in your affiliate's activities (3.3).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for internal membership engagement, such as notes from your regular meetings and how you communicate to or involve your membership (4.1).
As Wikimedia CUG Rwanda works toward achieving its Strategic Plan 2025–2030, the organization has identified the need to bring on two paid staff members — a Program Coordinator and a Finance and Administrative Officer — to work alongside its existing base of volunteers. This shift is grounded in challenges experienced over the years from relying solely on a volunteer-driven model. Volunteers, while deeply committed, often have limited and unpredictable availability due to competing priorities such as school commitments, paid employment opportunities, and other personal obligations, which has at times slowed program implementation, delayed reporting, and made it difficult to maintain consistent progress on strategic priorities.
The Program Coordinator role responds directly to the need for sustained oversight of Wikimedia Rwanda's growing portfolio of activities — including wikiclubs, edit-a-thons, partnership management, and monitoring & evaluation — ensuring these programs are implemented consistently and tracked effectively, rather than depending on volunteers whose time is inherently divided. Similarly, the Finance and Administrative Officer role addresses a critical gap in financial accountability and administrative continuity; sound financial management, timely reporting, and compliance are essential to maintaining donor trust and securing future funding, yet these functions require dedicated, consistent attention that volunteer capacity alone cannot reliably provide.
By introducing these two paid positions, Wikimedia CUG Rwanda aims to ensure continuity and reliability in core operations, while still preserving and strengthening the volunteer spirit that has driven the movement since 2019. Paid staff will provide the stability needed to coordinate volunteers more effectively, follow through on strategic plan commitments, and sustain the organization's growth, without diminishing the essential role volunteers play in content creation, community building, and outreach.
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]For affiliates, also use this section (Part 4: Financial reporting) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 3.2 (Financial & Legal Compliance).
| Description | Planned / received budget for this category (RWF) | Amount spent (RWF) |
|---|---|---|
| Personnel costs | 25800000 | 1865102 |
| Operational costs | 20400000 | 6795307.6 |
| Programmatic costs | 68560000 | 12990614 |
| Total General Support Fund | 20107200 | 21651024 |
| Other revenue | 2500000 | 2500000 |
| Remaining funds from General Support Fund | N/A |
15. Please state the total amount spent from this fund in your local currency. (required)
21651024 RWF
16. Please provide an overview of the amount spent from this fund in the following budget categories in your local currency. (required)
- Operational costs: 6795307.6 RWF
- Programmatic costs: 12990614 RWF
- Staff and contractor costs: 1865102 RWF
17. Did you have any other revenue sources (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): Yes
- 17.1. Provide the total amount received from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): 2500000 RWF
- 17.2. Provide the total amount spent from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): 2500000 RWF
18. Provide a financial report document which will provide the details of funds received and spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sV271WhLwaT0NSwAZU9-iUM27nKe3eb3fR1eS1_86AY/edit?usp=sharing
18.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
N/A
19. Do you have any unspent funds from this funding?: No
20. Final confirmations (required)
- 20.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement? You must be in compliance with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement. In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the Wikimedia Foundation mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
- Yes
- 20.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
- Yes
- 20.3. 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 Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
- Yes
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