Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Open Foundation West Africa Annual Plan 2022/Final Report

Final Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2023-01-30T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Final

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General information[edit]

This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results. See the midpoint report if you want to review the midpoint results.

Name of Organization: Open Foundation West Africa
Title of Proposal: Open Foundation West Africa Annual Plan 2022
Amount awarded: 121494.3 USD, 741933 GHS
Amount spent: 123183.34 USD

Part 1 Understanding your work[edit]

1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.

One of them was to organize hybrid training events asynchronously. Each of the sessions had a dedicated trainer. This ensured effectiveness of sessions due to full attention of the participants.

In our bid to promote Open Education,the Kiwix project was implemented and this brought Wikipedia to schools in communities that did not have access to the internet. This brought educational content to marginalized communities. Social media platforms and the newsletter were used to disseminate information. This was the best means to communicate since majority of our community members are tech savvy and made use of the social media handles. It was a very effective in terms of reach and cost. Global and African events like The African Union Day, The African Cup of Nations and The World Cup tournaments were leveraged on to position some of our campaigns. This got articles created and updated, making an effort to fill the information gap. IP blocks were dealt with by getting Wikipedia accounts created before training days. This prevented a lot of accounts being created on one IP. There were also multiple IPs so there would not be too much traffic on one that would cause IPs to be blocked.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?

A.Training of organizers brought them up to speed by equipping them with sound knowledge about the open movement and its projects. They were also equipped with the skills to be able to train and support community members to find their feet and be able to edit independently.

B.The use of our social media platforms and newsletter kept our community informed and updated about all activities and knowledge that was relevant to them as far as the open movement is concerned. C. Having in person and online meetings at the same time with each session having a dedicated trainer made training effective as more attention was paid especially in the online sessions. D. Getting members with special skills to take part in tasks that required their expertise. Photographers were chosen to go on a photowalk to employ their skills. A group was created for tech developers. This was done to harness their skills so they could be employed to develop the platforms. In this way different skills are applied so there is diversity in terms of skills and activities in the community. E. Events like the African Cup of Nations and the Africa Union Day were capitalized on to get more content about Africa on those themes. F. There was empowering and capacity building of volunteers in the other regions of the country and outside of Ghana. This was done using virtual meeting platforms. G. New partnerships were built. This provided access to new audiences.

3. Would you say that your project had any innovations? Are there things that you did very differently than you have seen them done by others?

Keeping community members informed through our Newsletter. This is published monthly to bring all members of the community up to speed.

Annual evaluations are performed to have an idea of the overall performance of the affiliate. This probes all the aspects of our operations and engagement, giving us a holistic perspective of where we are. Town hall meetings to get the thoughts of all community members which contributes towards making adjustments to improve the wikimedian experience. Active member meetups to take feedback from the members who are very functional in contributing and managing communities. This gives us a picture of realities so measures are taken to fine tune the areas that need improvement.

4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.

The use of our social media platforms and newsletter kept our community informed and updated about all activities and knowledge that was relevant to them as far as the open movement is concerned. Dissemination of information was done using a newsletter and social media platforms. There are whatsapp groups for different communities, an instagram page and various facebook pages and groups. The activities were coordinated by the various leaders of the various hubs and groups.

5. Documentation of your impact. Please use the two spaces below to share files and links that help tell your story and impact. This can be documentation that shows your results through testimonies, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, etc.) social media posts, dashboards, etc.

Upload Documents and Files

Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:African_Wikimedia_Technical_Community_Training_004.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:African_Wikimedia_Technical_Community_Training_001.jpg

6. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups	Agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community	Strongly agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Strongly agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	Strongly agree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement.	Strongly agree

7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?

A project called the “Girlscode” was developed. This exposed about 100 girls in secondary school to the open movement and equipped them with the skills to access and contribute to it. It is going to be a yearly event that will recruit more people from that demographic.

The Africa Wiki Challenge sought to produce content on African culture to bridge the information gap. The Sheroes of Africa theme for our DTI contest was aimed to create content on notable women to give the female gender better representation on Wikipedia. The Kiwix project gave many students in areas where there was limited access to the internet an opportunity to discover the open movement and gained skills to access and contribute to it.

Part 2: Your main learning[edit]

8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?

Our participants faced the challenges of IP Blocks, high costs of data and high transport costs. The last two challenges were as a result of the rising costs of living in the country. The IP blocks made creation of accounts very challenging during newbie sessions and the interest of new and some old editors waned due to inactivity. A solution to this challenge was to create accounts for newbies before the event to avoid having a lot of account creation on one IP which could lead to the IP blocks. 8 new partners were onboarded to support in achieving the dream. A total of 441 were trained and 283 of them were new recruits.

9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?

Participation in the Africa Wiki Challenge came from more countries than we expected.

During the implementation of the kiwix project, one of the schools needed materials that we did not have because they did courses which were different from the standard curriculum.

10. How do you hope to use this learning? For instance, do you have any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future?

From the Kiwix project lessons, we shall find out the courses that schools offer first since there are different kinds of them. There are technical schools, vocational, seminaries etc. We need to confirm the courses that the schools offer so the content could be curated for them.

The participation of people from other countries in the Africa Wiki Challenge made us realize that language must be made a priority so that support will be given more attention going forward.

11. If you were sitting with a friend to tell them one thing about your work during this fund, what would it be (think of inspiring or fascinating moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes, or anything that feels important to you)?

Goals were achieved in spite of tough economic conditions,which had a stifling impact on volunteers. Data costs rose, along with transportation and the general cost of living. The situation threatened volunteers’ commitment but contributions to the platforms and projects were impressive.

12. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).

Upload Documents and Files

Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

Part 3: Metrics[edit]

13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Additional Metrics
Additional Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of activities developed	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of volunteer hours	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of participants	Participants from 10 regions in Ghana and via our online training/campaigns from across the continent will benefit from our activities. We target about 1000 participants throughout the year. 500 new participants and 500 returning participants.	1000	758	By mid-year we recorded over 600 participants who benefited from our training, campaigns, and programs. At the end of the year, we recorded 758 official participants.	Google Event form sheet submitted by our hub leads and our dashboard.
Number of editors	The number of editors in all activities; 300 particularly females and students from the various universities where we have clubs. 300 new editors or account creations	300	532	We had recruited over 200 by mid year and an additional 332 between then and the end of the year.This was through the different editing events and training were organized. The new bee program was also very instrumental in helping us achieve this.	Mainly the dashboards of the various campaigns organized during the year.
Number of organizers	Our organizers include 5 core team members, 20 hub and club leaders across the region, 10 affiliate organizers across the continent, 15 community volunteers to implement Kiwix project.	50	28	These include hub leasers who organize events across our respective making a total of 15 and campaign organizers who participated in our AWC campaign and the Africa Youth Month.	Google forms and the various program dashboards.

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Wikipedia	our programs will seek to derive content surrounding gender, biographies of notable women, and increase information about the regions of Ghana as well as bridge thematic gaps like culture, history, geographic locations, Africa, etc. 1500 articles	1500	69962	By mid year there was a tally of 44877 edits to Wikipedia and this grew to 69962 by the end of the period. These contributions came from the Africa Youth Month, translations, The Wiki World Cup Hackathon,	The dashboards of the various campaigns.
Wikimedia Commons	We seek to generate audiovisual content on Wikimedia Commons through our Wiki Loves campaigns and other related campaigns on WIkimedia through images, videos etc.We want to be able to generate over 1800 images 200video files on Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikipedia and other sister project	2000	6040	At the midpoint, there were 4672 uploads to the commons and there was an increase to 6040 by the end of the year. This was attained through active uploads by the community.	The cumulative dashboard.
Wikidata	We seek to generate wikidata items from existing articles, newly created articles and uploads on Wikimedia commons by encouraging members and participants about the importance of wikidata as well as build their capacity around it.	2000	113151	We recorded 113151 contributions on Wiki data last year from our cumulative dashboard. The spike in contributions came from programs organised after mid year.	Dashboard specifically our cumulative program dashboard
Incubator	We seek to grow contribution on local languages in incubator wiki eg Ga	100	2148	2148 As at Mid last year, we only got 169 contributions on incubator wikis. Fortunately our dashboard recorded a lot more contributions from the Ga incubator, Gurene incubator and others. We are delightful to achieve this feat	Dashboard, specifically our annual cummuiative dashboard
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?

Yes

15. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future.

Tracking tools for the technical communities are few and due to this there are some contributions in that space which are not tracked.

The measurements on the contributions on projects are captured by dashboards but other activities like implementation of Kiwix are not tracked. There is no tracking system for the usage of Kiwix. This makes it challenging to measure its impact.

16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).

Upload Documents and Files

Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Open_Foundation_West_Africa/Africa_Knowledge_Initiative_-_Africa_Youth_Month_(November_-_December)/home

Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships[edit]

17. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension
A. Financial capacity and management	This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
B. Conflict management or transformation	This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values)	This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it
D. Partnership building	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
E. Strategic planning	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
F. Program design, implementation, and management	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation	This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer)	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers)	This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
J. Governance	This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
K. Communications, marketing, and social media	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability	This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
M. On-wiki technical skills	This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it
N. Accessing and using data	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
O. Evaluating and learning from our work	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders
N/A
N/A

17a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Peer to peer learning with other community members in conferences/events, Peer to peer learning with other community members in community/ies of practice* (structured and continuous learning and sharing spaces), Using capacity building/training resources onlinee from sources OUTSIDE the Wikimedia Movement

17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Lack of volunteer time to participate in capacity building/training, Barriers to access training because of language, Barriers to access training because of connectivity or equipment

18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?

N/A

19. Partnerships over the funding period.

Over the fund period...
A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame)	Strongly agree
B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups	Strongly agree
C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups	Strongly agree

19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Permanent staff outreach, Board members’ outreach, Volunteers from our communities

19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Lack of interest from partners, Lack of staff to conduct outreach to new strategic partners, Lack of knowledge or capacities to reach out to strategic partners

20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?

Persistence in following up after initial contact to formalize partnerships

There is the need to know where we align with prospective partners. Not all of them are feasible and that is why knowing the prospects of the partnership need to be determined through discussions. It is best to get partners who have an interest in what we are doing or have to offer. In such cases it is easier for them to be realized since each party perceives a win win arrangement.

Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration[edit]

21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?

We are a group that champions open activities and our programs are aligned to our vision and that of the Wikimedia Foundation. Any new initiatives from the Foundation are adopted to maintain alignment. Funds facilitate the attainment of our goals and that gives us a very strong sense of belonging to the Wikimedia movement.

22. How has your (for individual grantees) or your group/organization’s (for organizational grantees) sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Stayed the same

23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

N/A

24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Increased significantly

25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

The past year was quite challenging for community members and nationwide generally however, the output on the platforms was higher than expected. A lot of community members went out of their way to contribute to campaigns and the overall goal of increasing African content.

26. Are there other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in your motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects? (for example, Black Lives Matter, Feminist movement, Climate Justice, or other activism spaces) If so, please describe it below.

None

Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration[edit]

We are interested in better supporting peer learning and collaboration in the movement.

27. Have you shared these results with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Yes

27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?

The results have been shared on meta pages, Diff, our monthly newsletter, whatsapp groups, community events, one on one meetings,community engagement, lets connect, podcasts and telegram platform. Connecting with organizers in other countries.

We would like to do more of the sharing. We would continue the use the above mentioned platforms.

28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?

We do this occasionally (less than once a month)

29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?

We do share mutual learning but it is in informal ways. This happens through personal interactions between people who want to learn and the people they want to learn from. We are contacted by other grantees who need guidance or are inspired by the running of our operations. We do likewise when we need to learn from others to improve.

Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance[edit]

30. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

123183.34

31. Local currency type

USD

32. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.

Financial Report.xlsx

Report funds received and spent, if template not used.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dR8rRcxmptSjdaAxiu8nzP3mM_DS8zc6TaaMdMXOU_0/edit?usp=sharing

33. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.

N/A

34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

N/A

34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

N/A

34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

N/A

35. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund 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.

36. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

Yes

37. 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

38. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.