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

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Midterm Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2022-07-15T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Midterm

Application Final Learning Report

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General information[edit]

This form is for organizations receiving Wikimedia Community Funds (General Support) or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their mid-term learning and results. See the Wikimedia Community Fund application if you want to review the initial proposal.

  • 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: 29807.88 USD

Part 1 Understanding your work[edit]

1. Briefly describe how your strategies and activities proposed were implemented and if any changes to what was proposed are worth highlighting?

The team deployed various strategies in implementing the various projects and programs and these include; partnering with organizations and institutions to amplify our programs and also reach new audiences. Additionally part of our strategy has been to empower and build the capacity of volunteers from other regions within Ghana and beyond. By this we incorporated a virtual aspect in our in-person training, to ensure that participants joining from other regions or countries could also benefit from the opportunities we offer. We also leveraged various social media and communication platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Instagram, and mailing lists to increase publicity of our events. We also leverage some significant events like the African Cup, and African Union day to position some of the campaigns we organized. Some of the strategies to deal with IP blocks during our training is to start helping participants to create their accounts prior to the day of the event to minimize the number of participants that are unable to create their accounts on the day of the event.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you feel are being effective in achieving your goals?

1. Partnerships
2. Hybrid events
3. leveraging various communication platform
4. Encouraging participants to be members so they can be continually supported and updated with new opportunities .
5. Newsletter to keep our community updated about ongoing and upcoming events
6. Registering to participate in events helps us to engage and support participants ahead of training.

3. What challenges or obstacles have you encountered so far?

Throughout our implementation process, we encountered diverse challenges while we were able to mitigate some others that were beyond our control. Some of these challenges include;

IP address block: This is one of the persistent challenges experienced in all of our edit-a-thon which either hinders them from creating their account or editing. As part of our strategies to mitigate this, we engage participants ahead of time to help them create their accounts before the day of the event, although some were successful we realized that the block was still persistent. We also tried to engage some key admins to unblock these users after the event but that also failed as we did not get any feedback

Getting strategic partnership can be hard especially with government institutions due to the bureaucracies Due to the recent high cost of living most tech hubs that initially provide us with free spaces now are demanding payment to host training at our respective hubs.

Network challenges experienced in some parts of the countries do not permit participants to enjoy full virtual training without interference Working with participants and organizers from non-French speaking counties who showed interest and participated in our programs was quite a challenge when engaging them, but with the help of translating tools we managed to pool through and some could speak basic English which was helpful.

4. Please describe how different communities are participating and being informed about your work.

Over the years we ensure that our work is visible to both existing and newer communities and encourage participation. Storytelling has been a great way of encouraging and showcasing the impact of our work. We send out a newsletter every month to inform the community about past, ongoing, and future events. We also published blogs on platforms like Diff, Wikimedia Education newsletter, and Local media portals on projects that we have organized. For some bigger campaigns, we create Telegrams or Whatsapp groups for participants' engagements and support. Participants who join training become members of the OFWA communities and they get the opportunity to be updated with other events or opportunities. options for our in-person training. *We host a separate trainee synchronously for the virtual participants to ensure that quality attention is given to those participants also. We also realized that streaming in-person events are not suitable for training but are ok for conferences

5. Please share reflections on how your efforts are helping to engage participants and/or build content, particularly for underrepresented groups.

To ensure continuous engagement;
  • Organize hybrid events
  • We encourage more female participation through Female specific campaigns
  • Providing one on one consultation with the community
  • We have a technical team that attends to community questions and comments on our various WhatsApp platforms.
  • We keep our community constantly engaged and updated on our social media platforms
  • We offer our office space to the community for free to either edit or upload images.
  • We offer a variety of events so that community members with different interests can find their interests and participate. Programs range from photography to writing contests, social responsibility, education programs like Kiwx, teacher training events, etc.
  • Providing one on one mentorship for local organizers who wanted to participate in our regional campaign

6. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What have you learned so far about these areas during this period?

7. What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your work?

Based on our learnings, we are looking to host community town hall meetings to have discussions with members of the community to identify pain points and aspects where we can improve. We also want to continue to make our events hybrid as this has proven to be very effective. We want to continue to engage members on the communication platforms as this has really helped us reach new audiences. We also see partnerships are a great way to reach new audiences. Continue to engage the community.

Part 2: Metrics[edit]

8a. 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
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

8b. 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 600 In the past 6 months, we have had over 600 participants benefiting from our training, campaigns, and programs. These include students, teachers, and existing and new members. We used the events dashboard, google forms and reports submitted by hub leaders.
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

300 200 We have recruited over 200 new editors into our community through the different editing events and training we organize. The new bee program has also been very instrumental in helping reach this milestone. However, due to the rampant IP block newcomers struggle to contribute however we try to engage some administrators to help unblock and they are able to edit after 3 to 4 weeks but not all users have been successful. We use the program and events dashboard. We also do head counts for programs that we are not able to track with the dashboard.
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 25 These include hub leasers who organize events across our respective making a total of 15 and campaign organizers who participated in our AWC campaign. We collated event metrics from our database
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 44877 Wikipedia: This year's contributions made beat the initial target of 1500 articles on Wikipedia. The results were achieved through the programs organized during the first half of the year. Our major contributions stemmed from the Africa Wiki Challenge which saw contributions from outside our sub-region. The tool used to collect data was the Events and Programs dashboard for each program organized by the organization.
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 4672 Commons: The target for contributions on Commons was 2000 uploads. However, we have had uploads that exceeded the target. Two major campaigns contributed to the increase in the number of uploads i.e. Wiki Loves Africa and Africa Wiki Challenge. We organized photo walks as part of the Wiki Loves Africa contest and this saw a lot of participants uploading a lot of photos. Participants of the Africa Wiki Challenge also made significant contributions which boosted the number of uploads. The tool used to collect data was the Events and Programs dashboard for each program organized by the organization.
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 4672 Commons: The target for contributions on Commons was
2000 uploads. However, we have had uploads that exceeded the target. Two major campaigns contributed to the increase of the number of uploads i.e. Wiki Loves Africa and Africa Wiki Challenge. We organized photowalks as part of the Wiki Loves Africa contest and this saw a lot of participants uploading a lot of photos. Participants of the Africa Wiki Challenge also made significant contributions which boosted the number of uploads.
The tool used to collect data was the Events and Programs dashboard for each program organized by the organization.
Incubator We seek to grow contribution on local languages in incubator wiki eg Ga 100 169 Most of the contributions don't happen on incubator wikis, we hoping that we could grow more community members who will be interested to contribute to the incubator wikis. We used the dashboard to track this contribution
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

9. Are you having any difficulties collecting data to measure your results?

No

10. Are you collaborating and sharing learning with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Yes

10a. Please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how?

We do that partially by writing blogs on Diff and through our newsletters.

11. Documentation of your work process, story, and impact.

  • Below there is a section to upload files, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g. communications materials, blog posts, compelling quotes, social media posts, etc.). This can be anything that would be useful to understand and show your learning and results to date (e.g., training material, dashboards, presentations, communications material, training material, etc).
  • Below is an additional field to type in link URLs.

Part 3: Financial reporting and compliance[edit]

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

29807.88

13. Local currency type

USD

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

  • Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
  • Provide links to your financial reporting documents.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dR8rRcxmptSjdaAxiu8nzP3mM_DS8zc6TaaMdMXOU_0/edit?usp=sharing

15. Based on your implementation and learning to date, do you have any plans to make changes to the budget spending?

Yes

15a. Please provide an explanation on how you hope to adjust this.

We want to keep our programs as flexible as possible we planned on making a few adjustments to the programs in the next half of the year

16. We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being a grantee has been so far.

Our experience being a grantee has been a wonderful one. We have been well supported especially when we migrated to this new portal (Fluxx). The WMF grants team has been very responsive and provided many support and learning avenues and also provided opportunities for us to ask questions and share our learning. This has strengthened our relationship and we are more than happy to provide any necessary feedback that the WMF needs to ensure transparency and consistency.