Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Africa Wiki Women — International Women’s Day 2025:Accelerating Action for Gender Equality (ID: 22979343)/Final Report

Africa Wiki Women — International Women’s Day 2025: Accelerating Action for Gender Equality

Rapid Fund Final Report

Report Status: Under review

Due date: 24 June 2025

Funding program: Rapid Fund

Report type: Final

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General information

Applicant username: Pellagia Njau
Organization name: N/A
Amount awarded: 4894
Amount spent: 4894 USD, 12656521

Part 1: Project and impact

1. Describe the implemented activities and results achieved. Additionally, share which approaches were most effective in supporting you to achieve the results. (required)

The Accelerating Action for Gender Equality 2025 campaign by the Africa Wiki Women, in celebration of International Women's Day 2025, was aimed at bridging the gender gap across Wikimedia projects. The campaign focused on celebrating and documenting African women, particularly those in journalism and politics, through community-driven content creation on Wikipedia and its sister projects. Activities included image donations of these women, item improvements, and the expansion of Wikipedia articles. In recognition of cultural inclusion and diversity, the campaign featured both online training sessions and in-person events across three African countries. These in-person events were organised by African women through female organisers in these African countries in collaboration with NGOs, and creating opportunities for empowered women to empower others and build a strong, capable community of African women. To achieve these goals, the following activities were carried out:

Call for Female Community Organisers [1]: We had an open call for female community organisers from across all African countries. The application form was publicised across our handles, and three outstanding organisers were chosen from three African countries, Nigeria, Ghana and Botswana.

Call for Professional Photographers [2]: We invited professional photographers to donate high-quality images of African women in politics and journalism, aimed at increasing visibility for African women.

Collaboration with NGOs: We partnered with NGOs such as Women for Sustainability Africa [3], Fempire, and the Open Inclusive Initiative in Ghana, as well as the Open Knowledge Development Initiative (OKDI) [4] in Nigeria. These partnerships were instrumental in enlightening and engaging female Wikimedians for this significant campaign.

Our initial goal was to recruit 50 participants from various African countries, while ensuring diverse representation, contribution, and engagement among both new and existing female Wikimedians. However, we exceeded this target by a wide margin, recruiting 167 participants through a combination of social media promotion and in-house publicity efforts. The campaign strategy involved organising six online sessions, including the virtual launch, training sessions, and office hours. These sessions provided platforms for sharing experiences, building connections, advancing editing skills, and exploring the intersectionality of gender issues within the Wikimedia movement. They also offered opportunities for African women to strategise for more effective engagement and contributions on Wikimedia projects.

2. Documentation of your impact. Please use space below to share links that help tell your story, impact, and evaluation. (required)

Share links to:

Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project
Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions
Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access.

You can also share links to:

Important social media posts
Surveys and their results
Infographics and sound files
Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects

Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project Campaign meta page [5]

Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions. [6]

Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access. All photos can be found under this category: Africa Wiki Women IWD 2025 Virtual Launch Recording [7] Introduction to Wikipedia and minor edits on Wikipedia Session Recording [8] Training Slide [9] Major edits on Wikipedia for African women in Journalism and Politics Session Recording [10] Training Slide [11] Introduction to Wikidata and Major Edits Session Recording [12] Training Slide [13] Introduction to WikiCommons and Licensing of Media Files Session Recording [14] Training Slide [15] Office Hour Session Recording [16] Session Presentation [17]

You can also share links to: Important social media posts Facebook https://web.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=122190259436052180&set=pb.61551565400200.-2207520000&type=3 https://web.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=122190478256052180&set=pb.61551565400200.-2207520000&type=3 https://web.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122191028870052180&set=pb.61551565400200.-2207520000 https://web.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122191326482052180&set=pb.61551565400200.-2207520000 https://web.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122191830356052180&set=pb.61551565400200.-2207520000 https://web.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122192935244052180&set=pb.61551565400200.-2207520000

Surveys and their results Campaign Evaluation Form [18] Campaign Evaluation Form Sheet [19] Campaign Evaluation Report [20]

Infographics and sound files

N/A

Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects List of articles improved, expanded and translated[21]

Additionally, share the materials and resources that you used in the implementation of your project. (required)

For example:

Training materials and guides
Presentations and slides
Work processes and plans
Any other materials your team has created or adapted and can be shared with others

For example: Training materials and guides IWD 2025_Accelerating Action for Gender Equality Campaign Overview, Timelines and Activities [22] IWD 2025_Accelerating Action for Gender Equality Campaign Implementation Team [23] IWD 2025_Accelerating Action for Gender Equality Campaign Resources and Suggested Articles [24]

Presentations and slides Introduction to Wikipedia and minor edits on Wikipedia [25] Major edits on Wikipedia for African women in Journalism and Politics [26] Introduction to Wikidata and Major Edits [27] Introduction to WikiCommons and Licensing of Media Files [28]

Work processes and plans IWD 2025 Accelerating Action for Gender Equality Campaign Roadmap [29] Online platform for meetings, office hours and training held (Zoom) In-person events in Nigeria, Ghana and Botswana

Any other materials your team has created or adapted that can be shared with others In-person Report [30] for the training event that happened in Nigeria, Ghana and Botswana.

3. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with this Rapid Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals. Required. Select one option per question. (required)

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

Part 2: Learning

4. In your application, you outlined some learning questions. What did you learn from these learning questions when you implemented your project? How do you hope to use this learnings in the future? You can recall these learning questions below. (required)

You can recall these learning questions below: Impact Measurement: Assess the effectiveness of accelerated action in addressing gender imbalances on Wikimedia platforms. This includes the scale of content creation and the number of new editors retained. Sustaining Momentum: Learn how to keep the energy and momentum of the IWD campaign going throughout the year and foster long-term contributions. Gender Equality Progress: Understand the changes made in the visibility of African women’s stories and contributions on Wikimedia platforms. Community Engagement: Measure how effective partnerships were in driving the impact of the campaign, and how they can lead to future collaborations.

Sustaining Momentum: Learn how to keep the energy and momentum of the IWD campaign going throughout the year and foster long-term contributions. We learned that sustaining the momentum gained from the campaign requires intentional planning, consistent engagement, and strategic collaborations. To keep the energy alive, we plan to establish a support system that encourages periodic activities such as edit-a-thons, capacity-building sessions, and storytelling challenges that retain and improve contributors' participation. In addition, we are exploring opportunities to collaborate with other initiatives and organisations that share aligned goals. These partnerships will help us extend our reach to a wider audience, amplify our impact, and ensure that the campaign’s vision of bridging gender gaps continues through long-term, community-driven contributions.

5. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities? This can include both positive and negative situations. What did you learn from those experiences? (required)

During the Accelerating Action for Gender Equality campaign, participants in the Wikimedia Commons tasks faced a challenge: the inability to take pictures of these politicians and journalists, who were also women. This challenge brought to our understanding how uneasy it is to get photographs of living people due to the recent culture of self-security. However, based on the suggestions provided by the intended image donors, we drafted a letter featuring the logo and an official identity, which was then shared with the photographers. This document served as a means of identification and trust-building, and we recorded an increased number of images submitted after the document was shared with the photographers as a form/means of identification with the Foundation.

6. What is your plan to share your project learnings and results with other community members? If you have already done it, describe how. (required)

For every session, we published Diff post for them as part of the campaign’s deliverables. You can find all the published blogs here: Documentation [31] We also shared the videos of the session on our handles, Youtube especially AWW Accelerating Action Wikicommons Training Wikidata Training for the AWW Accelerating Action For Gender Equality Campaign AWW Accelerating Action For Gender Equity- Wikipedia Editing Training #AWWWikipediaTraining Accelerating Action for Gender Equality Office Hour

Part 3: Metrics

7. Wikimedia Metrics results. (required)

In your application, you set some Wikimedia targets in numbers (Wikimedia metrics). In this section, you will describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used.

	Target	Results	Comments and tools used
Number of participants	60	167	Event Registration Tool [32]
Number of editors	30	166	Outreach Dashboard[33]
Number of organizers	5	10	Event implementation team on the metapage[34] In-person event organisers[35] We hosted in-person events, and the organisers of these country events were added to the list of organisers

Wikimedia project	Target	Result - Number of created pages	Result - Number of improved pages
Wikipedia	100	129	154
Wikimedia Commons	50	66	1
Wikidata	300	50	410
Wiktionary
Wikisource
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia

8. Other Metrics results.

In your proposal, you could also set Other Metrics targets. Please describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used if you set Other Metrics in your application.

Other Metrics name	Metrics Description	Target	Result	Tools and comments

9. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? (required)

No

9.1. Please state what difficulties you had. How do you hope to overcome these challenges in the future? Do you have any recommendations for the Foundation to support you in addressing these challenges? (required)

Part 4: Financial reporting

10. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency. (required)

12656521

11. Please state the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)

4894

12. Report the funds spent in the currency of your fund. (required)

Provide the link to the financial report https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11VV5a-tqxF80HjUMP6ysFxamw4VQml4EYYd4WYDTxwA/edit?gid=0#gid=0

12.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)

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

No

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

N/A

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

N/A

13.3. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

N/A

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

Yes

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

Yes

14.3. 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

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

Review notes

Review notes from Program Officer:

N/A

Applicant's response to the review feedback.

N/A