Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/SAPG 2022 Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda/Final Report
Report Status: Accepted
Due date: 2023-03-19T00:00:00Z
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: Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda Ltd.
- Title of Proposal: SAPG 2022 Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda
- Amount awarded: 46866.96 USD, 161594550 UGX
- Amount spent: 166997342 UGX
Part 1 Understanding your work[edit]
1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.
- We started by having an internal planning meeting for 2022 composed of key project leads (GLAM, Education, Diversity and Content Generation, and Photographic Competition) to discuss the activities and plan which informed the development of the annual work plan and budget. After the meeting, each project lead implemented activities with the help of activity calendars engaging the community volunteers through a series of events (online and offline). After the implementation, each project lead provided documentation and reporting for the activities including financial accountability, and other communications resources like meta-pages, dashboards, etc.
We have maintained the volunteer base, and communicated through communication channels (social media, meta-pages, WhatsApp groups) which then volunteers are able to choose activities that are of interest to them and participate. These activities included photowalks, editathons, translatathons, trainings, workshops,etc. Through these activities, we saw an interested volunteer base and a maintained volunteer base.e.g… increased content creation in most of the projects, increased partnerships, and saw continuing editors.
We also had activities around developing our 5-year strategy by engaging an independent consultant who guided us through the entire process of strategic planning (i.e., inception meeting, literature review, interviews with volunteers, community engagement workshop, etc). The user group also produced podcasts during the strategy process through interviews to document the strategy and share learning with the entire community of Wikimedians in Africa and worldwide.
2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?
- One-on-one mentorship during edit-a-thons and translator-thon that led to the increment in number of contributions on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons through the projects such as GLAM; Education; Diversity and Content Generation; and Photographic Competition.
To have programs that are sustainable, we focused on empowering active volunteers to take on more active roles, like leading on organizing activities. This helped us to avoid dependence on one individual and avoid burnout where several people can contribute. Employed communication channels (social media, meta-pages, WhatsApp groups, Telegram group) that helped with easy coordination during the implementation of activities and projects. We created administrative roles by appointing a volunteer Executive Director and hiring an administrator, we also outsourced the services of a professional accountant. This helped to relieve the administrative roles from volunteers in the community and helped us become more effective, and reduced burnout.
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?
- Initiated Collaboration between Education institutions (secondary schools especially teachers) and GLAM institutions (Librarians) to achieve Wikipedia literacy and find ways how these institutions could foster collaboration and knowledge sharing in terms of content generation and improve free and open access to knowledge locally.
Through new partnerships in WikiGap with Swedish Institute we were able to get extra funding that allowed us to conduct post-program evaluation and one on one partner engagement with old, new, and existing partners. Faced repetition in photos due to restrictions to access areas that needed park entry fee. Hence, photographers were taken to the new park (Murchison falls)which led to the contribution of quality photos and unique photos. To mitigate familiarity with the usual Wikimedia Projects of Commons, Wikidata and Wikipedia, we introduced volunteers to Wikisource as a new project to work on. This catered for the interests of a number of new and old editorsbecause of the low barrier to participation and helped us engage a new professional demographic i.e archivists thus increasing our volunteer base
4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.
- We maintain different WhatsApp groups with both new and old contributors, which makes it easier to mobilize people to participate in different activities throughout the year. In addition to that, we use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram to inform and mobilize new contributors.
In terms of participation, community members have participated in both online and offline activities such as edit-a-thons, photo walks, trainings, Wikimania in-person events and strategic process activities. For volunteer retention, more active volunteers were engaged in leading trainings and organizing programs. We hosted our local volunteer community to an outreach event in March 2022 in which project leads presented their work from the previous years and outlined their plans for the new year. Volunteers were then invited to give their feedback and initiate a dialogue with the projects they are interested in In addition, volunteers were invited to attend the usergroup AGM which is a governance tool - the financial audit report was presented by the auditor while project leads also shared their project reports with the attendees The wider Wikimedia community was kept abreast by recordings we made of our sessions that we held online. Usergroup volunteers were able to make presentations about their work at Wikimania and WikiIndaba
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.
- Social media posts:
Wiki For Refugees event https://twitter.com/platformngo/status/1605296528343683094; https://twitter.com/WikiUganda/status/1605485941597958144 Wiki Soccerthon: https://twitter.com/BALUKUBRIAN6/status/1602132604257538048 Wiki Loves Monuments: https://twitter.com/WikiUganda/status/1601300941440839680 Wiki Source: https://twitter.com/JNjai/status/1600427199479283714 Strategic Planning Process: https://twitter.com/RonaldLomo/status/1596559249286770688; https://twitter.com/RonaldLomo/status/1593949505560498177 Wiki Loves Earth: https://twitter.com/WikiUganda/status/1564991466824400896 Wikimania 2022: https://twitter.com/WikiUganda/status/1561072520652115973
Wikimania 2022 in-person event Uganda https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOihPinP8WiVpbP-rGlPXTNAPHnRCIJPzDs46nuIx8xYasv1kRZ7UlQToykGxwJvA?key=OHNGY0pQdzhhb01kNUxmWmxPRjlyU0g1LWdFdkJ3
Wiki Loves Africa 2022 in Uganda Launch Event https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPtqoLyyApdmMGZuvGOFaNWw5zqEdfuWC22b1EAbz-Lr6u2QQHjECEls4vlghguAw?key=X3Jla1p3NHR0SW9EQUt1TmNqQmxCNGdsUTNPcmd3
Dashboard
WikiGap 2022 in Uganda Dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Uganda/WikiGap_2022_in_Uganda_(2022)
Wiki Loves Monuments Dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Uganda/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_in_Uganda_2022_Editathon
Wiki For Human Rights Dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Uganda/WikiForHumanRights_2022_in_Uganda
- 1Lib1Ref January 2022 : https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Uganda/1Lib1Ref_Uganda_February_2022
Newsletters & Reports
GLAM Newsletter report : https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/December_2022/Contents/Uganda_report
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.
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Strongly agree |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Neither agree nor disagree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | 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?
- Through our program on Wiki For Refugees, we were able to engage refugees from South Sudan in Rhino Refugee Settlement and Bidi Bidi refugee settlements. As a result of this engagement, a new user group for Wikimedia South Sudan is emerging.
Through the Wikisource Uganda 2022 contest, we managed to engage students of literature at Makerere University as well as Archivists.
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?
- How many people edited beyond an event?
On this learning priority, it really depended on the type of activity. We realized that for photographic contests, the majority of the participants were able to continue uploading photos beyond the initial event, whereas for wikipedia editing related events only a few were able to continue editing. Also there was no easy to use tool to track participation beyond the initial event. We normally depend on the dashboard but it does not give a good overview or accurate statistics of mostly edits done since some articles and wikidata items can be deleted although the dashboard can still count it among number of edits or uploads. The edits counter tool on the other hand does this very well but then you have to go person by person which takes a lot of time https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec
Which events recruited long-term volunteers? WikiGap, GLAM, Luganda Wikipedia, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth were some of the events where we were able to recruit long-term volunteers. This was easier because these are some of the events that are recurring annually and usually attract previous participants to take part again. So with time we are able to get recurring volunteers who become long term volunteers and active contributors on Wikipedia. What style of training had higher retention of volunteers?
9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?
- When implementing the Wikimania 2022 in-person event, we got in touch with other contributors in Uganda who were new to our user group. The Wikimania event helped us grow our reach by attracting new people. It came as a surprise that there were other active Wikimedians in Uganda that we had never gotten in touch with.
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?
- We intend to develop a communications strategy to guide and plan on how to disseminate our work beyond the current reach. We will also develop a mailing list for Uganda that can be used to share current and future events including recent publications developed by the user group. The user group will make use of the current partners to talk about the user group and establish new partnerships to broaden our partnership and reach. This will also include the use of mainstream media.
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)?
- 2022 was our second time getting an annual grant, the first one came when there was COVID-19 and we could not conduct a number of planned activities since most of them required physical engagements although we adopted the use of digital platforms to conduct activities. In 2022, when the COVID-19 restrictions were uplifted, it enabled us to conduct our activities as planned. One of the highlights for us this year (2022) has been engaging the user group members in developing a 5-year strategy that will guide all our activities for the future and help us achieve the intended impact.
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.
- Podcasts
Meta for Strategy Process https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Uganda/WMUGU_Strategic_Planning_Process_2022 Blogpost https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/10/11/lessons-learned-from-the-wikimedia-summit-2022/ https://wikiuganda.wordpress.com/2023/01/30/wikiforhumanrights-2022-launch-event-right-to-a-healthy-environment/ WikiGap Event Toolkit 2022 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZUGTRjk5Ud-XBBRLbxRSy49mZ1rNHVR8T3_BRLZZNq8/edit?usp=sharing
Part 3: Metrics[edit]
13a. Open and additional metrics data
| 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 | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | 10 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | 3 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | N/A | 2 | 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 | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | GLAM 50
EDUCATION 50 DIVERSITY AND CONTENT 150 |
300 | 192 | 192 participants in total, 151 in WikiGap, 19 WikiForHuman Rights and 22 Wiki For Refugees. Wikigap being a month-long contest and co-organized with 4 universities around the country attracted more participants. | Used the event dashboard to get the usernames of the participants in each program, and then used WikiScan to assess the number of contributions, and new vs old participants |
| Number of editors | GLAM - New editors 10 old editors 5
EDUCATION -New editors 10 old editors 5 DIVERSITY AND CONTENT -New editors 20 old editors 10 |
60 | 50 | Outreach Dashboard and WikiScan | |
| Number of organizers | GLAM - 2
EDUCATION -3 DIVERSITY AND CONTENT -5 |
10 | 10 | This included trainers, speakers, coordinators and facilitators of the different activities | Activity reports |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | GLAM - 50
EDUCATION -50 DIVERSITY AND CONTENT -150 |
300 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Wikimedia Commons | wla 200
wlm 200 wle 2000 |
600 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Wikidata | N/A | 100 | 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 |
14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?
- No
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.
- The dashboard would ,for some reason, go down or experience technical difficulties, in the middle of events. This resulted in having to extend the deadlines for some competitions and inaccurate results when functionality was eventually restored.
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.
- N/A
Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships[edit]
17. Organizational Capacity
| A. Financial capacity and management | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| 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 has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| 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 has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| 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 capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| 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 has grown but it should be further developed |
| N. Accessing and using data | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| O. Evaluating and learning from our work | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| 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.
- Formal training provided by the Wikimedia Foundation, 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, Using capacity building/training resources online from sources WITHIN the Wikimedia Movement, Formal training provided by a Wikimedia Movement organizing group (i.e., Affiliates, Grantees, Regional or Thematic Hub, etc.)
17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
- Lack of awareness of capacity building needs, Lack of staff time to participate in capacity building/training, Lack of training that fits contextual needs and interests
18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?
- We would like to get support on which tools to use to easily track progress towards achieving our goals and measuring impact of our programs.
19. Partnerships over the funding period.
| A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame) | Agree |
| B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups | Agree |
| C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups | Agree |
19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
- Staff hired through the fund, 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.
- Difficulties specific to our context that hindered partnerships, Local policies or other legal factors, Lack of staff capacity to respond to partners interested in working with us
20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?
- To build successful partnerships with other institutions and groups, it is crucial to clearly define goals and expectations, maintain regular and effective communication, build trust and transparency, ensure benefits for both parties, be flexible and open to new ideas, establish mutual respect, evaluate the partnership's success, empower partners to take ownership, and regularly review and make adjustments to maintain effectiveness. These strategies were used to build partnerships with various organizations, including Platform for Africa and the Wikimedia Community User Group of South Sudan.
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?
- For our user group to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia movement, it means aligning with the values of the movement, such as open access to knowledge and collaboration. It also means actively participating the free knowledge initiatives such as having an active community of editors and events organizers.
Most importantly it means actively participating in the implementation of the 2030 Wikimedia strategy recommendations, which help us to truly identify with the free knowledge movement and be proud to be associated with it.
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?
- Somewhat increased
23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.
- It was one of our goals in 2022 to try this out for the very first time and see how it works, and it is something we hope to improve on in the new year.
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.
- In 2022 we were able to get dedicated staff members which helped us a lot in terms of making sure that the coordination of activities really happens easily, something that we struggled with in the past as we depended a lot on volunteer time.
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.
- We have close connections to the OpenStreetMap community in Uganda, and they have almost a similar mission to ours, which help us to stay motivated to contribute to free knowledge. The other one is the Creative Commons movement.
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?
- We have shared results through documentation mainly, the activity report and through diff, we have already published podcasts to document our strategic process.
28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?
- We do this regularly (at least once a month)
29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?
- We not been proactive in doing this, we would love to do this when given the opportunity.
Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance[edit]
30. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
- 166997342
31. Local currency type
- UGX
32. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
- Link to Financial Report https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/158GPUs_V2MDzsMWLc8UOGeO40PA7J5fLBVJO2Y_xkWk/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.
- For financial reporting for 2023, we would like to use the template provided here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TK9xzL8Bpo_oO0vJhgKhH-PvcTwD_0KJ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113250753325927899714&rtpof=true&sd=true
We think it will make the financial reporting process easier for us.