Grants:Project/Rapid/Wikimedia Tanzania/East Africa Regional and Thematic Hub (EARTH) Research grant
Background: Research about EARTH has already been carried out over the last two years (2020, and 2021) but we are including more research activities to discover commitments of previous and new community members in the region. The community members are keen and have already made commitments in line with the Movement Strategy implementation. We would like to find out ways of how these commitments and other new ideas can be implemented through the EARTH. Following this research, a plan and conversations with several well-established, and emerging communities will be carried out to help create a draft implementation plan, for future engagements, whether through a regional, thematic hub or not, and to seek the necessary agreement and support for the project at Wikimedia events.
English Wikipedia Swahili Wikipedia Wikimedia Commons
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Applications are not required to be in English. Please complete the application in your preferred language.
Project Goal[edit]
What will be the outputs of your project and how will those outputs contribute to advancing a specific Movement Strategy Initiative
- What specific Movement Strategy Initiative does your project focus on and why? Please select one of the initiatives described here
- 25. Regional & Thematic Hubs: Hubs have been prioritized as one of the Movement Strategy initiatives for implementation in November 2021. Hubs, however, are still not well-defined both generally as a whole thing within the Movement and on a local communities and regional contexts basis. Our region, with a few WMF-recognized affiliates, and many emerging communities that lack necessary support needs more coordination and collaboration with the existing matured communities. It’s important for us to define the scope and role of a hub in our region. Throughout the past two years, we have conducted preliminary research to define how hubs should function within our region and the purpose that they would serve. Now that the scope and role of the hub in our region are fairly defined and shared within the Wikimedia community, we are looking to start the extensive, larger, deeper, and more inclusive conversations with them to plan the hub project.
Project Background[edit]
- When do you intend to begin this project and when will it be completed?
Start date: 15th June 2022 End date: 15th Feb 2023
- Where will your project activities be happening?
- The East Africa region is our main focus. Closely related and language (Swahili) connected communities will also be considered in the research, and planning to identify whether they are interested in participating. Also due to past collaboration history, we have with other communities coming from nearby countries to EA region, we are planning to include and involve them in this project
- Are you collaborating with other communities or affiliates on this project? Please provide details of how partners intend to work together to achieve the project goal.
- The core collaboration is between two affiliates (Wikimedia Community User Group Tanzania and Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda), and one community in the East Africa region (Planning Wikimedia Community User Group Kenya), who will continue with the previous collaboration with other affiliates and communities in the region. The target communities of this project will include other 15 language communities, 3 regional countries (Rwanda, South Sudan, and Burundi), and 2 nearby countries.
- What specific challenge will your project be aiming to solve? And what opportunities do you plan to take advantage of to solve the problem?
- The challenges that this project aims to address:
Coordination: When participating in processes across the Wikimedia Movement, our region faces issues with making coordinated or representative decisions. We have been facing challenges that prevent all of our affiliates from joining Wikimedia conversations, although we have made strides in improving this under-representation for example with the joint Wikimania Scholarship, and WikiIndaba sessions, more needs to be done for stronger coordination and inclusivity. Agreement and action: While we have carried out previous research without any grant, there is a mixed feeling of agreement, and resentment among communities in the region, we would like to concretize and have sufficient agreement and support from the communities for the tangible steps in creating the EARTH. Growth: The emerging affiliates and communities in our region lack the capacity to support future growth. Since 2019, for example, we have seen a slight increase in engagement from the majority of emerging communities in the region, but others are either idle or declining in their activities. Lack of systematic way of Knowledge sharing: While some of the affiliates within our region are more capable than the others in different angles, there seem to be no good systemic ways of knowledge transfer and skills sharing.
The opportunities that this project aspires to seize: Movement Strategy: The ongoing Movement Strategy process provides an opportunity for change. We see this as a chance to start connecting our region and look for solutions to improve our work in new ways. Informed process: Now that we have conducted activities over the last two years, we know the steps and needs to be addressed and we also know the expected disagreements and difficulties. This will help us to engage in informed conversations with the community. Growth of Swahili Language: the Swahili language is one of the potential connectors amongst Wiki Communities. Despite that Swahili has been recognized as one of the official working languages by SADC, AU, and by having World Swahili Language Day as announced recently by UNESCO, there are few efforts of utilizing this within the EA region and beyond. We need to utilize this chance by running projects that will add more content on Swahili Wikipedia. We are planning to expand a Wikimedia Tanzania-led #WikiForUniversities Project (#Wiki4Uni) is one of those projects and we have already launched it in Pwani Univeristy- Kenya on March 2022.
- Does this project aim to apply one of the examples shared in the call for grants and if so which one?
- Hubs planning and Hubs research:
The research activities will involve interviews with community members, both virtual and in-person, Questionnaires. The research will key among other things help identify the gaps the EA communities aspire the hub to fill and will inform the thematic areas to cover in EARTH.
- Project Management Team: Constitute a team (paid roles) to oversee the effective handling of the project in all phases involved.
The team will also be responsible for submitting the region’s views in hub discussions with other community members.
Project Scope[edit]
Regional Focus[edit]
The Project will focus on determining the needs for a hub in 11 Wiki communities across 11 countries namely (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Zambia and Botswana);then plan on how these needs and ideas can be designed into an achievable action plan.
The first phase of the project will focus on Research and Planning Activities that are aimed at intensifying community outreach to gather input around what a regional hub means for the target communities, the problems they hope the hub to solve and also possibly identify thematic areas of mutual interest.
Thematic Focus[edit]
While we plan to have various thematic areas of focus based on communities' feedback, we have identified Swahili as a unifying language that binds together the East African wiki communities. This is because Swahili is the main language spoken by most of the people within the EA and SADC region, as a result it has been adopted by SADC, AU as one of the working languages. Swahili has also gained international attention to the extend of having a International Swahili day on each 7th July of the Year starting with 2022.
Room for other language communities[edit]
This project will be as inclusive as possible to spotlight other African language communities existing within the region (such as Kinyarwanda, Luganda, French) among others. Our approach will be identifying the community's representatives coming from other language communities other than the Swahili to come onboard and help to share the research processes/activities with their respective members.
Project Phases[edit]
The project plan will be broken down into Research, Planning and Reporting phases that will be stretched within 9 months.
Guiding questions:[edit]
The research will key among other areas aim to address the following (additional research questions and rationale will be developed by the Project team together with the research consultant to be hired)
Questions
- What are the current and future needs the EA wiki communties are facing?
- What a regional hub means for the target communities?
- How will the hub help to solve their needs?
- What are the problems they hope the hub to solve?
- What are thematic areas of mutual interest for Wiki communities across the EA region?
- Apart from Swahili community, what are other language communities that can be involved in this project?
- Apart from the 11 Wiki communities, Who else should be included in this process?
Project Activities[edit]
- What specific activities will be carried out during this project? Please describe the specific activities that will be carried out during this project.
- Community consultation to define needs, and Map out hub-like structures: We will carry out online community engagement sessions in the 11 target communities which will be aimed at raising more awareness about movement strategy, and bringing the community up to speed on the state of implementation. The community engagement will also seek to find out the specific needs that the communities hope the hub to meet. After the research activities, we will have a second round of community engagement to share the findings of the research. The feedback received will help inform the planning phase of the EARTH.
- Hub Tours : We will conduct tours of selected local hubs within Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda to learn more about their operations and areas of focus. We plan to appoint representatives in each country to conduct local tours.
- Language and thematic consultation. We have already identified Swahili as a common language in the region. Additionally, since the EARTH is both regional and thematic, this step will help get feedback from the communities on the thematic areas they would wish the EARTH to cover.
- Evaluation of feedback and reporting. The final findings of the research activities will be analysed and compared to the initial findings to determine the impact and next steps. A report will be shared with the participating communities, and published on meta.
- How do you intend to keep communities updated on the progress and outcomes of the project? Please add the names or usernames of these individuals responsible for updating the community
- The communities will be updated through our newsletter emails, social media pages as well as we will be in touch with the communities’ representatives who will be responsible for delivering the updates to their community members.
- Who will be responsible for delivering on this project and what are their roles and responsibilities?
- Basically, all the three steering team members will be responsible for creating updates to the communities, and we are planning that the other 3 facilitators will join the steering team where by one of them will be responsible to work closely with the core team in delivering the updates to the other community members.
Additional information[edit]
- If your activities include community discussions, what is your plan for ensuring that the conversations are productive? Provide a link to a Friendly Space Policy or UCoC that will be implemented to support these discussions.
- While sending the general information to the communities’ representatives about the research about the EARTH project process, we will ask them to abide by the WMF Friendly space policies as well as adhere to the Universal Code of Conduct. The same will be done for our regional meetups.
- If your activities include in-person events or activities, you will need to complete the steps outlined in the Risk Assessment protocol. Please provide a link to your completed copy of the risk assessment tool.
- Generally, most of the activities under this phase will be done online under a few exceptions that the steering team members will do the local tours to visit the hubs.
- If your activities include the use of paid online tools, please describe what tools these are and how you intend to use them.
- We are primarily planning to use Zoom as a paid tool for most of our activities due to its conducive features of break out and recording of the sessions.
- Do your activities include the translation of materials, and if so, in what languages will the translation be done? Please include details of those responsible for making the translations.
- Yes, some materials will need translation (eg. questionnaires and project pages). The translation will be mainly done in Swahili and French.
- Are there any other details you would like to share? Consider providing rationale, research or community discussion outputs, and any other similar information, that will give more context on your proposed project.
- We had a recent EARTH regional meetup (12th March 2022) where we updated the community representatives and the attended members on the progress of this EARTH research process. We are energized by their positive inputs about this project and hence we anticipate good results.
Outcomes[edit]
After your activities are complete, we would like to understand the draft implementation plan for your community. You will be required to prepare a document detailing this plan around a movement strategy initiative. This report can be prepared through Meta-wiki using the Share your results button on this page. The report can be prepared in your language, and is not required to be written in English.
In this report, you will be asked to:
- Provide a link to the draft implementation plan document or Wikimedia page
- Describe what activities supported the development of the plan
- Describe how and where you have communicated your plan to relevant communities.
- Report on how your funding was spent
Your draft implementation plan document should address the following questions clearly:
- What movement strategy initiative or goal are you addressing?
- What activities will you be doing to address that initiative?
- What do you expect will happen as a result of your activities? How do those outcomes address the movement strategy initiative?
- How will you measure or evaluate your activities? What tools or methods will you use to evaluate your activities?
To create a draft implementation plan, we recommend the use of a logic model, which will help you and your team think about goals, activities, outcomes, and other factors in an organized way. Please refer the following resources to develop a logic model:
- Overview of logic models on Meta-wiki
- Example logic models for reference for other movement activities (such as partnerships and edit-a-thons)
- Blank logic model template on Google Drive
Please confirm below that you will be able to prepare a draft implementation plan document by the end of your grant:
- I confirm that we will prepare a draft implementation plan document by the end of your grant
Optionally, you are welcome to include other information you'd like to share around participation and representation in your activities. Please include any additional outcomes you would like to report on below:
Our project plan will be broken down into various phases as outline below:
- Project Duration - 9 months:
- The project is expected to happen within 9 Months from April to October
- Research - 3 months (Community Engagement through meetups and Questionnaires will be done, we plan to conduct at least one meetup per community/week).
- Make contact with the communities (identify community needs around hubs, technology, community, and content hubs)
- Translation of results
- Develop questionnaires to be used in the research
- Field visits
- Planning - 5 months
- Engage communities/share results (involve the communities online to share results from the research process and make sure every potential community that was involved in the process feels their ideas are well represented, and make this room useful for any other ideas that can come up )
- Meet-ups (We are planning to have 4 meetups )
- Final Reporting - 1 months
- Gaps and needs
- Evaluation
- Recommendations
Next Phase:
- Plan the pilot phase
Mode Of Operation
- Duration:
The project will run for 9 months (June 2022-February 2022) and will target a total of 11 communities. The community outreach will be done through virtual meetups and questionnaires. The meetups will be both decentralized and collective.
- Representatives: We plan to recruit representatives from each community to help with mobilizing members during the meet ups as well as other volunteers to help with any other needed tasks. The representatives will also be crucial in providing insights and valuable information about their communities.
- Questionnaires: We plan to develop questionnaires to guide the research
- Hub Tours: We will conduct tours of selected local hubs within Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda to learn more about their operations and areas of focus.
- Language Support: We plan to include French and Swahili translations in our activities
Project Management The steering Team will oversee the overall management of the project and recruit active and interested community members who would like to support the project
The Core Team:
- Douglas Ssebagala
- Winnie Kabintie
- Antoni Mtavangu
- Research Consultant- (to be contracted)
Community Facilitators
- We plan to include 3 facilitators from the community members to join the core team (2 slots will be reserved for Affiliates not represented ion the core team and 1 slot will be for other organized groups within the 11 countries).
- Additionally, during the community engagement we will identify two community representatives (volunteer roles) from each of the 11 communities, who will act as community liaisons between the project team and their respective communities.
Roles and Responsibilities[edit]
| s/no | Name | Role | Responsibilities |
| 1. | Douglas Ssebaggala | Project Lead |
|
| 2. | Winnie Kabintie | Project Coordinator |
|
| 3. | Antoni Mtavangu | Project Assistant |
|
| 4. | To be contracted | Research Consultant |
|
| 5. | Wikimedia Community User Group Rwanda | Project Facilitator 1 |
|
| 6. | Wikimedia Community User Group Congo | Project Facilitator 2 |
|
| 7. | To be determined | Project Facilitator 3 |
|
| 8. | To be determined | Community Liaisons |
|
Budget[edit]
Below is the budget to the fund needed to run this project. The money will be used/spend to run activties under this project.
Budget:
| ITEM | NO OF ITEMS | UNIT PRICE | SUBTOTAL (USD) | COMMENT |
| Data Services | 11 countries | 20 | 220 | Mobile data support for virtual events |
| Communication and social media events promos | - | volunteers work | Volunteers work | Developing communication materials for the project e-Posters, Wikimedia channels (Facebook, Twitter, e.t.c) |
| Documentation | 14 events | 100 | 1,400 | 3 General Meetings and individual community meetups (Rapporteuring) |
| Facilitation | 6 | 200 Per month | 4500 | Coordination of events, Make sure agendas are made and understood, briefing, ensuring meeting objectives are met.
Language support- Swahili and French |
| Project Management Costs | 9 months | 1500 | 13,500 | Compiling final report, Overseeing the general project, community engagement, Evaluating Project progress, providing oversight.
Compiling final research findings.
|
| Fieldwork (Local Hub Tours) | 4 communities | 400 | 1600 | Transport, meals, Accommodation, Airtime |
| Translation costs | Swahili and French | 2@500 | 1000 | |
| Administrative Costs | 1500 | 1500 | rates, transaction fees, accounting, online meeting for team, stationeries, | |
| Childcare | 100@14 events plus 200@3 team member | 2000 | Covering all events | |
| Miscellaneous | 2,082 | (for any unforeseen needs) | ||
| External Research Consultant | 1 | 25usd/hr, 4hrs/week (400/month) for 9 months | 3600 | |
| TOTAL | 28,402 |
TOTAL AMOUNT REQUESTED USD: 28,402
Completing your application[edit]
Once you have completed the application, please do the following:
- Change the application status from
status=drafttostatus=proposedin the {{Probox}} template. - Contact strategy2030
wikimedia.org to confirm your submission, as well as to request any support around your application.
Endorsements[edit]
An endorsement from community members (especially from outside your community) will be part of the considerations when reviewing your application. Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!