Grants:Project/Wiki In Africa/Wiki Loves Women 2018/Midpoint

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Report accepted
This midpoint report for a Project Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Wiki In Africa/Wiki Loves Women 2018.
  • You may still review or add to the discussion about this report on its talk page.
  • You are welcome to email projectgrants(_AT_)wikimedia.org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.



Welcome to this project's midpoint report! This report shares progress and learning from the grantee's first 3 months.

Summary[edit]

In a few short sentences or bullet points, give the main highlights of what happened with your project so far.

Wiki Loves Women has been launched and is now actively operating in both Uganda and Tanzania. Both country teams were drawn from the Wikimedia Usergroup communities within each country. The project has been fully articulated, its scope defined and adapted to the context of the two countries, and the discussions, research and launch phases are now complete. Country teams are concentrating on drawing people to events, negotiating mutually beneficial partnerships, and ensuring visibility around the project and the need behind the project through the events.

The project team has been in discussion with each country team to ensure scope and mentor the teams through the various stages of the project, and the project’s requirement. The communications materials have been updated, and a publicity programme is being finalised. The project received a fair amount of visibility among the Wikimedia Community prior to and at Wikimania in Cape Town, where it was officially launched. The first of the international online drives started in October to add to the Afro Cine month.

Methods and activities[edit]

How have you setup your project, and what work has been completed so far?

Describe how you've setup your experiment or pilot, sharing your key focuses so far and including links to any background research or past learning that has guided your decisions. List and describe the activities you've undertaken as part of your project to this point.

Wiki Loves Women explanation poster
Launch of Wiki Loves Women 2018 with Uganda and Tanzania teams

Midpoint outcomes[edit]

What are the results of your project or any experiments you’ve worked on so far?

Please discuss anything you have created or changed (organized, built, grown, etc) as a result of your project to date.

  • Communications materials
  • WMF Grant teams showcase + Wikimania poster created
  • Launch at Wikimania 2018
  • Communications channels and systems
  • Mind the Gender Gap in Africa Facebook group
  • 7 events held. Outreach dashboard has been used to measure the outcomes of these events.
  • 1st online global drive held - Occupations Drive
  • Wiki Loves Women Event Toolkit started
  • Finances are all in hand and on track
  • Social media engagement briefed and at pre-launch stage

In more detail:

Tasks and admin[edit]

Team arrangements and MOAs were developed over several remote meetings. The MOAs have signed and tasks are reiterated and discussed monthly. Tasks, systems and processes have been set up on Trello and communicated with all teams. Communication systems such as dedicated slack, whatsapp and skype channels have been established. Milestones discussed and established with in the MOA.

Monthly meetings and mentorship[edit]

Monthly meetings are held to ensure that neither team flounders. These sessions are intended for updates, but most time is spent in a mentor session, with explanations of the more confusing elements that the teams are grappling with. The meeting notes can be seen via the ether pad links below.

During the course of these meetings several elements recur that shows that some concepts are not as easy to grasp as initially thought, and require constant discussion and mentorship. To date, these include:

  • Event dashboard on Outreach
  • Commons categories
  • WikiData training and introduction; opportunities for events

Events[edit]

By mid-November, 7 events have been held across the two countries. Events have ranged from launch and information sessions to specific subject focus sessions, such as the WikiData and African Cinema event held in Dar Es Salaam.

Events in Tanzania
Events are detailed on the WikiProject page. Key events have included

  • 17th November:Third Wiki Loves Women in Tanzania (Tanzanian Women in Wikidata and Cinema)
  • 20th October:Second Wiki Loves Women in Tanzania (Women in Politics)
  • 8th September: Launching of the Wiki Loves Women project
The report by the Wiki Loves Women team in Tanzania that details their activities up until November 2018.

Events in Uganda
Four events have been held in Uganda. These are:

  • 24th October: Wikidata in Mbarara
  • 8th September: Wikipedia workshop with Women in Technology
  • 10th- 12th August: WikiGOESACCT
  • 26th July: Wikipedia workshop with Femrite at Uganda Museum

Read about the blog post covering the Femrite workshop

Dashboard tracking
We are having troubles tracking globally on the dashboard for reasons we can not really explain (confusion between programme, courses... and probably the teams not putting the events at the right place and us being unable to fix that...). In short, we can track per events, but not globally... Some tracking links

Partnerships[edit]

Partnerships are seen as a vital aspect of the project. Partners are approached to enhance the project with regards to:

  • content (existing content held within the organisation),
  • networks (able to attract already passionate and invested members to get involved and join the project),
  • communications (providing the project with access to established communications channels) or
  • venue (provide in-kind support services).

With local partners invested in the project, Wiki Loves Women has a greater chance of stability, and thus being sustainable within the community beyond the grant period.

Current partners in Uganda:

Current partners in Tanzania:

  • Buni Innovation Hub
Proposal addressed: Space and support on events running, Database and Newsletter sharing
Status: Space Secured
  • Seed Space Dar es salaam
Proposal addressed: Space support and facilities.
Status: On last discussion of partnership.

Partners in Tanzania currently in discussion

  • Goethe institute:
Proposal addressed: Space and support on events running
  • Swedish embassy
Proposal: Event support, press media & Branding
  • British in Dar
Proposal: Event support, Awareness campaigns & Branding
  • Alliance France :
Proposal addressed: Space and support on events running

Communications[edit]

Internal communications systems and methods have been established via a variety of communications channels. Trello is used for project and task management, while whatsapp, slack and Skype are used for internal discussions, follow up and adhoc questions. All collective internal documents and materials are kept on dedicated folders on Drive and Dropbox.

All branded materials have been updated to reflect new funders and uploaded to the Commons Category as well as a shared Dropbox and Drive folder. The current element are as follows:

Links:

* Page
* Tanzania
* Uganda
* Discussion group: Mind the Gap in Africa (private)
Commons Categories:

Updated or additional Communications materials:

Social media brief
Timeframe: November 2018 - March 2019
Target: people to understand and inspired to participate; host their own events or take part in online article drive
Focus:

  1. Nov-Dec: build visibility, knowledge of need, etc. = build the story around WLW
  2. Jan-Mar: launch of WLW Event Toolkit; coverage of events happening in Uganda and Tanzania and online event, with additional coverage of WLW-inspired’s events in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire

Social media driven … ideas and suggestions welcome. #Womentoknow is an existing campaign that we have built up before … we will be showcasing some in Uganda and Tanzania.

Wiki Loves Women Online Occupation Drive[edit]

In order to support AfroCine project, Anthere created the Occupations Drive. The aim of the Occupations Drive is to help improve the occupation labels in WikiData with non gender-biased description and description in more languages. Pages were established for 12 Africa-based languages. The deadline for this drive is the 30th November 2018.

Wiki Loves Women Event Toolkits[edit]

Although still a project in progress, the initial structure and elements for the Toolkits have been created. The intention of the toolkits is to provide any gender focused organisation or Wikimedia community with the resources to host their own events focused on gender issues and the celebration of women across Africa (and beyond).

Finances[edit]

Please take some time to update the table in your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed all approved and actual expenditures as instructed. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided there to explain them.

Then, answer the following question here: Have you spent your funds according to plan so far? Please briefly describe any major changes to budget or expenditures that you anticipate for the second half of your project.

The budget is being spent as per the original plan, and everything is on track. Some money from this tranche has yet to be spent, but this is due to the social media plan not yet being finalised and signed off. Please note: In the current summary on the Project Finance Page the costs from each country team has not yet been segmented into stipends, event and marketing line items. This will be separated out in future so that more insight can be gained into actual costs. Each country has an ongoing expense record and all receipts are kept in the corresponding country team dropbox.

Learning[edit]

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you are taking enough risks to learn something really interesting! Please use the below sections to describe what is working and what you plan to change for the second half of your project.

What are the challenges[edit]

What challenges or obstacles have you encountered? What will you do differently going forward? Please list these as short bullet points.

  • sending money to local teams proved challenging at first, due to the information needed by the South African Reserve Bank and the kinds of accounts they would find acceptable to transfer money to. We were a bit too optimistic that everything would roll-out just fine. Once initial issues were fixed, things have proceeded just fine.
  • The settling-in period took longer for one team to gel. Once we realised that tasks were falling behind, we raised the issue and it seems that a frank discussion and request for team-determined solutions was all it took to get the team on course. We wait to see that this change has been more positibe.
  • In general, we are late on the number of events that should have occured by now. Under our initial estimation, we believed that 10 events should have already been held. We are currently at 7. This is due in particular to the slow start (in part due to the delay in the money transfer, and the slower process of team and task integration by the one team). This is one of the reasons that we are asking for a small extension.

What is working well[edit]

What have you found works best so far? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

What has been working well for us:

  • Building on the work that has been conducted in the previous 4 years, the excitement that the project is continuing in 2 other countries, and the presidents continuing to be set by the teams in the earlier project.
  • The support that we received from the Wikimania team in getting Erina and other members of the WLW teams to Wikimania. Erina was able to share her context in the "conversation with Katherine" to all the delegates.
  • The monthly meetings to catch up with plans, discuss intentions and approaches, and mentor through smaller challenges.
  • Being able to collaborate with and support other African-based projects like AfroCine Month with the work being done.
  • Your learning pattern link goes here
  • still to be completed

Next steps and opportunities[edit]

What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your project? Please list these as short bullet points. If you're considering applying for a 6-month renewal of this grant at the end of your project, please also mention this here.

  • work in both countries will continue, especially after the Festive Season, with a build up to events around Women's Month in March;
  • the communication campaign will be launched in the second half of the project space;
  • an online article drive around female activists and heroes will be run at the beginning of 2019;
  • the toolkit will be launched and people encouraged to host Wiki Loves Women events during March;
  • ongoing mentorship of the teams;
  • development by teams of a plan towards project sustainability;
  • (possible) development of a further grant to implement similar programmes in other countries for late 2019-20.

Opportunities:

  • we have been contacted by (and would be interested in hosting) Wiki Loves Women activities in Sénégal

Grantee reflection[edit]

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being an grantee has been so far. What is one thing that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed from the past 3 months?


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