Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia South Africa/2018

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
Grant stage: grant in progress
Grantee: Wikimedia South Africa
Amount granted: R263,900.00 (US$ 20,300.00)
Funding period: 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018
Final report due: 30 January 2019

Application[edit]

Background[edit]

These two requests are required of first-time applicants. In future years, you can use reports to substitute for these requirements.

  1. Link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements in the past year.
    Wikimedia ZA's advocacy efforts for Freedom of Panorama in South Africa
  2. Link to one learning story you have created or contributed to, that demonstrates how your organization documents and applies learning.
    National survey of South African editors in 2015

Link to these documents only if you have them.

  1. Link to your organization's staffing plan. This organization is not requesting staff. There is currently no paid staffing plan for the 2017/18 time frame. There is a desire to gain a full time employee in a future grant request. Functions normally forfulled by staff will be conducted by Wikimedia ZA volunteers.
  2. Link to your annual plan. WMZA's annual plan can be summarized as follows: host Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town, grow the local chaper's membership rate by 100%, continue outreach and partnership building activities.
  3. Link to your strategic plan. *

Please add your global metrics to this sheet. Contact APG staff if you need access. Please visit this worksheet to view global metrics targets and progress.

Programs[edit]

Public outreach

Wikimedia South Africa conducts a number of outreach activities to introduce the practice of editing Wikipedia to members of the general public. For the past two years the chapter has conducted a number of edit-a-thons (such as the metal edit-a-thons) with this focus in Cape Town and Johannesburg. for the past 12 months, every second month the chapter hosts an edit-a-thon/Wikipedia training event at the American Corner in the Cape Town Central Library. Location and access to computers is provided at no cost by the American Corner. Wikimedia ZA seeks to support these events by providing catering and the chapter envisions increasing the number of these events to once every month. Other outreach activities include similar events in Johannesburg and regular meetups for editors in South Africa to build a stronger sense of community. It is the chapters view that this is especially important in the 2017/18 year so as to help increase local awareness and excitement for Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town. Costs here are for catering only. Outreach metrics:

  • Number of participants with user names
  • Number of new user names (new editors)
  • Number of articles edited
  • Number of new Wikimedia South Africa chapter members

Durban activation: the city of Durban is one of the largest cities in South Africa however the chapter is currently unaware of any Wiki/Open Knowledge contributors in that city. As part of an effort to start the process of growing a community presence in Durban Wikimedia South Africa would like to do a road trip for one or two existing volunteer chapter members to visit the city for a few days to rise awareness, organise outreach events, and host a meetup for any existing editors in the city and members of the general public.

Durban metrics:

  • Number of new Wikimedia South Africa chapter members in the Durban area.
  • Number of participants in the Durban area (based on user names)

Wikimania 2018 scholarships

This involves granting scholarships to South African Wikimedia project editors who do not reside in Cape Town to attend Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town. This project involves setting up a scholarship program and review process to award qualifying applicants (Wikimedia project contributors who are South African based and not in the Cape Town area) a ticket to attend Wikimania 2018 as well as travel and accommodation expenses. The amount asked for is to cover 12 grantees for the following expenses for each: airfare/travel (R2500) + accommodation for 4 nights (R1500 x 4) + R500 allowance to food.

Scholarship Goals:

  • Diversity goal (diversity of recipents based on the following metrics: race, gender, region, language, rural/urban)
  • Setting up process for awarding scholarships
  • Follow-up survey for a Report on how their scholarship impacted them, how do we know it has benefited the SA community?
  • Number of recipients that become new Wikimedia South Africa chapter members

South African National Biodiversity Institute outreach

A training/outreach program to work with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). Promoting a culture of contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons within the institution. This will involve conducting training with SANBI staff and members of the public to both educate them on how to edit Wikipedia and upload to media to Commons. The organisation has a collection of photographs and digitisation of the photographs by volunteers would be one objective of this project of the position as would encouraging SANBI staff and members of the public to improve South African related botanical Wikipedia articles. We believe that this will help build the chapter's relationships with institutional partnerships and collaboration within and beyond the botanical community in South Africa.

Metrics

  • Number of training lessons conducted
  • Wikipedia uptake within SANBI and boarder botanical community. These metrics would include:
  • Number of participants trained based with their user names recorded for tracking
  • Number of articles created and images uploaded by participants
  • Any future possible volunteer driven Wikipedia related botanical projects
  • Botanical community involvement in Wikimania 2018 (level of attendance by SANBI associates)

Staff[edit]

This organization is not requesting staff.

Budget and resource plan[edit]

Link to a detailed budget (that also includes a plan for raising the resources you need). Google Sheets budget plan

Midpoint report[edit]

This is a brief report on the grantee's progress during the midpoint reporting period: 1 January - 30 June 2018.

Program story[edit]

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

Here is the text you may use to add a story or link!

Expanding Wikipedia to KwaZulu Natal

Progress[edit]

Please add text or a link to a page with details on your program progress. This should including reporting against each of the SMART objectives from your proposal.

The first six months was a busy period for Wikimedia ZA. Two programs were:

There was an additional program conducted by Wikimedia ZA during this period which is not covered by any grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. That program was the Freedom of Panorama and Fair Use Advocacy effort by Wikimedia ZA.

Expanding Wikipedia to KwaZulu Natal

A report on Expanding Wikipedia to KwaZulu Natal can be found both on event organiser Bobby Shabangu's page here and a copy on meta here.

Hosting Wikimania 2018

Wikimedia ZA being the hosting organiser for Wikimania 2018 was a once in a lifetime opportunity for us as a chapter. Due to the importance of this event we decided to try and leverage it for long term community growth in a number of different but mutually supporting ways by focusing on the following objectives:

  1. Raising public awareness of both Wikipedia and the broader Wikimedia community with special focus on Wikimedia ZA.
  2. Raising awareness of an important issue within the Wikimedia community of an issue important to Wikimedia ZA through the theme.
  3. Increasing the number of chapter members for Wikimedia ZA.
  4. Using the event to mobalise and engage the existing Wikimedia ZA members.
  5. Better connect with existing Wikipedia editors in South Africa.
  6. Building and strengthening long term relationships with potential and existing outreach partners.
  7. Support South African language Wikipedia's by raising awareness of them in the media and at Wikimania.
  8. Support WMZA advocacy efforts regarding copyright reform.

As a volunteer organisiating with no staff hosting Wikimania was a big and taxing endeavour for the chapter and for the Cape Town based members in particular.  Every week for six months team members meat twice a week, every week over Google Hangouts preparing for the event. Preparations that WMZA was responsible for were: ensuring that local logistics were in place, organising outreach activities, connecting with local outreach partners, giving multiple interviews (radio, print media, TV, ect), and volunteer coordination. All of these functions were handled well with proof of this being the successful hosting of Wikimania. The host partners performed extremely well and were well prepared ahead of time. Three (Water edit-a-thon, Wikipedia 101 for Librarians and the Globalising Copyright User Rights) large and highly successful outreach activities were organised and hosted.

A poster created for WikiCon Berlin 2018 illustrating feedback from a WMZA hosted workshop at Wiki Indaba 2018 about Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town.

1. Goal Raising public awareness of both Wikipedia and the broader Wikimedia community with special focus on Wikimedia ZA.

Activity By giving interviews with and writing articles for the media a total of 170 stories were published about Wikimania in June/July 2018, with a combined AVE (advertising value equivalent) of US$467,000. We conducted over 35 one-on-one interviews, including 25 on-site interviews involving Jimmy (WMF), Katherine (WMF), Douglas (WMZA), Isla, Felix and Dumi. Douglas gave around 15 radio interviews in this time.

2. Goal Raising awareness of an important issue within the Wikimedia community of an issue important to Wikimedia ZA through the theme.

Activity This was achieved through use of the theme to both raise awareness of knowledge gaps on Wikipedia (especially but not limited to geographical knowledge gaps) during the conference as well as using it as a very important metric to decide on which presentations would be presented at Wikimania. Judging from anecdotal feedback during and after the conference this was very well recieved and went a long way to creating a social consensus within the community that this is an issue we as a community need to think more about. Thank you to Kui Kinyanjui for supplying the figures here.

3. Goal Increasing the number of chapter members for Wikimedia ZA.

Activity A total of 44 new chapter members signed up due to Wikimania occurring representing a 200% increase in chapter memberships.

4. Goal Using the event to mobalise and engage the existing Wikimedia ZA members.

Activity Hosting Wikimania was either going to bring the volunteering Wikimedia ZA members together and rally us or it was going to break us. I am happy to say that the event rallied Wikimedia ZA members to volunteer and pull long hours helping to make Wikimania 2018 a success. It has also greatly increased the buy-in on everyday chapter activities by general members. This will have a long lasting positive impact on the chapter providing us with volunteer and community input momentum.

5. Goal Better connect with existing Wikipedia editors in South Africa.

Activity Wikimania in Cape Town greatly exited South African Wikipedia editors and presented an opportunity to engage with the broader community within the country that no other event would be able to. To help facilitate this a total of 11 complementary registrations were given to Cape Town based Wikimedians and an additional 12 scholarships were given to Wikipedia editors from across the country. Two additional scholarships were provided by the Goethe Institute to applicants from the SADAC region around South Africa.

6. Goal Building and strengthening long term relationships with potential and existing outreach partners.

Activity Thanks to the generous support from the Wikimedia Foundation we (WMZA) were able to give out over 85 complementary registrations to outreach partners. The three outreach activities (Water edit-a-thon, Wikipedia 101 for Librarians and the Globalising Copyright User Rights), one indirectly and two directly organised by WMZA, also had a large impact on future outreach activities. Due to this event the chapter established or strengthen connections with: South African librarians (libraries workshop), the design community (Interactive Africa), artists (Africa Centre and David Krit Art Galleries), water experts (George Gabriel), legal experts (RecreateZA), University of Cape Town, Seninjongo High School students, and CILT (educational teaching NGO).

7. Goal Support South African language Wikipedia's by raising awareness of them in the media and at Wikimania.

Activity In every media interview local South African interviewers gave (Douglas, Dumisani, Isla) a point was made to explicidly mention African language Wikipedias and the need for more people to edit those language Wikipedias. Indications are that this has had some impact with Zulu language Wikipedia raising from 942 articles before Wikimania to 1010 today. The same is true of Afrikaans Wikipedia (46,824 to 52,964) and Xhosa (708 to 747). All of these figures are noticeable increases in relatively short periods of time.

8. Goal Support WMZA advocacy efforts regarding copyright reform.

Activity Organising the Globalising Copyright User Rights event as well as using this as an opportunity to introduce local South African copyright advocates with members of the Wikimedia community globally achieved this greatly.  

In our estimate all eight goals were achieved and we regard Wikimedia ZA's involvement in Wikimania to have been a great success.

SANBI

The South African National Botanical Institute (SANBI) outreach effort has produced limited results. At the beginning of the year when this grant application was submitted it was envisioned that we would build off contacts we had been working with over the past two years to host a botanical upload marathon during Wikimania as part of the Wikimania editathon. This did not come to fruition. SANBI (a well funded national government run organisation with its largest branch located in Cape Town) requested that Wikimedia ZA pay for a SANBI botanist to be sent down from Pretoria to help run the event. WMZA had no budget for this and asked SANBI if they could send someone from Cape Town instead. No reply has ever been heard from SANBI since then despite followup attempts to contact them and a decision was made to focus on water sustainability as a theme instead. This was successful with 39 Wikimedians and water experts attending the Water edit-a-thon.

There is currently no funding allocated to this project in this grant as it was reallocated to the scholarship support when the grant application was being written up and before the grant proposal submission. However it was kept in as at the time it was a promising project for general outreach and metrics reporting.

Whilst WMZA will continue to reconnect with SANBI in an effort to continue this project it is recommended in this report that the focus of this outreach effort be broadened to include and perhaps focus on other outreach partners.

Currently we are looking at doing a heritage outreach with the Good Hope FM Breakfast Show (a local radio show) to worth with them and South African History Online to produce Wikipedia articles on heritage subjects of interest to Capetonians (residents of Cape Town) during the month of September 2018. Another, and at the time unexpected, outreach partnership is with the Nelson Mandela Foundation to digitise one of Nelson Mandela's Diaries and upload them to Wikimedia Commons and Wiki Source. This project was announced during the opening ceremony at Wikimania and has commenced since then. Yet another project is the water sustainability project that culminated in the offical editathon at Wikimania. There is a desire to follow up on this topic with local water sustainability outreach partners. Another outreach project we are seriously investigating and communicating with outreach partners on is Wikipedia and Design. This outreach effort will focus on both improving design related articles on Wikipedia whilst also encouraging members of the design community to become Wikipedia editors. These are a few of the projects WMZA would prefer to reallocate resources to instead of the SANBI outreach.

As such Wikimedia ZA requests permission to report on these metrics instead of the SANBI metrics moving forward.

Other projects

There was also the Freedom of Panorama and Fair Use Advocacy effort by Wikimedia ZA however that project is not funded by any Wikimedia Foundation grant and so only a brief description will be given here.

A significant amount of Wikimedia ZA volunteer time (by Douglas Scott) was devoted to advocacy efforts to amend the South African Copyright Act so as to:

  • Include a Freedom of Panorama clause that will allow members of the public to freely photograph works of public art and freely share that media.
  • Change the basis of the Copyright Act from a Fair Dealing foundation to a Fair Use foundation so as to simplify copyright legislation in South Africa thereby making it easier for members of the public such as Wikipedia editors to edit Wikipedia.

Currently indications are good that both objectives will be achieved. The second draft of the Copyright Right amendment bill has both the Freedom of Panorama clause and Fair Use in it. It is expected that the bill will go up for a vote in the South Africa Parliament in the second half of 2018. Wikimedia ZA has worked with local Copyright User advocacy group ReCreate ZA and Creative Commons to help make this happen and would like to thank these partners.

Monthly Cape Town workshop


In addition to preparing for Wikimania the Cape Town team hosted an ongoing Wikipedia workshop every month in 2018. From January 2018 to June 2018 six workshops were hosted by the Wikimedia ZA at the American Corner in the Cape Town Central Library. These workshops are important for ongoing outreach efforts with members of the public and provide a forum for chapter members in Cape Town to meetup at. Around 20 new editors have been introduced to editing Wikipedia during this period and through this program.

Spending[edit]

Please report your organization's total spending during the reporting period, or link to a financial document showing your total spending. 82,382 (ZAR) / 6,243 (USD)

Here is where your spending notes/explanations are.

Amount spent in the first half of 2018 (January - June 2018). These expenses do not include costs incurred during or after July 2018 when Wikimania was hosted. They also do not include costs related to the US$5000 Wikimania related grant given to WMZA to help host Wikimania.

{

Final report[edit]

This is the final report for your grant, describing your outcomes from the period *.

Program story[edit]

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

*

Learning story[edit]

Please link to one learning story that shows how your organization documents lessons learned and adapts its programs accordingly.

*

Results[edit]

Please add text or a link to a page with details on your program results. You should report on each of the objectives you included in your Simple APG application.

Spending[edit]

Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period.


Final report[edit]

This is the final report for your grant, describing your outcomes from the period {{{reportingperiodfinal}}}.

Program story[edit]

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

Afrikaans Writing competition

Learning story[edit]

Please link to one learning story that shows how your organization documents lessons learned and adapts its programs accordingly.

Country editor base survey of South Africa

Results[edit]

Please add text or a link to a page with details on your program results. You should report on each of the objectives you included in your Simple APG application.

Program name Participants Newly registered Content pages Uploads to Commons New chapter members
Outreach 329 52 3522 376 44
Scholarships 25 NA NA NA NA
SANBI NA NA NA NA NA
TOTAL 354 52 3522 376 44

Includes data from Midpoint as well as second half of 2018 such as: 27 October - Moleskin event stats: 70 participants, 25 new registrations, 22 content pages, 1 commons upload. Wikidata birthday stats: 20 participants; also includes all data for 2018 from the Wikimedia ZA campaign dashboard.


In the second half of 2018 (August-December) WMZA was involved in a number of events that resulted in multiple outcomes. These events were:

Afrikaans Writing competition

WMZA Event organiser: Dumbassman

The Afrikaans writing competition was held from the 15th December 2018 to the 15th January 2019. It's goal was to increase the number of Afrikaans editors whilst expanding Afrikaans language Wikipedia by encouraging the creation of new articles. This supported Wikimedia ZA's outreach and South African language support goals. It did not succeed at its first goal of increasing the number of Afrikaans editors but it did succeed in creating 255 new articles with an additional 1,840 articles edited and improved.

Moleskin primary education outreach

WMZA Event organiser: bobbyshabangu

Organised by the Moleskin Foundation to promote primary education in South Africa and with the support of Wikimedia South Africa an event was held in Johannesburg. The event involved school children learning about and editing Wikipedia. Wikimedia ZA volunteer editors taught teachers and students how to edit Wikipedia and gave information on the pressing need for more indigenous South African language editors to edit local language Wikipedias in South Africa. This was seen by the chapter as an important basic education outreach activity that also had positive although relatively small content impacts on Wikipedia. This event did not incur any financial costs to the chapter.  

Wiki Data Birthday workshop

WMZA Event organisers: Michaelgraaf, YaguraStation, Discott

Hosted on the 27th October 2018 Wikimedia ZA, in celebration of Wiki Data's 6th birthday, organised a workshop to showcase WikiData tools to the local Wikimedia community in Cape Town. The event was live broadcast to participants in Johannesburg so they could also participate. Our event partner was Code for Africa who provided a venue and helped inform the wider technology and open data community in South Africa about the event.



WikiDesign outreach

WMZA Event organisers: Discott, YaguraStation,A3 Baard

On the 11 April 2018 Wikimedia ZA ran an outreach event with Interactive Africa as part of the Chapter's outreach activities and in preparation for Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town. The outreach event was intended to encourage more members of the design community to edit Wikipedia. Since the April 2018 workshop the event has evolved into a broader content creation activity with the South African design community to create and improve design related articles on Wikipedia to be conducted in 2019. This includes a Commons upload-a-thon to get content onto Commons by content owners (authors) and an editing drive by veteran editors to work with content experts to create and improve relevant Wikipedia articles.

Copyright outreach

Discott (WMZA) [left] and Econterms (WMDC) [right] attending the edit-a-thon at the 5th Global Congress that allowed the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property to meet Wikimedia DC.

WMZA Event organiser: Discott

The latter half of 2018 was very busy for the chapter volunteer involved (Discott) in advocacy efforts around copyright. A bill amending the South African Copyright Act was that included both Freedom of Panorama and Fair Use was presented to and passed by the lower House of Parliament. The bill now needs to be passe by the Council of Provinces before it can be signed into law by the president. This is expected to happen in 2019. Although no Wikimedia Foundation funds were used in this activity it is an important chapter activity that needs to be highlighted.

Additional copyright related events happening in the latter half of 2018 was the mapping of global copyright user rights for educational purposes conducted at the 5th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest that lead to a number of positive outcomes (25-30 September 2018). Ranging from the creation of a matrix detailing copyright user rights to information sharing with copyright legal and advocacy specialists,to the introducing of the Proposed Treaty On Copyright Exceptions For Educational And Research Activities to the WMF, to the introduction of the Program for Information Justice and Intellectual Property with Wikimedia DC. If Wikimedia South Africa had not attended this event then this introduction would not have been made.

On the 14-17 December 2018 Wikimedia representative Discott attended the Re:publica Accra technology conference to present on Freedom of Panorama in Africa. The event also allowed Wikimedia ZA to strengthen ties with Wikimedia Ghana and share knowledge on copyright related issues. This trip kick started a drive in Ghana to reform the country's copyright law regarding a lack of Freedom of Panorama provisions. A lack of Freedom of Panorama has a negative impact on the submission of photographs of public works & buildings on platforms such as Wikimedia Commons.


Other acitivies conducted by Wikimedia ZA using 2018 grant funding were:

The Annual General Meeting is an important and legally required part of the chapter's core operations. Chapter members are updated on chapter acitivies, board members are elected, goals are set, chapter accountability is maintained, and important policy decisions are taken during this event.

Spending[edit]

Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

Expense tye Actual YTD Budget Additional projected*
Audit Fee R1,300.00 R32,000.00 R30,000.00
Accounting Fees R25,900.89 R20,000.00
Annual General Meeting - Board Expense R26,312.37 R30,000.00
Bank Charges R4,871.86 R2,000.00
Basic Repairs and Employee expense R2,717.00 R2,000.00
Catering Expenses  : R4,727.00 R9,600.00
Durban Activation Roadshow R12,741.60 R13,200.00
Dropbox R4,950.00 R3,200.00
Editathon : Outreach R1,008.00
Printing & Stationery R1,500.00
Postbox R1,200.00
Scholarship R87,020.70 R108,000.00
Virtual Receptionist : Operating Cost R5,000.00 R6,000.00
Website R2,565.18 R2,000.00
Meeting & Events R8,200.00 R2,000.00
Contingency funds R25,000.00
Totals (ZAR) R179,115.65 R263,900.00 R211,115.65
Totals (US$) $13,778.13 $20,300.00 $16,239.67

Note: ZAR to US$ conversions done at R13 to US$1, the same rate as used in the 2018 budget application budget.

Note: These figures do not include an additional R62,086.75 of Foundation funds deposited into the WMZA Foundation account by the WMF for Wikimania 2018. These expenses are not part of the 2018 WMZA grant budget and are not reflected here.

Note*: The "Additional projected" expenses have been lined up and ear marked for spending in 2019 as of writing this report. Request that they be included into either this budget or the 2019 budget. A few additional expenses relating to the 2018 budget were made in in January 2019 but have not been captured here. These are the YTD expenses recorded by the chapter's book keepers (Copia) from January 2018 to December 2018 only.

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period.

R179,115.65 (US$13,778.13)
Amount left from 2018 grant: R84,698.35
Note: an additional R32,000 will be spent as part of the 2018 budget but will be spent in 2019.

</includeonly>

Use the following parameters to set up this reporting form. |fundingperiod=Provided by APG staff. |programstoryfinal= Please add a link to one program story. |learningstoryfinal= Please add a link to one learning story. |metricsfinal= |outcomes= |spendingtotal= Please add the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent, in the currency you received your grant. |spendingreport= Please add a link to your detailed financial report. It should be in the same format as your budget for your Simple APG, so that it's easy to compare the two.