Grants talk:Conference/Africa Gender and ICT Bootcamp: Connecting the dots to close the digital gender gap

I have entered several fields in the Probox, but they do not show up. The only field that is published is the description of the event itself.

--Anabmap (talk) 13:39, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

@Anabmap: Hi, this is Chris Schilling, the Program Officer for Conference Grants. I've addressed this issue. One of the Probox fields portal= was intended to be filled in as portal=conference to designate this grant as a Conference Grant proposal, but it had been filled in with something else, which caused an error in how the Probox is displayed. This designation is added by default when starting a new proposal page, so it looks like it was changed somewhere along the way. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

@Nne75:, Hi Nnnena! Thanks for your proposal for the Africa Gender and ICT Bootcamp. I've had a chance to review the proposal, and have the following comments and question to offer as a part of staff review:

Comments/Observations

• The main purpose of the event is to train Wikimedians in Africa in skills and topics related to fundamental on-wiki skills and public policy in an effort to close the gender digital divide. This includes specific access and ability for women to participate in both Wikimedia projects and the Internet more broadly.
• In terms of programming, the focus will be on activities that will help build local communities in a manner that will help close this divide, such as educating attendees regarding this gap, providing training for on-wiki skills, and teaching how to build and advocate for policy choices that are equitable and address known problems related to gender disparities in Internet access and participation.
• The proposed event is smaller, involving an estimated attendance of around 20 persons. This is not necessarily a problem -- with the right planning, events with a smaller attendance can effectively address highly specific and complex issues, and allow participants to actively participate and contribute throughout the event.
• Thank you for providing this context from A4AI regarding gender-responsive policies to address affordability. This report provides important context regarding what kind of topics are likely to be highlighted at the bootcamp.

Questions and Requests

• The event is reported to be “over a three-day period” in the proposal, but the event dates are from Feb - July 2019. What are the proposed dates for this event?
• Because the attendance of the event is smaller, it is important to consider who will benefit most from participation in this bootcamp. Who is the audience for this event, or what communities will you likely be inviting to attend?
• Based on the key lessons learned from Wiki Indaba 2018 (i.e. event program should be meaningful to the community and to allocate enough time for in-depth discussions), what decisions has the Web Foundation made regarding programming?
• The budget includes a stipend for two (2) Data Officers ($3,000 USD), one (1) Policy Director ($4,200), and two (2) Admin/Finance ($4,000 USD). Could you provide more information on what tasks or responsibilities are associated with these roles?
• Is there an event page prepared on Meta (or elsewhere)? Please add this to the proposal as soon as you are able.
• Given the concerns about skills gaps in using a computer, do you expect that most participants own and are able to bring a personal computer? If not, is it possible to rent a small number for the event? If it is possible to rent, I would recommend amending your budget accordingly.

When you're able, please review these comments above and revise the proposal as needed. These revisions will be due by 24 September 2018 (because you received staff feedback from me later than I had intended), after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal. Take care, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

@Nne75: I had one other request related to the budget. Please update your budget table to specify what the current grant will be covering in the budget, and what will be covered by the Web Foundation / possible partners. Here is a table in another Conference Grant proposal, as an example. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): Thanks for the insights requested. Kindly note that cost of budgeted items on WMF has been specified on budget. Proposed camp plan has been added. We do not plan to rent computers as we expect young policy-level persons who are at ease with their own computers. I have added all of that information in the necessary sections.

@Nne75: For transparency, I'm going to post your full responses to these questions that you provided to me over e-mail:

The event is reported to be “over a three-day period” in the proposal, but the event dates are from Feb - July 2019. What are the proposed dates for this event?

The final event dates will be decided in consultation and collaboration with organising partners.

Because the attendance of the event is smaller, it is important to consider who will benefit most from participation in this bootcamp. Who is the audience for this event, or what communities will you likely be inviting to attend?

We are targeting young, active, policy-level Africa-based Wikimedians. At least, 50% being women.

The budget includes a stipend for two (2) Data Officers ($3,000 USD), one (1) Policy Director ($4,200), and two (2) Admin/Finance ($4,000 USD). Could you provide more information on what tasks or responsibilities are associated with these roles?

The budget is for 1 officer, 1 Operations person and 1 Director. The Officer is Ana, the Ops person is Phoebe, and the Director is Nnenna. There is an estimation of timesheet hours that will be spent working on the bootcamp, expressed in months. The measure is in months for each of the persons.

Given the concerns about skills gaps in using a computer, do you expect that most participants own and are able to bring a personal computer? If not, is it possible to rent a small number for the event? If it is possible to rent, I would recommend amending your budget accordingly.

We have no plans to rent computers. And we actually require campers to not just be able to use one, but come along with one. As said above, we are looking at a higher level of wikimedians, not entry-level. The practicals require that trainees have a somewhat computer capacity.

I am copying and pasting the proposed camp program below:

Time	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
9:00-10:30	Ice breaker. Team building activities	Data track 2	Planning for the future
10:30 - 11:00	Break	Break	Break
11:00 - 12:30	Communities	Data track 3	Team activity
12:30 - 14:00	Lunch	Example	Lunch by teams
14:00 - 15:30	Data Track 1	Policy Track 2	Team project activity
15:30 - 16:00	Break	Break	Break
16:00 - 17:30	Policy Track 1	Policy track 3	Team presentations and closing

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Funding decision for Africa Gender and ICT Bootcamp

Hi Nne75. Based on our discussion, and the feedback received from the committee, we believe this event is not best served as a standalone event at this time. However, we would like to explore other possibilities for creating space for this event. We are currently in discussion with organizers for WikiIndaba to assess whether this proposal can be done in association with a larger conference. I will be more able to make a definitive funding decision based on the outcomes of our discussion, which I expect will be by the end of next week. I will provide more elaborate feedback on the proposal at that time. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 23:34, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

@Nne75: Hi Nnenna. In discussion with Georgina and our team regarding the possibility of incorporating this event as a part of WikiIndaba, we believe reserving two days either before or after the conference will be too logistically challenging to implement. Furthermore, some sections of the proposal need to be further developed. Based on this, we will not be funding the proposal this round, but would encourage you to make specific improvements to the proposal and to resubmit in a future round. The next application deadline is February 4th, for events scheduled between August 2019 - January 2020. Based on our review and committee feedback, there are specific requests we would like to see the following changes in the proposal in order to fund it:

• We would like the Web Foundation to take more time to conduct outreach to their intended audience for this event, or to consider a more specific audience for this initial event to focus on a specific country or set of countries in Africa facing similar policy challenges. This would allow the Web Foundation to work more closely with specific African user groups who can help with messaging and recruitment, in addition to understand their level of commitment and interest. We are able to offer support in helping to identify possible communities who could benefit from this bootcamp.
• Two policy areas the Web Foundation would like to focus on in this event are online privacy and personal data rights. We would like to see more information about some specific responsive policies or actions that could be explored at this event.
• If the bootcamp will incorporate organized contribution to Wikimedia projects, we would want to know how these activities help fulfill the larger goals of this event.
• The cost of the proposed event is too high considering the number of expected attendees, and we would like to see a reduced funding request if the expected audience is relatively small or more specific.
• The structure of the budget related to participants should be made more specific to separate out the costs of international and local travel, catering, and other possible costs like visa fees. See this budget from the CEE Meeting 2018 as an example.
• The roles and responsibilities of staff related to the event should be specified in the proposal so there is a clear rationale of how these staff will help the Web Foundation achieve its goals for this event.
• This is less of a priority than the above feedback, but we would like to see more information about a scholarship selection process. This does not need to be finalized at the time of the proposal, and we can share some guidance in this area, but some initial thinking around planning and criteria is typically provided in proposals.

Please contact me if you need clarification or would like meet to review any revisions or need support in addressing these requests, and we look forward to your next application for this event. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 26 October 2018 (UTC)