Grants talk:PEG/WM ZA/Joburgpedia 2016

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GAC members decisions[edit]

GAC members who support this request[edit]

GAC members who support this request with adjustments[edit]

  1. I support this request but balance of impact and funding isn't perfect for me... I hope that WMF will discuss the scope of the project and will work on it during funding discussion with grantee rubin16 (talk) 18:06, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    I second the Rubin16 concerns. The idea is good, but the costs vs effects are 5 x less than in last year project. Polimerek (talk) 10:43, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

GAC members who oppose this request[edit]

GAC members who abstain from voting/comment[edit]

GAC comments[edit]

previous reports[edit]

I think that these links will be useful:

budget changes compared to 2015[edit]

I reviewed the prior year report and grant application and see the following significant changes to budget:

Yes, last year we had a part-time employee as a chapter who invested a significant amount of time to this project. We have since scaled down and the employee is no longer avaialable. Furthermore our Partner ConhillEdu had a dedicated staff to assist us with connecting to the schools (about 20 - 25, were contacted by this resource, with only 5 staying the course), ConhillEdu have had to scale down due to uncertainty in funding for the next 3 years, so the resource from their side decreases down to 30% of what we had last year. You will appreciate that more work in organising and face-to-face meetings will not be borne by our two project leads. This is why we have allocated an increase in project management fees. This is still modest in my view when you consider that we are trippling the number of schools participating.--Thuvack (talk) 08:17, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We have received considerable interest for this project from the local press as well as the communication department of the City of Joburg. This cost is in anticipation of work that would have to be done there. Also the norm for incidental and contingencies is usually 10 - 15% of the project cost, we have done due diligence and are confident that we have priced in as much of the activities we can forsee as we can, hence we are allocating only 7% of the budget to contingency--Thuvack (talk) 08:17, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We are engaging 3 times more schools this year, which is almost 5 time more learners. We have kept this cost as low as we could. --Thuvack (talk) 08:17, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As a whole, prior year required 2000 USD and now you ask for 10000+ USD but the impact hasn't changed five times as budget had. What is the reason? rubin16 (talk) 18:05, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the biggest cost increase in this case is the Transportation component, whicg was handled by ConhillEdu last year. We are in discussions with Both ConhillEdu and City of Joburg and may be able to share this cost with them, but we have priced it in as it is absolutely necessary to get the schools to the edit-a-thon/training venue.--Thuvack (talk) 08:17, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Thuvack: sorry for writing again: will you have time to comment on my question above? rubin16 (talk) 13:19, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Rubin16:, my apologies for this delayed response, I was away for the past two weeks. Please see my responses in-line above. --Thuvack (talk) 08:17, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Community comments[edit]

WMF Comments[edit]

Hi @Thuvack: and @Bobbyshabangu:. Thank you for your continued work supporting and growing the community in Johannesburg. We appreciated discussing the development of Joburgpedia with you several weeks ago and learning how the goals and activities have changed over the years. We understand the focus has shifted to capitalizing on the relationship with ConHill and engaging students through workshops and contests. We understand the project has a three-pronged approach to engaging with the students and teachers: (1) Invest in younger students and engage them through the writing contest; (2) Train university students and encourage them to become mentors -- develop relationships with them that last several years throughout their education; (3) Engage teachers since they have the highest potential for being longer term Wikimedians and continuing Wikimedia projects in their classrooms.

There are several issues we discussed on the call that we still would like to know more about:

  1. University students may not be well prepared to serve as mentors after two training sessions. This was identified as a major challenge last year -- how are you organizing the project differently so that they will be more successful? Will the mentors from last year be participating again? Are there other experienced Wikimedians either in Joburg or elsewhere to can do the online support and mentorship?
Although one of the challenges was mentors not being prepared after two training sessions, we have noticed that this was also because they've found it difficult to understand and get used to marked up text in time before we start bringing in the students. So, yes mentors from last year will be participating but we are aiming to focus more on visual editor this year with mentors from last year assisting in training the new volunteers.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:42, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  1. If the goal is to expose the secondary students to Wikipedia editing with the hope that they will continue editing after the contest, prioritizing quality of engagement over quantity might be a good strategy. It sounds like ConHill had a lot of challenges getting 20 schools to participate last year and there were additional challenges with access to internet. We would encourage you to identify schools where the teachers and librarians are most enthusiastic about working with Wikimedia throughout the school year and where there is reliable internet. If you are open to exploring other ideas that include more regular activities like wikiclubs, let us know. We've seen that developing good, long-term relationships with teachers is the key to successful engagement in schools.
Thank you for this insight, we are most open to new ideas that will make it easy for us to run the project. I would love to connect with other wikimedians who have been involved in the same project to share ideas, especially on how they run their wikiclubs and other issues such as monitoring and evaluation, qualitative over quantitative and outcomes, retention etc. Getting this kind of information would be very much invaluable for us. Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:42, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  1. You have developed key partnerships with several GLAMs in Johannesburg, however beyond ConHill it is not clear how the partners listed are engaged with the project.
The Johannesburg Heritage Foundation have a archives of all the heritage sites in the Johannesburg area which helps us with research when for instance a particular school chooses a to do a Wikipedia page about a site which does not have any internet links for citations, so they help us with research for free. Besides this, they also run a school's project as well, where they take students on tours to historical and heritage sites. We are in communication with them to find out if we can't extend the invitation to the schools in their database. We are involved with the City of Johannesburg on other Joburgpedia projects like our Wikitowns, however they are there to help us with logistics and additional support, e.g last year they provided catering for 2 events when we ran out of funds to do this. for extra computers and a space to do the prize giving event, the Goethe Institut will be the one assisting us in this regard. Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:42, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please let us know if you have questions about the above. We look forward to your responses. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 02:41, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Project Scaled Down[edit]

We ahev scaled down the project and converted it to a Train-The-Trainer format for Teachers and University Students, and this way we hope to prepare them for a schools writting competition project we aim to host next year in April 2017. --Thuvack (talk) 14:31, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Thuvack. Thanks for the update. We're looking forward to hearing more and seeing an updated proposal in one of the upcoming Project Grant rounds. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 16:46, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Thuvack. Thank you for updating this grant request. We look forward to hearing about how the editathons and training events go. Focusing on teachers and the Conhill fellows is a great step forward. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 22 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Project Cancellation Request[edit]

@ User:Jtud (WMF) & @Alex Wang (WMF) Please note our request for cancellation of this project and as follows:

Our long time contact at ConhillEdu is in the process of leaving the institution, as they have encountered serious budget cuts around the end of February. As a result they have decided to scale down on the schools project. This has a direct impact on our project as we had hoped to piggy back on their schools program as well as their University students tutelage programs. We are in discussion with ConhillEdu as well as City of Joburg (Which is under new administration) in order to evaluate a possible collaboration for the school year of 2018. As a result of all the above we believe that the chances of success as well as related additional expenses are not looking good, we have decided to cancel this project.

We have only incurred three expenses on this project as follows:

Description Used Funds (ZAR) Used Funds (USD)
1.1 Project Management Fees (Dumi) R 2500 $ 175,19
1.2 Partial claim of Project Management Fees (Bobby) R 1500.00 $ 105,12
1.3 Project team brain-storming lunch R 180.30 $ 12,64
TOTAL EXPENDITURE R 4180.30 $ 292,95
Calculated per exchange rate of R14.27/1USD on 06/09/2016, per project application.

We will await your directives on the way forward in this regard. --Thuvack (talk) 07:33, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Thuvack. Thank you for this update and we're sorry to hear that the transition at Conhill Edu has created such challenges for the project. We will note a 36.061.70 ZAR underspend on this grant. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]