Grants talk:Programs/Organizer Lab/Swahili Climate Voices

Committee Feedback

Hello @Justine Msechu, thank you for the grant application. Your project proposal seems quite clear on the goals and what the project seeks to achieve. We are happy to see good use of existing communities in Tanzania and in the sub-region.

General observations:

Although your project is tightly scoped we don’t have a strong sense of your outreach strategy. You have outlined several stakeholders/partners that you want or would like to work with but your outlined activities don’t explain how you plan to achieve that. Your list of identified is quite wide however you have not showcased what roles these partners will play to amplify the impact or help you reach the project's goals.

We also observe that your activities focus heavily on existing and experienced Wikimedians through your collaboration with the affiliates but less on the approach to attract or engage new audiences even though there is a plan to ensure 40% of participants are newbies.

Reservations:

Your budget lacks a contingency which is usually useful for covering incidental costs not budgeted for normally on the administrative side. Contingency or miscellaneous budgets are normally 10% of your total budget.

Your budget mentions an amount of $4000 for stipends but does not provide the makeup for that line item. Can you please provide further information about this?

It's not clear how your activities support the partnership list/work that you have provided, it will be great to be clear on how to support these partners in the process. The project lacks a collective action plan for how these new audiences or participants will be assimilated into the existing communities.

We worry that you mention so many different audiences to target in this project and will suggest that you scope this initial project around one audience to ensure you are successful.

What we would like the grantee to improve:

• What strategies will you employ to leverage the resources, capacity, or potential of these partners?
• What plans or lines of action are you taking to train and engage newbies?
• How do you intend to connect all the activities happening with the various affiliates you are working with? There is currently no synergy or a single activity or drive that connects participants from all the 3 different communities participating in this project.
• Working with partners can take a while, so can you tell us more about these partners/partnerships?
  • At what stages are these partnerships and do you anticipate their full inclusion in your programmed activities?
  • What exactly will be the contributions of these partners to the project?
  • Are there any risk assessments of the impact of these partnerships if not secured for the project?
• Your program has some good quantitative measures but programs like these with the right qualitative measure can really tell impactful stories. What is your plan to capture such stories as part of the information collected to tell impactful stories?
• What tools or approaches do you intend to use to track activities from your program? Especially some quantitative metrics around retention and newbie participation.
• We would also be pleased to connect you with the GLAM team at the WMF to learn how to capture metadata from your project.

NB: Please make indicated changes to your application on the Wikimedia Foundation Grantee Portal (Fluxx). Log in to the Grantee Portal and you will see your application in the 'Proposals need attention' section. Edit and re-submit your proposal by March 02, 2023. FNartey (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

@FNartey (WMF) Thank you very much for your constructive remarks, recommendations and comments, please take a look at our responses below to the raised questions regarding the proposal;

Your budget lacks a contingency which is usually useful for covering incidental costs not budgeted for normally on the administrative side. Contingency or miscellaneous budgets are normally 10% of your total budget.

Response

We had a meeting with our advisories as mentioned in our proposal, one of the advisory Ebenezer Mlay (User: CaliBen) the organizer of Wikimedia Community Arusha, said he will cover the costs of one event that was planned to happen in his community with sub-grants from the general fund, so we already update our budgets in the flux that contingencies will be covered with the cost reduced from such one event. We came up with that decision so that not to go beyond the Organizers Lab budgets

Your budget mentions an amount of $4000 for stipends but does not provide the makeup for that line item. Can you please provide further information about this?

Response

We have already provide the makeup for that line item on our budget.

What strategies will you employ to leverage the resources, capacity, or potential of these partners?

Response

The majority of partners involved in this project are Wikimedians and/or entities with members who are Wikimedians. To mention a few, our partners who are Wikimedians include; Iddy Ninga (User: Idd ninga), the Co-founder of Dunia Salama Foundation (also listed as a partner), Frank Kisamo (User: Frank kisamo), the Co-founder of Ksm Agro Industry Company LTD (also listed as a member). As such, the strategy employed to leverage the resources, capacity, or potential of these partners is the involvement of individuals and entities that share a common goal with the project and at large, with the Wikimedia community.

Similarly, the strategy also extends to other partners involved in this project who are not affiliated with Wikimedia. For instance, The Center for Research Cooperation (listed as a partner) a branch of the Conservation Resource Center, a non-profit organization which supports researchers and students working in natural resource issues in Tanzania. We expect that through such a partnership, we will be able to broadly extend our reach during implementation of this and future projects.

For our media partners, we intend to employ their resources to publicize our project to the masses including stakeholders and potential long-term partners.

What plans or lines of action are you taking to train and engage newbies?

Response

We intend to conduct an Attitude, Skills and Knowledge training for the newbies who will be participating in this project. Also as we have indicated that 40% of project participants will be newbies, we have put in place much efforts and strategies of recruiting newbies, such that via collaboration and partnership, not only that but will recruit more volunteers from universities and collages.

How do you intend to connect all the activities happening with the various affiliates you are working with? There is currently no synergy or a single activity or drive that connects participants from all the 3 different communities participating in this project

Response

We anticipate providing mini-grants to these communities, where facilitators as mentioned in our team will organize the events in their communities, therefore in this way, it will help to connect the activities mentioned. We will ask them to submit the report at the end of each event and combine those reports to formulate a general report at the end of the campaign and submit it to Wikimedia Foundation.

Working with partners can take a while, so can you tell us more about these partners/partnerships?

Response

As explained earlier most of the founders of these organizations that we anticipate partnering with, are Wikimedians in our existing communities therefore they are fully aware of the Wikimedia activities, we already had conversations with them about the mission and goals of the project and they accepted with a great enthusiasm to work with us, in this project, through this partnership we will help to reach more people to participate in the campaign and allow us to achieve far more than we could achieve alone.

At what stages are these partnerships and do you anticipate their full inclusion in your programmed activities?

Response

Yes, as we already had conversations with them about the mission and goals of the project and they accepted with great enthusiasm to work with us, in this project, through this partnership we will help to reach more people to participate in the campaign and allow us to achieve far more than we could achieve alone.

What exactly will be the contributions of these partners to the project?

Response

Most of our partners are fully aware of climate changes and environmental issues, therefore firstly, they will help to provide training and awareness of climate and the environment before starting to document in the Wikimedia projects, this will help our participants to be aware of technical terminology used, of what they going to document in Wikipedia and other listed Wikimedia projects that we anticipate contributing in during the Swahili Climate Voices campaign regarding the Climate Change and sustainability topic, Secondly, since our partners are involving many youths in their works, thus through this partnership we will recruit new participants by reaching out many youths through them and lastly these partners such as media's partners they will help to amplify our campaign by advising through their platforms which will help reach more people to join the campaign.

Are there any risk assessments of the impact of these partnerships if not secured for the project?

Response

There might be adverse effects if this partnership is not secured, such as a dearth of new participants and environmental experts in our project, as a result, we will fail to reach the project goals, to secure this we have the following plans after the grant approval.

1: We will sign a written agreement with our partners to ensure the security of the partnership

2: We will provide stipends to our partners, We hope this will motivate them to continue working with us until the end of the campaign.

Your program has some good quantitative measures but programs like these with the right qualitative measure can really tell impactful stories. What is your plan to capture such stories as part of the information collected to tell impactful stories?

Response

Thank you very much for recognizing that this campaign deserves to have impactful stories, sure we will use Diff and Podcast to document what we shall be doing during the campaign.

What tools or approaches do you intend to use to track activities from your program? Especially some quantitative metrics around retention and newbie participation.

Response

We will use the WMF Programs and Events Dashboard to track contributions, and Google Forms to create pre and post-surveys before and after each event, We anticipate using the modern WMF Event Registration tools as well.

We would also be pleased to connect you with the GLAM team at the WMF to learn how to capture metadata from your project.

Response

Thank you very much for this opportunity, also we will be grateful to be connected with the GLAM team at the WMF to learn how to capture metadata from our project Justine Msechu (talk) 10:19, 2 March 2023 (UTC)