Grants talk:Programs/Organizer Lab/Wiki-Green Conference 2023

Committee Review

Hello @NanaYawBotar, thank you for your grant application, we are excited about the opportunities that this project can provide to the Wikimedia communities in Ghana (possibly in the sub-region) and particularly enthused about the continuation of work from the previous year.

General observations:

Your project proposal clearly captures the scope of work it wants to do and the goals it seeks to achieve. However, we hoped to see a progression in goals and activities following the successful organizing of the initiative last year.

The project scope limits the opportunities to work with partners to either actively lead a contribution or content campaign drive or to reel in their audiences/networks into some type of editing activity that directly translates to contributions on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Based on what is written in this application we don’t have a clear sense of the engagement that has already been done with these partners prior to your application.

Reservations:

We have deep reservations about repeating the approach for the conference last year and not moving the conversation into actual work and retention. We understand the approach and there is evidence that it worked, but we think that keeping the conversation flat and not moving into action items will not allow the impact you are looking for.

• How are you going beyond the conversation that you had with the allies last year?
• What ensures that the relationship that you already have with the allies doing more?
• What do you hope to do with the allies 3, 6, and 12 months after the event?
• How will you document what you learn from the partners?

We don’t see a detailed approach to tackling gender and other inclusion around climate and sustainability, as these at times can be very sensitive topics to navigate.

One of the struggles with contributing to this topic in Africa is not having clearly identified pools of sources and topic lists.

• How will you engage the experts and institutions in the panels, etc. to do this?
• How do you intend to leverage the knowledge, resources, and support of the partners to improve sources for contributions in this topic area?
• Can you use the collective wisdom of the participants to build a priority topic gap list?

We are missing your plans on how you intend to document important topical discussions and lessons from the conference.

What we would like the grantee to improve:

• We would like you to clearly distinguish how different the activities of this year are from the previous year and how you intend to get the conference goals closer to adding content or inspiring content contribution on Wikimedia platforms.
• It would be great to describe your re-engagement tactics/strategy for previous partners of the conference and how you are leveraging their networks and net worth for the movement.
• We would like to see a much more detailed plan on how you intend to tackle gender and other inclusion topics around climate in your project.
• We would like you to elaborate on your plans to document lessons learned and important knowledge shared at your conference for future use on the Wikis.
• We would like you to focus on describing qualitative learning on how these partnerships add value to the 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) 22:54, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello @FNartey (WMF),

Thank you for your feedback on our grant application. We appreciate the time and effort you have put into providing us with your observations and reservations.

Regarding the project scope, we understand that it may limits the opportunities to work with partners to either actively lead a contribution or content campaign drive or to reel in their audiences/networks into some type of editing activity that directly translates to contributions on Wikipedia and its sister projects. However, we believe that this is a viable approach that will help us achieve our goals.

We take note of your reservations about repeating the approach for the conference last year and not moving the conversation into actual work and retention. We acknowledge that keeping the conversation flat and not moving into action items will not allow the impact we are looking for. To address this, we will clearly articulate how we intend to move the conversation beyond talk and into action items. We will provide a plan for how we intend to engage our partners in meaningful ways that will lead to increased contributions to Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Regarding gender and other inclusion topics around climate and sustainability, we appreciate your concerns about navigating sensitive topics. We will provide a detailed approach to tackling these topics and engage experts and institutions in the panels to improve sources for contributions in this topic area. We will also leverage the knowledge, resources, and support of our partners to build a priority topic gap list.

We take note of your request for us to clearly distinguish how different the activities of this year are from the previous year and how we intend to get the conference goals closer to adding content or inspiring content contribution on Wikimedia platforms. We will address this in our revised grant application.

Regarding re-engagement tactics/strategy for previous partners of the conference, we will provide a detailed plan for how we intend to leverage their networks and net worth for the movement.

We will also provide a much more detailed plan on how we intend to tackle gender and other inclusion topics around climate in our project, and a detailed plan for how we intend to document lessons learned and important knowledge shared at the conference for future use on the Wikis.

Lastly, we will focus on describing qualitative learning on how these partnerships add value to the project.

Once again, we thank you for your feedback, and we will take your suggestions into consideration as we revise our grant application.

NanaYawBotar (talk) 15:45, 24 February 2023 (UTC)