Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Dagbani Wikimedians User Group 2022 Annual Programs

Hello, I wish to notify you about an update made on our application. We updated Question 20 of the Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation section. Please note that it may take a while to reflect on meta. Regards, Shahadusadik (talk) 17:43, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback from the Middle East and Africa Regional Funding Committee on your proposal[edit]

Hello Shahadusadik and Din-nani1

Thank you for taking the time to submit your proposal. We are pleased to have reviewed it and have the following comments and questions;

We find your proposal is clear in terms of understanding your desired goal.
The proposal aligns with the Movement Strategy, it focuses on these initiatives: Improve User Experience, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Innovate in Free Knowledge.
We are excited about the partnerships you seek to develop.
We recognize that there are many or a high volume of activities and are curious to learn more about the rationale for having these many activities and the capacity to implement them successfully. We understand the excitement to grow your programming and are keen on knowing what capacities exist especially as you transition the current volume of your programming.

Thank you for taking your time to review our application and thanks for your observation.

In regard to the high volume of activities, We wish to re-emphasize that our current scope of work cuts across multiple Wikimedia language communities, the Dagbani Wikimedia, the Gurene Wikimedia and the Moore Wikimedia language communities. The Dagbani Wikimedia community alone have been able to complete 8 projects within the last fiscal year. In addition to that, we have established the University of education Wiki hub and we are in the process of establishing two additional hubs at Bagabaga College of education and Tamale College of education respectively. Also, we have onboarded 4 more volunteers to join our core team and we believe that we can complete the proposed projects within the time frame.

How do you hope to address issues of notability related to the project related to members of parliament which might not meet the notability criteria for the biography of living people.

All the current parliamentarians in Ghana are covered on the parliament.gh and the Ghana MP’s websites.

Also, The Ghanaian community have previously organized a similar campaign to create and improve Eglish Wikipedia articles of all Ghanaian parliamentarians from 1950 to 2016. Therefore, we will be translating these existing English Wikipedia articles on the Dagbani Wikipedia.

Other resources we will be working with include:

How do you plan to retain 50% editors?

Since we have always retained more than 50% of our participants and volunteers through the rapid grant projects, we would replicate that for this program by continuing to engage our members through our ‘article of the week's challenge. Our meteor-mentee program and the community capacity building activities we have designed would help us retain more editors.

We are interested in learning about how you plan on collaborating with other Wikimedia communities in Ghana and how you plan to foster coordination and collaboration amongst members of the Dagbani Wikimedians UG community seeking to contribute to similar and aligned projects and impact.

We have previously collaborated with the other Ghanaian Wikimedia communities like the Global Open Initiative and the Twi Wikimedia Community. The user group currently works to support the Gurene and the Moore Wikimedia Communities.

We have supported some of our communities and individuals to run projects such as edit-a-thons, photowalks and other workshops in northern Ghana. We have always shared our past grant applications with community members and other Wikimedia affiliates/community talk pages and we look forward to collaborating with all of them.

Seeing that you have implemented the Dagbani Wikipedia Saha program, would you share any preliminary impact report that would support us in understanding the impact of the project and how it contributes to the main objectives of the UG and this proposal?

Even though the episodes are yet to be aired from May 7 2022 due to the current Ramadhan religious activities, the campaign ad is currently being aired daily on our partner TV station. We have received a lot of positive feedback from the community and viewers via WhatsApp messages, Facebook and phone calls. The Dagbani Wikipedia Saha social media pages have increased steadily, and the private Facebook group we created barely a month ago already has over 1,000 members with over 40 daily post reactions. In less than a month, we have reached 28 subscribers, and 2 video posts with over 100 views on YouTube. We currently have 102 Twitter followers and followers on Instagram. This tells us that people are so much looking forwarding learning more about Wikipedia in the comfort of their homes.

Finally, a detailed explanation of the Dagbani Wikipedia Saha was published in the April's the Wikimedia Education newsletter.

Would you indicate the rationale for the contingency costs?

Thank you for your observation. The contingency amount was supposed to be 5% of the total budget as recommended for a project like this and not the initial 7.7%. The contingency cost included the unforeseeable change in price, expenses and other miscellaneous expenses that may arise. Please note that we have updated the budget accordingly.

Questions from staff;

Would you share with us how you have managed resources before. What financial systems structures and skills have been useful in the past that will be handy in managing this proposed grant?

Since 2020, We have successfully managed our grants and resources with support from volunteer finance officers within our team. We have locally designed a Google spreadsheet called ‘The expense master’ which allows us to manage our expenses, receipts and invoices. Now that we are moving to a much bigger grant program, we will hire the service of a finance expert to help with budgeting and funds management.

Please share with us how the roles and responsibilities have been shared in the past amongst team members, and volunteers and how those roles will shift, given that the scale and scope of your proposal is bigger.

Our current core team is made up of volunteers from diverse professional backgrounds and experiences. Apart from the current 9 core teams and their roles listed in this proposal, we also have a volunteer support team drawn from the 3 language communities. The core team members and volunteers are selected based on their level of commitment and expertise. Now that we will be hiring 2 paid staff, we hope to onboard more volunteers from our diverse community.

How have you ensured accountability and transparency are achieved in your organisation and towards the community members you engage.

We have always engaged community members to discuss our current and upcoming projects. All our programs and activities are organized openly and transparently, where community members are invited to comment, endorse and provide feedback on all our grant applications.

We see a significant portion of your resources is on staff and while we understand the purpose of the request we have a few questions to support us in understanding the measures you have put in place to support this transition from volunteer-led to hiring staff to manage projects;

What is the basis/rationale informing the staff roles and costs?

Considering the nature and scope of our programs and the community base, we think it is important for us to have at least 2 paid staff who would help manage our projects and the user group in general. The Executive Director and the Project Manager roles are 2 of the most important roles in our organization. Their roles and individual contributions to the user group are super important to us as an organization.

That said, the costs associated with both roles are within the current minimum wage range in Ghana. The salary also included costs associated with social security and health insurance contributions.

The employees will be working for 5 days a week, they shall be paid within 30 days of every month and are entitled to sick leave and annual leave.

Have you taken time to review the labour laws and regulations and what policies have you put in place to be complaint

Yes. As a registered nonprofit organization, we are fully aware of the labour laws and regulations in Ghana and are committed to ensuring that we fulfil all the obligations required in hiring paid staff. One of the duties of our advisory board is to ensure that we comply with the labour laws and regulations of Ghana, the Wikimedia Code of conduct and our organization's bylaws.

Employees' experience in organizations is enabled by organizational culture and in thinking about the experience you hope the proposed staff would have, might you have thought about the organization’s culture and other organizational elements associated with hiring staff.

The proposed 2 paid staff are both founding members of our organization and have been working with the organization since its inception. They are fully aware of the organization’s culture and other elements associated with employee management and staffing. We believe they have the experience and the capacity needed for both roles.

Additionally, who would the staff be reporting to and getting support from?

We have a fully functional advisory board that the staff would be reporting to. See here.

Seeing that there will be a compensation/staff costs element, it would be financially appropriate that the payment is made from a legally recognized organization. Having mentioned that, are you legally registered and if not, what is your intended plan of action.

The Dagbani Wikimedians User Group is a legally registered not-for-profit organisation in Ghana (Reg. No CG053060121) under the Ghana companies ACT 2019, (ACT 9920). We are also registered under the Ghana revenue authority and the Department of Social Welfare Ghana, the official regulatory body for nonprofit organizations in Ghana.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you. On behalf of the MEA Regional Committee --VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 09:16, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you again for your comments. Warmly, Shahadusadik (talk) 10:38, 27 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Community Fund approved in the amount of $55,000USD[edit]

Hello Shahadusadik and Din-nani1

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of $55,000USD, with a grant term starting 1 July 2022 and ending 30th June 2023.

We would like to begin by recognizing the growth in proposal writing that we saw in this proposal; there was clarity which allowed us to understand your objectives and strategies that will enable you to achieve the desired impact. We were pleased to see the desire and plan to have coordinated and collaborated efforts amongst your community members including those interested in other Mole languages such as the Gurene Wikimedia and the Moore Wikimedia language communities. We look forward to learning how this intentional collaboration unfolds and any best practices that can be shared with other communities.

We recognize your ambition and enthusiasm for implementing the proposed activities and recommend reducing the scope of the projects, recognizing the need and opportunity to develop organizational and operational structures and processes before transitioning to an extensive scope. We recommend looking into a stipend or allowance approach to support coordinators and bringing on board a consultant who would support you in establishing organizational and operational structures that would enable you to absorb and manage future growth in programs and operational needs.

We were keen to learn more about your recruitment processes including those that will inform the selection of project leads and coordinators, and especially towards fostering transparency and availing the equal opportunity to community members.

We are excited at the Wikipedia Saha program and suggest that you take a phased approach to implement the program, that way you have opportunities to learn about the impact the program is creating before investing more resources. We encourage you to share with the community the outcomes of the program; it would be a great way of sharing learnings with others who are interested in the program.

Kindly adjust your programs to fit the budget approved and let the regional program officer if you need any support in making the adjustments. Overall, we are excited about the growth of the community and look forward to seeing the impact realized with these proposed programs.

Thank you for your work and all you do for the community and the Wikimedia movement.

Best regards from the MEA Regional Committee and Staff --VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for approving our grant request. We look forward to working with you more. Shahadusadik (talk) 12:32, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]