Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/AfroCROWD:Championing Communities of African Descent on and in Wikimedia and Improving the relevance of Wikipedia and open technology to communities of Color

Feedback from the Regional Committee

Hi Shanluan, and thank you for AfroCROWD's proposal for for the current funding cycle. The US/Canada Regional Committee has initially reviewed the proposal; to start the discussion, I'm offering some comments and questions for your review.

First, some comments:

• I am impressed by the very broad range of activities, audiences, and geographical locations in which AfroCROWD has been active. When reading your proposal I have the sense of an experienced project team and a mature, vibrant project.
• I appreciate that this project engages participants "wherever they fall on their Wiki journey" and is seeking to develop critical skills such as fact-checking, evaluating sources, and understanding media bias.

Next, a few questions:

• Would it be possible to provide an alternative view (or link) to your timeline? The link provided leads to a Canva display which is unreadable (much too small) on my system.
• In this & in previous AfroCROWD proposals, the list of activities has included engaging participants as contributors to Wikidata, but I see no metric associated with this. I'm just curious to know if any Wikidata activities have been attempted or completed.
• I understand that a key goal of AfroCROWD is to increase awareness of Black culture and the African diaspora. Have you considered monitoring the number of posts in Diff which relate to activities in Africa or within the African diaspora, as a rough measure of increased awareness within the WM community?

Thanks again for your proposal. Redwidgeon (talk) 22:40, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words and thoughtful assessment of AfroCROWD, and for recognizing the scope and prolific impact of our programs. It is encouraging to hear that our dedication to engagement of diverse audiences across the world of the African Diaspora in different regions and stages of their Wiki journey have been noted. This feedback reinforces our commitment to empowering our participants and audiences to contribute to and participate in the ever changing Wikimedia Movement as readers, users and editors and within the pages, pixels and coding and activities of Wikimedia projects.

Per your request, here is the updated Timeline link including an alternative view.

Thank you for highlighting our Wikidata engagement, which, while indeed incorporated in our integral activity as mentioned, we can surely move to publish our Wikidata metrics and make it more of an overall centerpiece.

Can you please clarify the final question? We are highly involved in this space and glad to be a part of its growth. Recently we even returned to the United Nations in celebration of Africa Day, increasing awareness of the Wikimedia community's part to play in closing knowledge gaps about Africa and the Africa Diaspora as seen widely in our social media here for example, spreading even further knowledge of the hard work of the Wikimedia community beyond internal awareness. We hope this will continue to grow and we are proud to be a part of it. Thank you again. Shanluan (talk) 10:19, 27 May 2024 (UTC)