Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia Community User Group Rwanda Support Grant 2025-2026

Feedback regarding your application

Dear Open Space Rwanda,

Thank you very much for your application. The WMF Community Resources team and the Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Funds Committee has convened to review your application and we have the following points for feedback before reaching a final decision. Upon reviewing your application, we would like to bring your attention to a number of points:

• The committee would first like to acknowledge the strong focus on improving Kinyarwanda Wikipedia and increasing community engagement through activities like workshops, edit-a-thons, and training programs.
• The committee sees that some goals, such as expanding Wikimedia clubs to 15 secondary schools within one year, may be unrealistic given the group’s current capacity and lack of prior success in securing school partnerships. May you kindly share how you plan to ensure the success of your activities given your current capacity?
• The committee kindly requests that you share a strategic plan and an annual plan. Without an annual plan that details your annual goals, outcomes and activities with a detailed timeline, it is difficult for the Committee to understand how the group plans on successfully completing its work. Without a strategic plan, it is also challenging for the Committee to understand where Open Space Rwanda is with regards to its organizational growth, or what are the strategies or tactics that you are using to achieve your longer-term goals and outcomes.
• As a result, the requested 110% increase in the budget is unclear to the committee, given that we still are unsure how Open Source Rwanda plans on growing its organization using the additional resources.
• May you also share how you decided on the staffing for your group and to what extent have you engaged your volunteers in also supporting your activities? May you also provide a breakdown of who from your organizing team is responsible for the activities listed in your program?

Thank you very much, and please feel free to share your feedback in this discussion page by Wednesday, May 14 at 12 PM UTC.

Wishing you the best of luck.

On behalf of the WMF Community Resources team and the SSA Regional Funding Committee, FElgueretly-WMF (talk) 13:06, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback on our request , we would like to give feedback on some of the points raised :

-The committee sees that some goals, such as expanding Wikimedia clubs to 15 secondary schools within one year, may be unrealistic given the group’s current capacity and lack of prior success in securing school partnerships. May you kindly share how you plan to ensure the success of your activities given your current capacity?

• Response

The comment is valid as scaling up in 15 schools would be too ambitious , we will revise and collaborate with 10 schools and we will use a decentralized leadership approach among the beneficiaries .

In 2024-2025 , We have so far achieved 1.22K articles created and 5.84K articles edited and this is far better than 2023 -2024 where we were able to increase around 25% of content creation on Kinyarwanda Wikipedia , but this time we need to put more efforts in other content such as sciences , environment climate change and we shall only achieve this when we collaborate with specialized university schools and also contribute on English Wikipedia .

Reference :

The key findings from the pilot include:

Future Audience attraction: for the sustainability of our movement as our 2030 goals in skills development this why we intend to engage more schools as well as to create awareness.

Popular request from school leaders to include Wikimedia activities in extracurricular and digital literacy programs.

- The committee kindly requests that you share a strategic plan and an annual plan. Without an annual plan that details your annual goals, outcomes and activities with a detailed timeline, it is difficult for the Committee to understand how the group plans on successfully completing its work. Without a strategic plan, it is also challenging for the Committee to understand where Open Space Rwanda is with regards to its organizational growth, or what are the strategies or tactics that you are using to achieve your longer-term goals and outcomes.

• Response

Here is a draft strategic plan which is still under development ,: DRAFT Wikimedia Rwanda Strategic Plan 2025–2030 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ePJHKhfkRe9pHVTc2p4LfLhX7oaoOvrW8gq4x93aEqI/edit?usp=sharing

action plan Wikimedia Rwanda plan 2025-2026 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UYyL8BEzlXvPqKSBUnbjHBFGpA8tvMBDI_lw34v2r0c/edit?usp=sharing

Wikimedia Rwanda Action plan 2025-2026(Activity calendar )

- May you also share how you decided on the staffing for your group and to what extent have you engaged your volunteers in also supporting your activities? May you also provide a breakdown of who from your organizing team is responsible for the activities listed in your program?

• Response

Wikimedia Rwanda’s 2025–2026 action plan, will be funded by a 95,000,000 RWF budget and 24,510,000 RWF in donations and in-kind support, relies on a volunteer team—including an Executive Director, Project Coordinator, Community Engagement & Partnership Lead, Financial Controller, two Wiki Club Coordinators, a Communications Team (Designer and Social Media Manager), and a Web Developer—to execute our five program areas: Kinyarwanda Language Promotion, Community Engagement & Outreach, Content Creation, Capacity Building, and Partnerships.

This volunteer structure was chosen to align with the Wikimedia Movement’s volunteerism ethos, ensure cost efficiency, and cover diverse skills needed for activities like edit-a-thons, photo contests, and training workshops, with volunteers supported by stipends, equipment, and in-kind resources ( workspace, travel budgets). Approximately 50 active volunteers, aiming to train 200 by 2026, contribute significantly to content creation (1,000 media uploads), outreach (such as Wiki Clubs in 10 schools), and capacity building, supported by microgrants and monthly awards (360,000 RWF) to prevent burnout. Responsibilities are divided as follows: the Executive Director secures partnerships (such as Rwanda Cultural Academy); the Project Coordinator organizes workshops and campaigns (such as Translate Wiki, Wiki Loves Earth); the Community Engagement & Partnership Lead drives outreach and partnerships; the Financial Controller manages budgets; Wiki Club Coordinators lead local events; the Communications Team promotes activities; the Web Developer builds digital tools; and volunteers execute content and outreach tasks, ensuring efficient delivery of the plan’s objectives. This team has been doing these tasks informally except the web developer , who will be new to the team. RebeccaRwanda (talk 08:28, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Transitioning to a new fiscal year

Dear User:WBuloso-WMF and The Grants review team.

Following our meeting with you on Monday and our subsequent internal discussion, we have decided to transition from our current fiscal year (July–June) to a January–December cycle (from the 2nd to the1st first round of granting cycle). This transition will help our User Group to properly align with our strategic plan 2025-2030.

To facilitate this shift, we plan to apply for two Rapid Grants to support our activities from July to December 2025, while we await the decision on our January–December 2027 grant application. We sincerely appreciate your guidance throughout this transition and your advice that will help ensure the sustainable and organic growth of Wikimedia CUG Rwanda at both the national and regional levels.

Kind regards, ɴᴅᴀʜɪʀᴏ ᴅᴇʀʀɪᴄᴋ 🐎 (talk) 14:23, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

Recognition and Funding for Movement Organizations

Dear Grantee partners,

As part of the next phase of the Movement Ecosystem pilot, the Wikimedia Foundation is publishing a proposal Updating the ecosystem of Wikimedia organizations/Recognition and Funding for Movement Organizations for community review that would update movement affiliate recognition and establish new, connected criteria for eligibility to receive Community Fund grants. The proposal also clarifies expectations for different types of affiliates, formalizes the role of hubs within the model, and aims to create a more coherent and sustainable framework for supporting Wikimedia communities over the long term.

This is a proposal. It was developed in the context of recent recommendations found in the following documents: Towards a Healthy Ecosystem of Wikimedia Organizations, Affiliations Committee Recommendations,the Future Affiliate Landscape, and Key challenges for a new Grantmaking Strategy.

The Wikimedia Foundation plans to submit it to the Board of Trustees for consideration in September 2026, but before then we are inviting Wikimedia communities to review the draft and share feedback. The public consultation will remain open until August 7, 2026, and will include a session at Wikimania. Feedback received during this period will help inform the version ultimately presented to the Board.

We encourage anyone interested in the future of Wikimedia’s movement organizations and funding model to read the proposal and participate in the discussion.

Thank you.

Willy WBuloso-WMF (talk) 07:22, 13 July 2026 (UTC)