Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Funds for Annual Projects and Activities of Kurdish Wikimedians User Group (ID: 22023127)

Feedback from MEA regional funds review team

Hi Kushared, thank you for submitting this grant application. After reviewing your grant proposal, we have some questions to learn more about the project and planned activities. Please add your responses on this page by January 8, 2022.

• Could you please provide more information about the Wikimedian in Residence position and their responsibilities at the Zheen Center? How will you select this person and how will you monitor the upload process?
• Could you please specify which activities will be organized in Syria and Iran? Both of these countries are sanctioned by the US and there might be some limitations to run any activities. Additionally, do you plan to redirect any funding to these countries including sending goods or prizes?
• Would you please describe why you need the following expense in the budget: Bus booking and budget hotel?
• What will be the strategy for supporting collaboration between Kurdish community members in different countries?

Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks for your time, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 07:02, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Dear @Davit, thanks for asking those questions. It also helped us for re-thinking about some of them;

• The person will be nominated by Zheen Center and approved by Kurdish user group. The center trained many people before as volunteer, they will choose someone who has enough knowledge on sorting, scanning, digitization and managing different kind of files/documents & some computer skills. Thus, we will not spend time to teach those skills. After selection, Kurdish Wikimedians User Group voluntary will take care about teaching her/him how to use Wikimedia projects particularly Wikimedia Commons.

We will do a contract with the Zheen center to manage the project together, from their side; they will manage and prepare report for the hired person, and from Kurdish user group team (Mohammed Serdar, Aras Noori), we will prepare templates and check her/his works (Data will provide by the center by the end of each week and Kurdish user group will review it, weekly data must contain daily uploads/activities, we will double check Wikimedia Commons manually as well). Later, all of the reports will be publicly published on the project's meta page in Kurdish/English. The responsibilities will be digitalization (if the document only available in hard format), uploading to commons, categorize, write descriptions, collaborate with Zheen Center and Kurdish Wikimedians User Group. In addition, Kurdish Wikimedians User Group will provide assistant to the hired person via online monthly meetings and instant messaging platforms.

We have a question as well, the institution located Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. To hire someone, should we follow Iraq or US work policies?

• Our physical activities will be mainly in Kurdish cities in Iraq. Despite having members in Iran and Turkey, but due to political and safety reasons, we might not able to do physical activities in Syria, Iran and Turkey. Therefore, as we have online contests and activities they will able to join us, specially we will do online campaign in our social networks. Our gifts will be electronics, gift card (ex: Amazon, Netflix, Google Play, App Store or any platforms that the winner prefer to receive but limited to the amount which sh/he won), Books and Wikimedia merchandise. For Syria we might not able to send gifts like books and electronics since there is no company or official channel to send them, but we can send them online gift cards (with Wikimedia permission). According the US rules, can we send electronics, Books and online gift cards to Iran and Syria? If not, What are other user group did in such a case?

• Regarding the Bus booking and budget hotel; We will use this amount to visit the Zheen Center in Sulaymaniyah as majority of our Iraqi members located in Erbil. The purpose of this visit is to teach the hired person physically (in case that is required) and and we have plan to produce a short introduction video of the project. Mainly the video will be used to introduce the project to Kurdish community outside of Wikimedia projects, and it will in the project's page on meta. Thus, The video will be in Kurdish with English subtitle.

• We believe having annually physical or online summit/conference could help to increase collaboration. Before moving to this strategy or position, we need to increase numbers of participants and increase more awareness about Wikimedia projects in Kurdish communities. Kushared (talk) 09:17, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Dear Kushared, thanks for your comprehensive response. Let me follow up on two questions asked:

• It is great to hear that the Zheen Center may manage the contract with the staff member; you will avoid additional bureaucracy in this case. As I also mentioned in the email to you, the contract and employment process must be aligned with the local regulations and the Iraqi Labor Law. There is no need to follow the US labor regulations. Would you need some amount for legal services to prepare the contract with the Zheen Center and/or Wikimedian in Residence?
• I have forwarded your question about the prices to the grant admins team. Once we have clarity around this question, we will move forward with the grant request and approve it.

Thanks again for your contributions to the Movement and Happy New Year! --DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 09:18, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Happy new year to you too :) We consulted with Zheen center, and here is our reply "We can manage legal forms by ourselves, to answer your question, no need further amounts to this purpose." Kushared (talk) 20:01, 12 January 2023 (UTC)