Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wiki Loves Earth 2025 in Nepal (ID: 22978581)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF) and OlesiaLukaniuk (WMUA)

Hello Nirmal Dulal, and thanks for your proposal supporting Wiki Loves Earth 2025 in Nepal. I wanted to confirm that Wiki Loves Earth-related Rapid Fund proposals are being formally co-reviewed by both the Community Resources team and the Wiki Loves Earth Organizing team supported by OlesiaLukaniuk (WMUA) (talk · contribs) so proposal feedback reflects both feedback and discussion from both of these groups. Funding decisions on these proposals are also being finalized in a cooperative manner between the WLE organizing team and the Community Resources team as a part of this process. Speaking more broadly, this collaboration is part of a broader effort to support more localized review and decisionmaking when resourcing major Wikimedia campaigns. With all that said, please see our feedback and questions below:

• We noticed that the WLE competitions in Nepal have generally been supported by yourself and Nabin, and given the recent size of the competition, we wanted to recommend that you take some time in this next year to work on expanding the size of the organizing team. With a smaller team, there are more risks around running the campaign successfully if someone from the team becomes unavailable for some reason (due to illness, for example). Is it possible to work on encouraging/supporting some volunteers to work more closely with you on the preparation and implementation of WLE in the future?
• The competition this year is expected to receive significantly fewer submissions than last year (1000 vs. about 1500 in 2024), but the number of jurors involved remains the same. Could you explain more about what may be causing this change in your expected outcomes and why a similar number of jurors is needed to support the review and decisionmaking for this reduced amount of expected submissions?

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 14:53, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Reply

Hi, I JethroBT (WMF) and OlesiaLukaniuk (WMUA)

Regading the aforementioned feedback and queries,

• We noticed that the WLE competitions in Nepal have generally been supported by yourself and Nabin, and given the recent size of the competition, we wanted to recommend that you take some time in this next year to work on expanding the size of the organizing team. With a smaller team, there are more risks around running the campaign successfully if someone from the team becomes unavailable for some reason (due to illness, for example). Is it possible to work on encouraging/supporting some volunteers to work more closely with you on the preparation and implementation of WLE in the future?

Hi, thanks a bunch for the feedback and bringing the query. Regarding the organizing team members and size of team in these past 10 years of experience we’ve tried multiple options and alternatives to execute the events in the best way possible with variant of team collaborations and have achieved success as well as faced consequences parallelly. Firstly the motive of having a small core execution team means less administrative, operation and execution cost. Apart from core team members we always have collaborative organizations and freelance photographers as a part of our associates and volunteers during all these events in the past and for the future as well along with the active community members here in Nepal. Taking the aforementioned feedback we will surely enhance the automation to avoid the future consequences and build an easy path for future generations.

• The competition this year is expected to receive significantly fewer submissions than last year (1000 vs. about 1500 in 2024), but the number of jurors involved remains the same. Could you explain more about what may be causing this change in your expected outcomes and why a similar number of jurors is needed to support the review and decisionmaking for this reduced amount of expected submissions?

Well, this is something we’ve been dealing with for a couple years and tried to overcome this year. Year by year we’re focusing on Quality apart from Quantity and it seems it’s working and our outcomes are ranking internationally in Top 10 and Top 20 more than ever in the past. Regarding the number of Jury members we’ve had 2 Jury members and will be continuing the same with different specializations to overcome both categories of Landscape and Macro. Although we’ve limited our organizational target but still have possibilities to exceed the target as per our track record for jury procedures as usual.

Nirmal Dulal (talk) 05:56, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Your application has been approved

Hello @Nirmal Dulal,

Thank you for your application and for taking time to respond with additional information. Congratulations, your application has been approved in the amount of NPR 645,000 from 1 May 2025 to 31 July 2025.

• I extended the implementation timeline. If you complete your project ahead of time, please feel free to submit your final report early via Fluxx.

Additional resources which may be useful

• The reporting requirements and templates for the grant can be found here. All reports are to be completed and submitted via Fluxx.
• Timelines for reporting can be found in your grant agreement or on Fluxx.
• Instructions for post award: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Processing/Grantee_Portal/Post_award
• Documenting project expenses: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Documenting_project_expenses

We thank you for your participation in the grant application process and hope to continue to journey with you as you embark on this project. Good luck!

Regards, Jacqueline on behalf of the Wiki Loves Earth Organizing team and @I JethroBT (WMF) JChen (WMF) (talk) 03:47, 2 April 2025 (UTC)