Grants talk:Project/MSIG/Wikimedia Community User Group Rwanda/MSIG in Africa great lakes region

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Overall Positive Feedback[edit]

Your proposal is very much aligned with the Movement Strategy Initiative you seek to implement

It is commendable to see the emphasis on partnerships (both regional and international) and the desire to learn from others. This shows how this project could very well lead to continued collaborations within the region and with internal partners in the future. The focus on accessibility: providing translation support, outreaching to remote and newcomer communities, and using both offline and online research methods, is all good too. It will be good to deliberately capture the best practices and challenges experienced from their needs analysis process, as that could be beneficial learnings for other communities seeking to do something similar.

YPam (WMF) (talk) 10:29, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for commending the proposal , we are aware of the need to be aligned with the movement strategy initiative and we will strive to implement all the plans in the same line RebeccaRwanda (talk) 19:14, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback For Improvement[edit]

Need to increase community Engagement

The details of the grant seem generic with no specific social media platforms or groups named on the section on how you intend to keep the communities informed. No specific individuals were also named to be responsible for updating the community. In addition, the report of this project will provide useful information about the skills gap of volunteers in Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, etc. for this reason, it will be great to see some endorsement from volunteers in these target regions.


Need to be more specific on budget

It is not currently clear how the expense items have been calculated, and also not clear as to the need for certain items. For instance, what is the difference between “investigation” and “field activities” which are budgeted as separate items?

A budget of this size could do with better breakdown, especially as to what each line item is supposed to do, as currently the numbers just seem more like guesses or estimates and less a logical estimation.

Something to consider How do you plan to ensure that the research design is contextualized given that the partner supporting on research design may not be familiar with the context? YPam (WMF) (talk) 10:35, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

On the need to increase the community engagement , we will make outreach a priority to the communities of the region through their leaders of all levels, we shall make consultations in order to get views of the beneficiaries and involve them in the planning and implementation process, collaborating on all tasks by receiving feedback from them and empowering these communities with roles of responsibilities in this project
On endorsement we have reached out concerned communities and they are ready to participate actively in the project, they are continuously updating their endorsement.
On the need to be specific on the budget we have detailed activities and corresponding project phases and their costing have been improved, after proofreading the items which proved to be ambiguous have been replaced and others have been improved to be more clear.
In order to contextualize the questionnaires and make sure it fits the purpose we will involve the communities in DRC, Burundi and Rwanda to discuss the objectives of the project , input from international experts will have an added value on a theoretical point of view and worldwide best practices , a validation and testing process of the questionnaire will follow on small number of different communities before the general rollout in the three countries
The best practices and challenges experienced from the needs analysis process will be documented in details to serve as learning from experience to other communities in other initiatives RebeccaRwanda (talk) 19:28, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]