Grants talk:Project/Rapid/AGRIPO/Wiki-agripo 4.0 : edit-a-thons on villages in the South-west of Cameroon

Questions about your request

Dear Elns,

Thank you for submitting this request. We appreciate your sensitivity to the violence taking place in Cameroon, and your desire to expedite the creation of encyclopedic content about the areas most impacted.

I have a few questions about your proposal:

• Can you briefly summarize the mission and goals of AGRIPO? Please also describe any previous work you have done in relation to French Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects.
• In your Project Goal section, you indicated that “Many villages in the English-speaking northwest have been torched and hundreds of residents have fled amid clashes between security forces and separatists,” however your project appears to be in the southwest. Can you clarify your geographic focus?
• Your plan is to have at least two events with a minimum of 10 participants. Since your goal is to create 300 new articles, that indicates that each person at each event would need to write approximately 15 articles. This might be hard to achieve. Can you explain what kind of preparatory work you will be doing before each event to make it likely that you can meet these goals? For example, will you have a template that participants can use to create articles? Will you have references already researched and laid out?
• Your budget indicates that you expect the cost of two editathons to come to 2,820 Euros. With a goal of 10 participants per event, this averages out to 141 Euros per person per event. Even without the cost of the tablets, at 91 Euros per person per event, this is still a very high cost. Consequently, I want to ask you to provide more information about your budget line items. Here are some specific questions:
  • Please provide further description of the cost of in-country communication. Is this for staff time to do social media outreach and emailing, or something else? If it is for staff time, please break down the budget by hourly rate and number of hours. If the units are not staff time, please clarify what they are.
  • Likewise, for project management, please indicate the hourly rate and the number of hours of staff time.
  • For internet connection, please clarify what the units are and why there are four.
  • Likewise, for travel, please clarify what the units are and why there are four. Who will be traveling and where?
  • You mentioned that some of the costs will be covered by AGRIPO. Please make it clear which costs AGRIPO will cover and which costs the Wikimedia Foundation will cover.
• Typically, when we cover the cost of equipment, it is for groups that will have a dedicated use of the equipment for contributions to Wikimedia projects and we require a plan for how you will make the equipment available for other Wikimedian volunteers to borrow for editing. Can you please describe how you would meet this requirement over the lifespan of the tablets you are requesting?

Thank you in advance for answering these questions!

Warm regards, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Answers to WMF questions

Dear Alex Wang (WMF),

Sorry for the long delay. I just see the questions. The answer will be the same for the 2 projects as the questions are the same.

• The goal of AGRIPO is to promote rural development. At this aim, we are working to promote information related to rural areas and priorities related to rural development like biodiversity. Since 2016, we are strongly involved to support production of information on rural development in French wikipedia. We successfully manage 3 wikipedia projects since 2016. The report of our first project is available online. The final report 1. The report of our 2nd project is available online. The final report 2. The report of our 3rd project is available online The final report 3.
• Wiki-agripo initiative is a progressive serie of activities supported by our organisation ( Agripo) to improve the content on Cameroon by focusing on three themes: villages, plants and Bassa community in Cameroon. At the end of each defined project of Wikivillages (based on a region), we continue to work on another focus. When we began to act, the Cameroon portal in french has 2453 articles. Now, this national portal has 7792 articles (with a progress of 5939 articles = 217% evolution done in 2 years after 15 years of wikipedia life). Of these new 5939 articles, the number of articles added through wiki-agripo was 4250 articles on villages, plants and Bassa. So we are more than happy to certify that 71.6% = 4250/5939 percentage of new contribution on Cameroon portal is directly link to our association'action. Any portal in french wikipedia in Africa never gain this level of progress in so limited time and resources. The fact and metrics of wiki-agripo impact are below

Themes	Before Wiki-agripo	With Wiki-agripo 2018	Impact
Plants of Cameroon	157	1110	953 new articles
Villages of Cameroon	80	3344	3264 new articles
Bassa community	586	619	33 new articles

The way we use by progressive activities linked to turn over of volunteers has a great impact. But this need to mobilise, mobilise and train new contributors for each project.

• We are working on the same dynamic with a progressive platform which has guidelines, references and sources of information related on the subject of our project. The page for the progressive initiative on the French Wikipedia remain the same plateform. More than ever, we also have direct assistance to our volunteer for those who want to receive personal assistance.

With our strategy, the number of articles are easy to reach. Volunteers continue to work after the collaborative meeting ( edit-thons). The work goes beyong the edithons because edithons are mainly use to coach the first steps of new volunteers.

• We are a rural association with no IT facility. For edithons, we rent space in urban city with limited access to IT facilities. The cost is not just for the successful participants. Usually, we mobilise more than 50 participants per project. But by experience, as they are new volunteers, less than 20% succeed to create articles. It is why we count only 20% of invited contributors who succeed to create articles.
  • The cost of in-country communication is related to internet and phone expenses. In each project, we make phone communication to mobilise volunteers and we take in charge expenses related to their access in internet in a country where few people has frequent access to internet. This facility are taking in charge to reduce this negative constraints of participation.
  • For project management, the hour rate is 10 USD per hour. For this project we mobilise 2 staff members during 2 months (for 30 hours per months). Usually they work more than 100 hours for 30 paid hours.
  • For internet connection. The unit is the monthly fee ( which is cheapest than hour payment). We buy 2 monthly fee for 2 computer access.
  • The 2 staff of projects has to travel from rural area to urban city where we organise the edit-tons. We have 2 travels per staff, 4 travels in total.
  • Usually, AGRIPO prepaid all expenses of projects. Each project cost more than 2000 USD. And we take in charge the overcost of the project. For exemple, we pay transport fee and perdiem to contributors when they need to travel as the staff. Many does. These costs are not taken in charge in the WMF grant.
• The equipment is dedicated to support all our Wikimedia projects. It is our 4th project and before that we use the association computer. Due to frequent wikipedia projects, we need to have dedicated equipement to wikipedia projects. This computer will be used over the lifespan of the computer for wikipedia project as we plan to cover all Cameroonian villages. We are in the begining but before our action, the Cameroon portal was 13rd in french wikipedia. We are now the 2nd african portal of french wikipedia. This is the result of our permanent action since 2016.

--Elns (talk) 01:13, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Approval

Hello Elns, thank you for responding to my colleague's questions. I am approving this grant request as well. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi WJifar (WMF), thanks so much for your support.--Elns (talk) 00:19, 26 June 2018 (UTC)