Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Ebenezer Mlay/1Lib1Ref 2020 in Arusha, Tanzania

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

@Ebenezer Mlay: Hi Ebenezer, thanks for your 1Lib1Ref Rapid Grant proposal in Arusha. I had a few questions and a request for some revisions to your proposal before we approve it:

• What are the usernames of the three other experienced editors supporting the event?
• In terms of your goals for the events, are there specific skills you would like to teach librarians and other participants at the edit-a-thon? Are there specific content areas you'd like to focus on for adding/improving articles on Swahili Wikipedia?
• In terms of your budget, Rapid Grants cannot provide funding for T-shirts for all event participants. Please review the funding guidelines for merchandise. I would recommend reducing this budget to four (4) T-shirts just for the organizers supporting the event or to consider different merchandise for all participants that has lower financial and environmental costs. Please revise this budget item accordingly on the grant page.

Let me know if I can clarify any of these comments or questions. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:11, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Reply to comments

@I JethroBT (WMF):, thanks for your comments on my proposal. I would like to provide answers to the questions you provided:

• The usernames for the other three editors are Innocent Massawe , Kevin Matola and Alexander Demetro

• I will teach new skills to the librarians such as editing articles in Wikipedia and adding references to the articles that are already in Wikipedia. Currently I do not yet have specific content areas to focus on, I am still in search but if you have ideas and you would like to share with me I would appreciate it.

• I have changed the budget for the tshirts to only be for the 4 organizers.

Let me know if you require more clarifications of the reply to your comments. With thanks, Ebenezer Mlay (talk) 00:58, 10 December 2019

@Ebenezer Mlay: Thanks for your quick response and for updating your proposal. In terms of content areas, I think it would be best to reach out to the library staff to see what areas they have some background or interest in editing if possible to see if there are some common topics that interest them. In general, some themes that generally work include:

• Geographically-based editathons for communities to improve articles on local places
• Topics connected with particular institutions, such as museums and societies.
• Editathons for people to develop articles on a topic meaningful to them, such as survivors of cancer improving health articles or artists improving articles on artwork or artist biographies.
• Topics around regional or national events.

These are just some ideas though, there are lots of other topics that could work too. There are some other resources for preparing edit-a-thons here in the Resource Center, so please review them if you'd like some other ideas. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:39, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Ebenezer Mlay: Hi Ebenezer, I'll be approving this proposal shortly, but I've adjusted the budget to include some additional funding for contingency, as well as to cover bank fees that we have encountered when sending funds to Tanzania in previous grants. For future reference, the minimum requests for Rapid Grants is $500 USD, which I know was met with the previous budget, but this additional budget item brings your current budget to this minimum. Let me know if you have any questions. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:11, 12 December 2019 (UTC)