Grants talk:Project/Yorg/Wiki Loves Africa 2019

A few questions[edit]

Thank you for your proposal, but I have several equations:

This proposal is very different from, for instance, the 2017 year grant request: the requested sum is much smaller, the proposal is much simpler and the language is less formal. What has changed over last two years? Can you summarize?
Is the grantee (Anthere) employed by Yorg?
"All top-15 winners of the international contest" So, there will be more than 15 winners and only some (five) of them will receive prizes. Is this true?
Who is Thanasis?

Ruslik (talk) 20:08, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the questions.

This proposal is very different from, for instance, the 2017 year grant request: the requested sum is much smaller, the proposal is much simpler and the language is less formal. What has changed over last two years? Can you summarize?

When the last proposal was submitted (for the 2017 photo contest), the WMF Grant team informed us that in the future we would have to very significantly decrease the cost of the photo contest because its costs were considered too high. It was suggested that Isla and I should go entirely volunteer and that someone else replace us, or that we should go and find funding elsewhere, or that the contest be very light weight, or that the contest be actually dropped entirely. We argued that contrariwise to other photo contests such as WLM, there is no paid staff (from WMF or rich chapters) helping us, hence quite a time investment; and that none of the UserGroup participating are actually really funded significantly generally and that this contest is sometimes their only annual funding. But the argument stood, we had to cut down. Pretty obviously, this is why we did not submit a Project Grant early 2018.
Isla and I considered the situation. The African community really wanted the contest to be take place again. We also wanted to keep it as one of the starting point for new UserGroup and individuals across Africa, so we did not want to change the model greatly (the concept is to provide an "easy to participate" event to foster community emergence and building). Still, Isla and I are both self employed, so that situation is really stretching our personal limits. Accordingly as well, we have been looking for funding from other sources during the year. Breaking news, we have not succeeded, in spite of spending quite some time and even some travel, in the hope of finding sources. When I saw that the situation was not favorable last summer, I contacted the Rapid Grant team during Wikimania to make sure that at least the funding for the countries through the Rapid Grants system would be preserved, and they warmly agreed. I was still hoping that the general framework could find other funding and looked more till November. It did not work. So, we brainstormed options with Isla so that the contest would be preserved anyway and not simply dropped. We figured out which were the absolutely essential elements that needed to be kept so that things would still occur. And we came up with this quite weird solution of breaking down the project funding in 4 little parts, that would only include those essential parts to make sure the general framework is here.

Part 1 is here. A Rapid Grant by I to set up the framework (support to the new countries in asking for their grant, set up of all pages and site notice) and recruitment. I am 80% done
Part 2 is there. A Rapid Grant by Isla to set up the design/communication material before the contest
Part 3 may be found there/ A Rapid Grant by Isla for com during the contest
and this Project Grant is the last, to cover up winners prizes (this really could not fit into a Rapid Grant)

We would have preferred to pile up those 4 in one Project Grant though, but the calendar was unfavorable anyway given that ... the contest is starting in one month whilst the outcome of the Project Grant will be in March. Too late.

What else changed ? Contrariwise to 2017, all countries are doing their own Rapid Grant requests (in 2017, some of them were through our Project Grant). You may find the details here

So here is why the PG is a much simpler proposal. Overall, we respected that request to seriously cut down on expenses. The expenses are overall very much cut down. This Project Grant proposal is less formal because I wrote it entirely myself, am not primarily English speaking, and am already quite overstretched with my own time. So I went the efficient road ... sorry if explanations are not sufficient or unclear.

Am I happy with the situation ? Not really. There are several negative points

First, it adds a lot of administrative work to do so many grant requests. In particular for the Rapid Grant Team who had to deal with a pile of requests ! But then... even if we had been welcome to do a full project grant for WLA with real budget, the calendar of the Project Grants this year made it impossible. One Project Grant round per year is just... not enough.
Second, there will be no global tracking of the project activities and outcome this year. Who will provide a report on impact this year ? No one. Unless someone magically shows up. I seriously doubt that given that making reports is not exactly the most interesting thing to do ;)
Third, this is a project in which nearly all Africans want to participate. It works. It could be expanded to be even more impactful. WMF has millions. Yet... there are the priorities that are shown on the paper (strategy blabla) and there is the reality.

Cheers. Anthere (talk)

Is the grantee (Anthere) employed by Yorg?
I am not. I am no one staff. I will invoice a little bit to compensate a bit my own work. Then I will support all working taxes from France myself (about 45%). Anthere (talk)

"All top-15 winners of the international contest" So, there will be more than 15 winners and only some (five) of them will receive prizes. Is this true?
Correct. We figured out that even if there is no gift associated, it is always cool to celebrate the people who proposed the best pictures. Anthere (talk)

Who is Thanasis?
Thanasis is the ED of Yorg. Anthere (talk)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2018[edit]

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2018 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through January 2, 2019.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for round 2 2018 will occur January 3-January 28, 2019. Grantees will be announced March 1, 2018. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 21:43, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A few additional questions[edit]

Can you explain a couple things in your proposal:

What does Yorg mean?
Can you explain how you believe awarding monetary prizes will result in more or better submissions? Are there any similar projects or initiatives where this has been successful?
Can you please provide evidence to support your claim, "many countries are also providing local gifts to winners."
I did not see any response for "How will you know if you have met your goals?" Can you please answer this section?
How many submissions are there ordinarily in this, and what increase do you expect as a result of this proposed contest?
I am unclear about the problem you are identifying -- is it that you there are not enough participants, and thus you want to award prizes, or is the problem more that you need an objective third party organization to manage this process?
Please add links to the external organizations and services you mention, including the Facebook group.
What are the judging and awarding criteria for these prizes, and how will they be communicated to the wise community who you hope will increase as a result of this project?
Please explain how this proposed project will "Increase visibility of Wiki Loves Africa," "Increase quality of participation," and "Bring trust in the drive" and how you will determine if this actually happens.

I look forward to your replies on this Anthere. --- FULBERT (talk) 18:53, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What does Yorg mean?[edit]

Yorg is the name of the Foundation Ynternet.org (http://www.ynternet.org). It is the fiscal sponsor of this grant. Yorg has been the fiscal sponsor of the past two WLA.

Can you explain how you believe awarding monetary prizes will result in more or better submissions? Are there any similar projects or initiatives where this has been successful?[edit]

Uh... successful and similar project include Wiki Loves Monuments ?

And the past four Wiki Loves Africa actually ?

Can you please provide evidence to support your claim, "many countries are also providing local gifts to winners."[edit]

No one has formally collected the exact list of local gifts delivered the previous years. I am going to ask the local teams to outline when they did. But this info can also be collected through rapid grant requests done previous years ([https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Africa_2019). The following grant requests seem to hint that local prizes/local ceremonies were held

Also, the winners page outline some of the ceremonies by local teams Commons:Category:Wiki Loves Africa 2017 (I wish all of them did a clear report, but they did not...). Overall, it seems to be rather small gifts though some countries have delivered very cool gifts. What is important to understand, and that is a big difference to Wiki Loves Monuments, is that all African countries (and even beyond) are welcome to join, but not all countries have local teams (indeed, this is the primary goal of Wiki Loves Africa... building community... in some countries, communities emerged, in some others, not yet). So we can not rely on national prizes only because in most countries, there would be no gifts at all. Hence the need for international prizes.

This year (2019), Rajeed volunteered to collect this information (yeah !!!) : which countries hold a ceremony and which countries deliver gifts.

I did not see any response for "How will you know if you have met your goals?" Can you please answer this section?[edit]

There was clearly a response in that section. Apparently, you missed it so I bolded it in the text. My answer : I will know I have met my goals when all international winners have successfully been contacted and received their gifts

Perhaps I do need to reemphasize that... I can only list goals that are related to what the grant is asked for, and that can be attributed to it. The goals of this grant can not be that the photo contest will be massively super successful with hundred of thousand of pictures or thousand of participants. This would not be a SMART goal.

How many submissions are there ordinarily in this, and what increase do you expect as a result of this proposed contest?[edit]

Good question. Thanks for asking. Outcomes are listed here. That was

2014, 47 countries, 5973 uploads, 880 participants
2015, 48 countries, 6960 uploads, 730 participants
2016, 49 countries, 7457 uploads, 852 participants
2017, 55 countries, 18199 uploads, 2624 participants

year after year the contest grows

In 2019, you should

expect stability in participating countries (basically, we already receive at least one contribution from all of them... I doubt that can go down...)
probably expect a decrease or stability of content and participants as the contest that used to be two months long has been reduced to one month.

I am unclear about the problem you are identifying -- is it that you there are not enough participants, and thus you want to award prizes, or is the problem more that you need an objective third party organization to manage this process?[edit]

The primary problem I am trying to solve is that Wiki Loves Africa organizers (not me only, but all teams) do think that it is a good idea to actually provide

prizes to international winners (without prizes of some sort, it is difficult to call that a contest really. At a minimum we need certificates...)
small gifts to jury members to show our appreciation for the selection work they did

Please add links to the external organizations and services you mention, including the Facebook group[edit]

All links added... (and all of them are also available on the contest page and the meta page dedicated to the contest; I think every interested organizer can not miss them)

I should also mention that there is a continental team and this one discuss mostly through emails.

What are the judging and awarding criteria for these prizes, and how will they be communicated to the wise community who you hope will increase as a result of this project?[edit]

The criterias are likely to be those listed on the project main page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2019

Competition rules

Images submitted to the Wiki Loves Africa contest may win prizes! There are a few rules to respect for the images to be eligible.

Rule 1: All photos must be taken by the person submitting them. They can be either self-uploaded or uploaded during a registered mass upload session.
Rule 2: Uploads can only be done from the 1st of February 2019 to 1st of March 2019. You can enter media that was taken at any time, even historical photographs (as long as you own the copyright on these photographs), but they must be uploaded during those dates.
Rule 3: Images must be free of watermarks or embedded signatures to be eligible. All entries will automatically be submitted under a free licence such as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 (CC-BY-SA 4.0) (or in the public domain). Read more about the cc-by-sa license here.
Rule 4: All eligible pictures will be categorised under Images from Wiki Loves Africa 2019, this will be automatically assigned during the upload process. (Feel free to add other relevant category descriptions to make the images more usable.)
Rule 5: Participants must enable e-mail on Wikimedia Commons so they can be contacted should their image be chosen for a prize.

Notes on video
Other files, such as audio and video, are welcome. For videos, please submit files in the following formats:

.ogg
.ogv
.webm

Due to complex intellectual property rights issues, Wikimedia Commons can not accept video content that is submitted in any other format. A helpful 'how to' guide on how to convert video media into these formats can be found here on Wikimedia. It is suggested that you upload video content one video at a time.

Additionnaly... the theme Play means prizes will go according to what is described here

Please explain how this proposed project will "Increase visibility of Wiki Loves Africa," "Increase quality of participation," and "Bring trust in the drive" and how you will determine if this actually happens.[edit]

Seriously ? Anthere (talk)

hmmmm, some info here

Thank you for your replies Anthere. Much clearer now. --- FULBERT (talk) 18:52, 11 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from the Community[edit]

Questions from T Cells[edit]

Hello Anthere, I enjoyed reviewing submissions from the past WLA. I am pretty sure some interesting photos will be contributed this year. However, I have a few questions:

It's interesting to learn that local participants are now requesting for funding directly to fund the contest in their own countries. Do you think this is a good way to effectively manage the project?
From the grant request, I noticed that over 3000 USD is allocated for prize. Considering that local organizers are also providing prizes, don't you think over 3000USD is too much for prizes?
From the grant request, I see that additional 2000USD was allocated for administrative cost. What might this administrative cost be? Considering that you and Isla has received 4000USD to manage the project, I am confused as to what you intend to do with this additional 2000USD.
Are there measures in place to ensure effective clean-up (blatant copyvios, blurred images)? You seem to be the only person from the organizing team doing some cleanup. I do not think this is an effective way to do clean up. What do you want to Do differently this year?
I noticed that most of the people leading the contests are not active contributors to Commons and as such may not be familiar with copyright policy. Why do you think they are the best to coordinate this contest? What type of support do you want to provide to ensure that only I quality of images,free of copyvios are uploaded.

Thank you. I'll be looking forward to reading your response. Regards. T Cells (talk) 12:12, 13 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the questions Cells

Q1[edit]

It's interesting to learn that local participants are now requesting for funding directly to fund the contest in their own countries. Do you think this is a good way to effectively manage the project?

The first few years, all of the funding was in one project grant and we (Isla and I) were managing the requests that came from local teams. Then, at WMF suggestion, we moved to a situation where the most experienced teams would make their own rapid grant and the less experienced teams would still be with us. And this year, for the first time, all teams are doing rapid grants, but I am helping those who are asking for help and review and I tried to coordinate things a bit. So there were actually 3 different models. Note that this year model happened because there is only one project grant call and that it was after the contest...

In truth... I prefer the third option. It gives us much less work and worries. I think it is still a good idea that we help the least experienced teams and I hope that this can be continued next year. But having all the administrative part of the local funding managed by WMF is certainly a relief.

There are drawbacks though... when it comes to documentation. Practically speaking, the first years, I was tracking all events and all expenses. I would know which teams did which type of events. For example, I could say which teams were having final ceremonies with gifts or certificates given to local winners. I could gather this info because the teams had to report to us about those events. Now, it is not tracked anymore. I think this is a loss for our collective.

OK. Good luck with the project. T Cells (talk) 10:51, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Q2[edit]

From the grant request, I noticed that over 3000 USD is allocated for prize. Considering that local organizers are also providing prizes, don't you think over 3000USD is too much for prizes?

No, I do not. The contest is happening all over the continent (and actually beyond, with the diaspora). But only a good dozen of countries have local teams. What about the others ? If Algeria has a ceremony and gives national prizes, that is awesome. But does that mean that Benin has to do it mandatorily ? And what about Togo where there is no team ? How could we hold a contest where only inhabitants of 3-8 countries can receive awards when inhabitants of all the other countries can not get anything ? That is simply not possible...

OK. The proposed 3000USD is for prize for winners with no organizing team in their country? And possibly for international prize? If yes, that's fine. Regards. T Cells (talk) 10:49, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

International prizes. Anthere (talk)

Q3[edit]

From the grant request, I see that additional 2000USD was allocated for administrative cost. What might this administrative cost be? Considering that you and Isla has received 4000USD to manage the project, I am confused as to what you intend to do with this additional 2000USD.

The money Isla and I got through the rapid grants was not to manage the *entirety* of the project but only part of it. And not all of it actually fall in our pocket. For example, a significant part of the communication budget is actually used to pay a designer, or to print leaflets or to pay facebook ads... In case you think that those 4000 USD make us rich, do keep in mind that those pay in good part costs such as those listed above, and out of the what is left, we have to pay social taxes (which in my country is simply 45% of the total, ugh). I expect that the time I spent preparing the contest will bring in my pocket about 800 euros, which is by no mean a revenu that could be considered a salary compared to the amount of time I spend on the project. Then, there are funny costs that we have to deal with that are invisible such as paying the host for the website, paying the domain name. Those are tiny expenses, but they pile up over time. And neither Isla nor I are employed. So...

The administrative costs in THIS grant request will cover the following

the time of someone to search and identify the winners (this is actually sometimes a little bit time consuming. every year, some must be tracked down...)
interactions with the winners (announcement, discussion regarding prices, collecting info about them to promote them on social media, to ship them gifts etc.)
shipping prizes, follow-up, crisis management when the gifts do not reach the winner... (been there, done that...). Sounds easy... till you realize that you can not simply give an amazon voucher to a dude living in Zambia. Sounds easy till you realize that every parcel must be shipped courrier
producing/purchasing the goodies, shipping the goodies. Same with certificates...
time spend submitting the grant request... answering questions... submitting documentation... collecting receipts... writing report etc.
and finally, percentage of total for the fiscal sponsor (which is the least expensive of all those I worked with... some Wikimedia chapters take 20% of the total...)

I am not exactly sure yet who will do the job. It will depend on which percentage we get from the grant, it will depends on which gifts we decide to provide, it will depend on whether I have lot's of work or lot's of free time. For example, we'd like to send hats and stickers to all winners. Hats are cheaper in South Africa than Switzerland, so maybe it make more sense to get them produce in SA, but then, the shipping would have to be done by Isla. If we ship them from Switzerland, it is likely to be a staff member from Yorg doing all the shipping. If we only get part of the budget, we will simply wire them money and not try to ship anything to them to make things simpler. Though... wiring money to Tanzania... Uganda... Algeria... all revealed to be challenges. The worst case scenario we met was when we tried to sent money to Zimbabwe in 2017. Ughhh. Never again.

No. I don't think 4000USD would make you rich. I just wanted to be sure of what you considered as "administrative cost" as that was not explained on the grant request page. Much clearer now. Thank you. T Cells (talk) 10:44, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Q4[edit]

Are there measures in place to ensure effective clean-up (blatant copyvios, blurred images)? You seem to be the only person from the organizing team doing some cleanup. I do not think this is an effective way to do clean up. What do you want to Do differently this year?

Actually... I used to do that quite a lot the first few years. I took care of the blurred, of the blatant copyvios and of the deeply inappropriate images. However, I never really took care of the more fine-tuned copyvios as I am not a specialist. A busy you usually tracked that...

You are perfectly right that my doing so much clean-up is not an effective way to clean-up. Which is why... I have decided not to do it this year.

What do I plan to do differently ? I have not planned anything. On purpose. And let me say that this is difficult for me :) I think many rely (too much) on me and do not jump in to help. Maybe am I preventing them jumping in simply because I spent some time doing it... So... I am actively letting it go...

Will you help again this year ? (well, I am fairly sure that even if I do not ask, you will ;))

OK. I'll be glad to help again this year. Let me know if you have any plan. BTW...Ji-Elle have been very helpful with categorization and other areas, that's appreciated and I enjoyed working with her last year. T Cells (talk) 10:40, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good ! Yes, she will help again, in particular in categories of countries without a local team (we can assume local teams will help categorize and clean-up images from their countries). She has family issues at the moment, but she agreed to come help again ! You two make the team... :) Anthere (talk)

Q5[edit]

I noticed that most of the people leading the contests are not active contributors to Commons and as such may not be familiar with copyright policy. Why do you think they are the best to coordinate this contest? What type of support do you want to provide to ensure that only I quality of images,free of copyvios are uploaded.

Good question... well, first, let me clarify again that this grant request does not cover the entirety of the contest, but only the part about the prizes management. So the only piece that does matter when it comes to copyvios is that I will need to ensure that winners' images are free... Previous years, I made sure that several people would double or triple check them before awarding them. This year will be no different...

Second, I find your suggestion that most of the people coordinating the contest may not be the best coordinators because they are not familiar with copyright policy a bit weird... coordinators are not appointed. Coordinators are people willing to actually organize a contest... I vaguely feel that your comment is oriented toward me... well... if I had waited for an expert in copyvio to come with the idea of WLA and organize it... I think I would still be waiting for it :) Also, organizing a contest requires quite a few skills, that are different from the copyright expertise...

BUT you make an EXCELLENT point... we should have a copyright expert on the organizing team. Anthere (talk)

No. You don't have to wait for expert in copyvios and my comment was not oriented towards you. I just felt that having people with fair knowledge of copyright on the organizing team would reduce the burden of cleanup on you. I know you have been helping with the cleanup in the past and that's appreciated and I remembered sometimes last year suggesting that an experienced members of the organizing join you in the cleanup. T Cells (talk) 10:33, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

So... there you go ! Check out the Village Pump announcement and call for help ! Hopefully that will help. I will further publish a reminder when the contest starts. And I count on you to help and raise issues that needs attention. Thanks Isaac. Anthere (talk) 14:43, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Yorg/Wiki Loves Africa 2019[edit]

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	7.1
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	6.1
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	7.0
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	6.3
Additional comments from the Committee: The project fits with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. It has a potential for online impact in the form of increased media uploads. This project fits perfectly into content creation and curation from uncovered regions in Africa. A good platform to increase opportunities to visualise the few contents that exist on Wikipedia. Considering the dramatically low quantity of Africa-related media it's extremely relevant to raise this amount. However this project is totally unsustainable because of it's nature of grant-depending on every aspect of the contest, this is worrisome. I like that this project hopes to increase coverage of a much needed part of the world. I am a bit unclear on how success will be appropriately measured. The proposer seemed a bit frustrated in the discussion page of the project proposal that another committee member questioned the success measure. I would suggest reflecting on the measure of success. This proposal has a great amount of potential impact, though I am not convinced its approach can be sustained or adapted, as it seems to continue what has been done previously without much additional add. The project is a scaled down version of earlier Wiki Loves Africa Projects. So, the approach is iterative and the proposed solution is a proven one. The potential impacts though not very great still outweigh the risks.The success can be measured. Very innovative and supports content from the continent This project lacks clear objectives, further than 'increase quality or quantity'. Successfully providing the prize to every participant neither should be a goal. Considering they gave approximate figures of other years' media uploaded numbers some should be provided for 2019. This area concerns me. The success measure indicated on the application is: "I will know I have meet my goals when all international winners have successfully been contacted and received their gifts". For me, this is not a sufficient measure. Perhaps a quantity of uploads, or new contributors even, would be more appropriate measures. I am unclear what success looks like, and after asking the proposed grantee about this, several questions were answered with links instead of explanations. The project as written is simple and realistic. The participants have the necessary skills. The current working team has considerable experience related to this type of projects and contests. However not knowing who will be in the jury concerns me, specially considering the amount of the prizes. I do like that this project is mirroring other successful projects, but I do not know if the bulk of the funding should be on prizes. I do understand this is a smaller budget, but perhaps the scale should be universally applied - prizes are reduced proportionately to the amount the administrative costs were reduced. Due to the manner in which the discussion questions were addressed by the proposer about reporting, I am concerned for the success of this project: "Second, there will be no global tracking of the project activities and outcome this year. Who will provide a report on impact this year ? No one. Unless someone magically shows up. I seriously doubt that given that making reports is not exactly the most interesting thing to do ;)" I am not clear how this may be doable on a continental scale, and while there were references to previous times this was done instead of saying why or how it will be different this year, I am unconvinced. The community engagement is sufficient for this type of projects. Many countries on the continent are involved and support the competition. In my experience of past Europe-WLM related projects/contests one of my major takeouts was to cut the high figures for the top winners and improve the prizes/goodies for the rest of the participants. This project should aim to increase media uploaded by as many as possible volunteers and not look for 'professional' photographers and their photos, just to give the feeling to every participant that they will opt for some prize even if they take photos with their phone. Also not very sure to give away money directly, I recommend always books, photography hardware, or similar. The proposer has not outlined the community engagement plan, but simply listed websites under the application section. There did not appear to be sufficient supporters or other members of the community identified or supportive of this work. Too much of the proposal reflected what was done in the past and not how things were learned from it to help improve or expand it in the future. I am willing to support the project this time. It is only aimed at providing prizes for the winners of Wiki Loves Africa 2019 competition, which seems to be a worthwhile goal, and is not bloated as some past projects. I hope that in the future we will be able to strike a right balance between continuing supporting Wiki Loves Africa 2019 competition while avoiding unproductive expenses. I definitely support the funding of this project. I think this proposal would be really interesting and helpful, though am not convinced it is possible in its current state.

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Next steps:

Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page.
Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on March 1st, 2019.

Questions? Contact us.

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:12, 6 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Has this committee be informed?[edit]

That the contest has been extended by additional 3 weeks? Anthere I can't see this information on this grant request. Perhaps I JethroBT (WMF) is already aware? T Cells (talk) 22:28, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@T Cells: I wasn't aware of the change, but thank you for the notification. What is the significance of this extension? I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:51, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. 2 weeks actually. Not 3. New deadline is March 15th. The main reason is that several of the local teams participating to the contest got their funds very late. When I say very late, I mean that several did not get it until mid-Feb (and I am not sure Algeria got it yet). This made planning a bit difficult for them. In the past, the contest was 2 months long. This year... we were sort of hoping to shorten it to one month. Looks like it is actually not super practical for them. So we cut the pear in 2 and picked up 6 weeks instead of 9 last year. Anthere (talk)

And thank you to the committee I JethroBT (WMF). Anthere (talk) 18:37, 1 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Round 2 2018 decision[edit]

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, $7000 USD

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee supports funding the prize distribution efforts for the photo contests associated with Wiki Loves Africa 2019.

Next steps:

You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
Review the information for grantees.
Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
Start work on your project!

Upcoming changes to Wikimedia Foundation Grants

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

On behalf of the Project Grants Committee, KCVelaga (talk) 05:02, 1 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would also like to make clear here that although the exclusive focus on prizes in this grant proposal might seem unusual, the request fulfills an important need for the campaign, and it is very much based on 1) the specific requests that the Community Resources team has made of the applicants regarding the structure of Wiki Loves Africa and 2) the schedule of when and how much funding is available through Project Grants and other funding programs we maintain. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:24, 1 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you wholeheartedly Anthere (talk)