Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wiki World Heritage UG/2021

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Dear Wiki World Heritage,

Thank you again for submitting your first sAPG application. We’d like to welcome you to the sAPG program and wish you good luck with your planned activities. I’ve completed the initial review of the grant proposal and have some questions for you to respond to:

  • Since this is your first Wikimedia Foundation grant, as a group, we would like to better understand your experience and capacity in managing funds. Do you or any User Group leader have any experience in funds/financial management? What are the financial/reporting practices you will inherit to ensure the transparent usage of funds?
  • How do you see your annual plan aligning with Movement Strategy recommendations?
  • How did you engage your community in the development of the Annual Plan and grant proposal?
  • What is the current governance structure; what processes are in place to ensure healthy governance of the user group?
  • Seeing that you have a proposed staff role [ WHindanger Project coordinator] who do they report to and what processes or steps have you put in place to support their success in the role?
  • Lastly, we realize that the costs associated with prizes are high, based on the average prize costs we have seen with affiliates in multiple regions. Would you share in detail why this might be the case?

Thanks again for putting together this grant application. I’ll look forward to your responses in order to move forward with the review process. Best regards,--VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 06:42, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki World Heritage answers[edit]

Dear Veronica, Thank you for your questions. Here are the answers from our group:

Q Since this is your first Wikimedia Foundation grant, as a group, we would like to better understand your experience and capacity in managing funds. Do you or any User Group leader have any experience in funds/financial management? What are the financial/reporting practices you will inherit to ensure the transparent usage of funds?

Although the group is newly created, most of the members, including the board, are experienced Wikimedians who have already received and managed several grants from the Wikimedia Foundation and Chapters, and from other organizations (UNESCO). Please find some examples bellow:
Project/activity Grantee from WWH UG Funder Amount Outcomes Relevant links
WikiArabia Conference Yamen Wikimedia foundation ≃42000 USD Launching the first conference in the Arab region Article by Wikimedia France / Grant application
WikiKsour Nassima Chahboun Wikimedia France ≃1200 USD +2000 photos of 12 traditional villages in Morocco, and a wikidata-based website Article by Wikimedia France about the activity / Uploaded photos (Dashboard) / WikiKsour website
MedinaStories Nassima Chahboun UNESCO World Heritage Centre ≃7000 USD 96 articles, 1080 photos, and a web application based on Wikipedia Activity report / UNESCO article 1 / UNESCO article 2
Wikipedia20 in Tunisia Habib Mhenni Wikimedia foundation ≃1613.7 USD 30 participants, an awareness video on social media with a total views >100k Grant Application / Report
Furthermore, the chair is a member of the micro grant committee of Wikimedia France and the treasurer is a member of the WMF Project Grant committee.
From these experiences, we have learned several good practices that we are going to apply:
  1. Monthly reporting: Monthly records will be published on Meta, to give everyone the possibility to track the evolution of our activities, and to simplify the process of preparing the final report.
  2. Dividing complex tasks into milestones: the website creation for instance will encompass several milestones, each one will be paid separately and we will not move to a milestone before achieving the previous one.
  3. Setting alternatives: Our activities for 2021 target several countries with different contexts. Therefore we have 2 options for prizes: vouchers, and in-kind prizes for countries where online purchase is complicated.
  4. Anticipation: Proceeding to the purchase of the in-kind prizes for instance as soon as we receive the grant, even for activities that will be held in October.
We have also implemented some measures to ensure an efficient management of our program and funds:
  1. Risk mitigation: during the planning phase, we have maximized the deadlines of complex tasks to avoid delays that can impact the program, and discussing the collaboration details with our partners several months before the start of the target activities.
  2. Having an experienced fiscal sponsor with paid staff (Kiwix organization)


Q How do you see your annual plan aligning with Movement Strategy recommendations?

As an international thematic group, we are working on promoting the Wikimedia movement through a project-based approach. Our activities, especially thematic projects, involve several Wikimedia projects and tools, and have a large geographic scope. Hence, they will not only contribute in increasing content related to heritage, but also in building capacity and catalyzing the creation of new communities in countries without affiliates.
Therefore, our annual plan connects with the Movement Strategy recommendations on the following points:
1-Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement
We also set actions to allow more volunteers worldwide to benefit from our capacity building program: a Youtube channel and a Commons category were created in order to share videos from the training sessions, and the learnings from these sessions will be synthesized, enriched with practical examples and published as how-to-guides (PDF format) in several languages. The guides will be available on Commons and on the group website.
  • Financial sustainability: Our annual plan includes the creation of a website to promote the User Group projects and give access to diverse content (articles and photos, statistics and graphs generated from Wikidata, and how-to guides). The website will highly contribute in building sustainable partnerships with important organisms and finding potential donors (World Heritage Centre, ICOMOS, etc.), as it will emphasize the importance and the power of Wikimedia projects and promote the user group.
(Please note that the user group was also promoted through the participation of MedinaStories project in the UNESCO World Conference on ESD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ8jNysMTBs&t=84s )
8-Identify Topics for Impact
Our annual plan focuses on advocating for and building capacity around content creation in areas where both editors and content are missing, through our thematic projects (Told Cities and Whindanger). This year, we are targeting several countries with no Wikimedia affiliates, such as Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen as part of “Whindanger”. The outcomes of this year will be leveraged to create more partnerships in countries with no affiliates for the next year (target countries).
9-Innovate in Free Knowledge
The website creation will contribute in making free knowledge content accessible in various formats, by being a non-tech friendly platform that gives the possibility to make several wikidata queries, and generate maps, graphs and statistics.


Q How did you engage your community in the development of the Annual Plan and grant proposal?

The annual plan has been developed through a participatory process that involved all the group members:
  1. A first meeting was organized to start brainstorming about the potential activities, in the light of previous projects and experiences (meeting link).
  2. The activities proposals were drafted in a shared document and a second meeting was organized to discuss the proposals further (meeting link).
  3. The proposals were finalized and enriched through conversations in our Telegram group, and the annual plan was defined in a shared document.
  4. After defining and discussing the annual plan, the grant proposal was drafted by the board members.


Q What is the current governance structure; what processes are in place to ensure healthy governance of the user group?

Currently the group is governed by a board composed of 5 members: the three co-founders and 2 elected members from the group community (this model was agreed on by all members in the first group meeting and is applicable only for the first board, then all members will be elected).
The board is composed by the following members (from 3 different continents: Africa, Asia and Europe):
The elections were organized in January 2021: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_World_Heritage_User_Group/User_Group_election_2021-2023
Besides the board members, we have experienced advisors to help the board to apply the best practices in the movement:
Regular meetings have been organised virtually between the members of the group to discuss the different activities (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_World_Heritage_User_Group/Meetings).
As to the group bylaws, they are being drafted by the group members, with respect to the UCoC. They will be published in June after liaising with the governance advisor.


Q Seeing that you have a proposed staff role [ WHindanger Project coordinator] who do they report to and what processes or steps have you put in place to support their success in the role?

The WHindanger Project coordinator will report to the board members. A list of KPI will be agreed with the coordinator and monthly meetings will be held to review the progress of the project. and in order to support their success in the role, we have put in place several steps:
  • The project timeline has been already defined,
  • The partners have been already contacted and the partnership details have been discussed with them,
  • Setting eligibility criteria to ensure that the selected coordinator will have the necessary skills for this mission,
  • Capacity building sessions help all the group members, including the one that will be selected as a coordinator, to enhance their skills and learn from each other.


Qː Lastly, we realize that the costs associated with prizes are high, based on the average prize costs we have seen with affiliates in multiple regions. Would you share in detail why this might be the case?

In the grant application we included 4 types of prizes ranging from 250$ to 50$ and here more details on the logic defining these prizes:
  • Instead of defining 3 prizes by country like it’s the case in most wiki contests, we think this can’t be the case for our contests related to World Heritage sites. Based on our experience with our previous project MedinaStories (funded by the UNESCO) and also previous Wiki Loves Monuments editions, it’s better to allocate prizes for each WH site instead of allocating them by country. This will avoid for instance having several photos for one site to the detriment of other sites in the same country.
  • although most of the prizes are ranging from 50$ to 150$ which we think they are consistent with prizes awarded by other affiliates , we thought that the prizes for Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen (250$ by site) should be higher than the other prizes and this is mainly for two reasons: firstly because there are no affiliates in these countries and therefore it’s very important to motivate participants from these countries, secondly because of the situation in these countries we expect to have some extra postage fees to send/deliver the prizes. Please note that no cash prizes will be awarded to winners from all the countries.

Best regards - Nassima Chahboun (talk) 08:38, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Simple APG Committee recommendation[edit]

We recommend that Wiki World Heritage receives grant funding of US$25,000 for 6 months. We recognize that the work they propose to embark on as part of their annual plan is critical for the documentation of world heritage sites globally. We also recognize the element of capacity building in collaboration with affiliates and organized groups where there is not an established affiliate within particular communities. We believe these efforts will go towards building sustainable pipelines of skills and knowledge needed for projects focusing on preservation of knowledge globally.

Seeing that this will be their first annual grant for 6-months, we recommend reducing the scope of the project by for instance reducing the number of cities or countries participating and that they have indicated in their metrics. With a reduced scope we hope it can provide Wiki World Heritage with the space to learn and iterate your project where needed with healthier metrics while avoiding the instance of being overstretched.

We would also recommend that you identify spaces that allow other interest groups to collaborate with you; how would interested communities access and be part of this project ?

We look forward to seeing the unfolding change and to see Wiki World Heritage strengthen partnerships and collaborations within the community.

For the committee, Philip Kopetzky (talk) 17:50, 14 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]


Thank you @Philip Kopetzky: and all the committee for your support and recommendations.
We will review our metrics and try to find areas where they can be reduced.
As to collaboration within the movement, we started by identifying the local affiliates of the target countries of our projects and contacted them directly. We will also improve our Meta page and create a special page for collaboration proposals, through which other communities can reach out to us. Finally, we believe that Wikimania will be an excellent opportunity to create more connections.
Thank you again.
Nassima Chahboun (talk) 09:31, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On behalf of the board members

APG approved in the amount of US$25,000[edit]

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of US$25,000 for 6 months., with a grant term starting 1 July 2021 and ending 31st December 2021.

We excited to have you join the annual grant program and look forward to seeing the impact you achieve with the proposed programs that include Content creation [Whindanger project | Told Cities project | Organizing Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos contest] and Growth and expansion [ Organizing capacity building sessions | creating a website for the UG and the projects].

We recognize the importance of the proposed work and the opportunity it holds in creating space for communities to collaborate with each other in the documentation of World Heritage Sites.

We recommend reducing the scope of your work based on the resources available and especially on the proposed capacity to support the implementation of programs.

Overall, we are pleased with the proposed programs and look forward to learning about the impact you achieve in collaboration with other communities.

Best regards from the SAPG Committee and Staff--VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]


Midpoint report[edit]

Dear SAPG Committee and Staff,

I hope this finds you well,

Please find below the link to Wiki World Heritage midpoint reportː

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WWH_activity_report_october_2021.pdf

Thank you again for your trust, and we remain at your disposal, should you need any further information.

Kind regards from the Wiki World Heritage Board Yamen (talk) 08:12, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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