Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Ghana User Group/2020

Comments from WMF

Hello Colleagues from WUG Ghana! Here are a few comments for you on this proposal; following up on our meeting preparing it.

Targets and metrics

1. Your targets are quite low for the amount of funding you're requiring, can you say more about them?

We left re:publica conference out of the targets because it's a partner event, and can be unpredictable. However we can increase the current figure by 100. We also didn't add the Wikimedia Education targets for the same reasons. However, we can put 75 students as a target. PROGRAM 1: Increasing Participation can go up by 175 participants and we can increase the pages and so on. Please have a look at the new targets, and see if it's more appealing now.

1. I have taken the information out of your reporting tables (mid point and final) as they are reporting tables, not forecasting tables. You will fill them out when you give your midpoint report.

Thank you. If it is posible, I would like someone to explain the table to me.

1. You only have one out of two mandatory grantee defined metrics. Please think about another one you could use?

Thank you. If it is posible, I would like someone to explain that part of the table to me.

Program increasing participation

1. You are planning 4 workshops a month, which means a lot of involvement necessary from people who lead the workshops. How many of you are doing these workshops? How many workshops have you already done in the past and at what rate (every week already?)?

1 workshop in each of the 4 cities we are active in. We are open to giving 1 from Accra to any new community we may set up during the year. There are 4 workshop leaders in Accra, 3 in Kumasi, 1 in Tamale, and 1 in Koforidua.

1. You mention the number of editors you recruited and give a link to the dashboard that we cannot access. Can you please give a public link? Was this funded by a Rapid Grant? IF yes, can you give a link to it?

Please try this link instead. Also, this is the rapid grant report.

1. Education program: Targeting 5 schools. Do you already have a working relationship with these schools? If yes, what have you been doing with them, if not, how do you plan contacting them?

We have a relationship with GIMPA Law School and we have held a Wikimedia Education project there already. They are expecting us back. We have also established contact with Lycee Francais, for them, the semester has started already and can only participate next year. GIJ, we have had an event there, we have a school club. For the Koforidua Tech University we had a meeting/workshop there with some students last week. We will continue from there. UDS is new territory. What we intend to do, as we have always done, hold a workshop for students, invite a tutor, use their help to explain the experience to school heads, propose a project or a school club.

Policy and advocacy

1. Freedom of panorama: As I understand it, you are going to be presenting a "pitch" on Freedom of panorama to the authorities (which authorities=) ion January, and will decide what the next steps are depending on the outcome of the meeting. Am I understanding this correctly?

We are targeting 1 follow up visit to the Flagstaff house where the petition has been directed to. 1 pitch meeting to present what FOP is, to the Minister of Information or his rep. Lastly, we are planning a delivery of postcards with photos of places that have some monuments censored out, to demonstrate what the lack of FOP means, to the Information Ministry and Tourism Ministry.

Sandiooses (talk) 18:29, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Community Support development

1. Registration as a non-profit: I am confused as to whether or not you have a legal entity. i think I understood in this section that you do have a legal entity but that you will be working on making it recognized as a non-profit? Or is that information obsolete or incorrect? Thanks for confirming what kind of exact leagal Status you have as a group. Also, it is not clear how becoming a non-profit really fits under "Community Support Development". It would probably fit better under operations/administration.

We are not a non profit. We have avoided registration because we can't register with our chaptership name Wikimedia Ghana, until Affcom approves us as a chapter. Our chaptership bid is ongoing however. We saw registering as non profit as an opportunity for growth, and access to local resources, hence "Community Support Development". However, operations and admin also sound appropriate. Please advice.

1. Can you tell more about the Training of the trainers? How many people are you looking at training? What kind of training are they exaclty going to have? Who is going to be training them (not who as in a person, but more, what kind of trainer are they going to have)?

At the moment we have about 350 people we can call members countrywide and with each event we recruit more. One of the challenges is ensuring the a consistent quality in Wikipedia/Wikidata trainers/project leaders around the country, the opposite is often created by the concentration of opportunities in Accra the capital city. The training is our attempt at reducing that inequality. The modules include:

• Learning to use Mailchimp to manage event registration, participant information and for newsletters
• While many of us edit Wikipedia and Meta, more advanced use of templates when creating project pages, banners is still hard for community organisers. We want to train people on that.
• Still, social media pages management has to be done in Accra for the other communities. It puts pressure on us. Communties in Accra, Koforidua and Tamale should be able to post their own content. We will train participants to create content and post.
• We also want to finally discuss/agree on a templates used for workshops to train new editors. A standard way of approaching events is needed.
• General event and community organisation coaching will also be available.

7 people will be on our expense sheet. More people can join, but we will not be responsible for their upkeep. There are community leaders who have experience in the skills we want to share. We will use their help. We are open to further discussion on this. It's very important to us.

1. Wikimedia Summit: There can be only one person from a User Group to the Wikimedia Summit.

I agree

Sandiooses (talk) 18:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Community activities coordinators

• What sort of tokens are you giving to show appreciation?

We'd prefer to give cash. If we position monetary compensation as a salary, expectations are going to go up. We are also not a legal entity. Token here means token of appreciation. Sandiooses (talk) 17:18, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Laptops

• Here a remark, not a question. 2 laptops for 4,000 dollars seems extremely high for the kind of work that you need to do. We will have to revise this budget position to be much lower.

Thank you for your answer to those questions! Best, Delphine (WMF) (talk) 16:42, 18 November 2019 (UTC) I agree. $2800 should suffice. Sandiooses (talk) 17:07, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Simple APG Committee recommendation

We recommend that Wikimedia Ghana User Group receive a grant of 14,000 USD for one year. We commend Wikimedia Ghana User Groups efforts at outreach and propose that they take advantage of re:publica to present or conduct an interactive conference there. We are also conscious that WGUG is operating in the same space as Open Foundation West Africa and want to confirm that both organizations are working together to make sure to avoid redundancies and duplicating work. We are concerned about the number of events planned for the year and would like Wikimedia Ghana User Group to reassess the volume of events in order to make sure that their transition to an APG does not cause too much stress on the volunteer community with high demands. We are also asking they revisit the cost of equipment. We are looking forward to see how Wikimedia Ghana User Group develops their activities and partnerships in the year to come.

For the committee, Islahaddow (talk) 11:31, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the support Islahaddow as always. A note on the equiment though; the cost would definitely be reduced. Nobody buys 2 regular laptops for $4000 :D It was a mistake on my part. I had in mind 4 laptops for our 4 independent communities which are based in cities 3-19 hours apart, hence sharing 1 or 2 wouldn't be realistic. Delphine (WMF) recommends we use Hardware Donation Program which I'll go take a look at. Eitherway we are delighted about this first APG. Thank you again. Sandiooses (talk) 10:26, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia User Group Ghana APG approved in the amount of 14,500 USD

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 14,500 USD, with a grant term starting 1 January 2020 and ending 31 December 2020.

Wikimedia User Group Ghana has been operating in Ghana since 2012, and was recognized as a User Group in 2014. In the past three years, it has been developing a number of activities around the Wikimedia Project and is applying for the first time for an Annual Plan Grant.

For this first application, they present a program plan with three focus areas: Increasing participation, Policy and advocacy, Community support development. These three programs are supported by a range of activities. A number have a clear focus on outreach, such as the radio show segments or participation in the re:publica conference in Accra, which seems appropriate in a context where notoriety of the Wikimedia Projects and their understanding still has room to grow. On the same line, the Program Policy and advocacy aims at increasing awareness around Free knowledge, through activism around Freedom of panorama, which in turn would support efforts to bring Ghanean knowledge to the Wikimedia Projects.

Wikimedia User Group Ghana is expanding outreach to new educational institutions, while strengthening and revisiting their existing partnership with Gimpa Law School, which hopefully will help them scale their education program and achieve good results for workshop execution and student participation, expanding on some of the work they have been doing.

Wikimedia User Group Ghana is planning a number of events in support of their community, and most specifically a Training of the Trainers camp designed to train community organizers and trainers across the country. We are looking forward to seeing the results of this camp and how they translate into new capacity building across the volunteer community.

In their program "Increasing participation", Wikimedia User Group Ghana is looking at organizing editathons. The plan is not clear as to where and how the monthly workshops or editathons will take place exactly. While we have seen good engagement and results in the past, there is no record of such an intensive effort to bring in new participants. One event a week (on average) might take a great toll on the volunteer community and we would like Wikimedia Ghana user Group to reassess its targets to spread their editathons. One editathon a week might be a hard schedule to maintain in any context. We urge our colleagues to be careful with volunteer resources, especially in a context where it might be difficult to find volunteers.

Also, we would like to make sure that Open Foundation West Africa and Wikimedia User Group Ghana work together in the coming year to clearly delineate their areas of expertise and areas of collaboration in the realm of community support and outreach especially. We will be working together this year to make sure that programs for each group take into consideration resources and expertise from the other group.

Wikimedia User Group Ghana has budgeted the purchase of two laptops, for a total of around 4,000 USD. We don't believe that the kind of laptops needed for Community outreach or volunteer work around the Wikimedia projects need to be such powerful machines. We are kindly asking Wikimedia User Group Ghana to please review their budget to include better priced machines, and consider applying to our Hardware donation program.

Please note that we would like you to review the budget to match the granted amount by:

• Reducing the number of "monthly editathons"
• Lowering the prices of the laptops
• Suppressing travel costs to the Wikimedia Summit (only one person is allowed at the summit and their trip is financed by the conference grant)

Note that a new version of the budget should be uploaded before the grant term begins.

Best regards, Delphine (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for being present throughout Delphine (WMF). A note on the equiment though; the cost would definitely be reduced. 2 regular laptops for $4000 is a stretch. It was a mistake on my part. I had in mind 4 laptops for our 4 independent communities which are based in cities 3-19 hours apart, hence sharing 1 or 2 wouldn't be realistic. And yes, we are considering the hardware programme. Also, a new version of the budget to fit the new amount will be up. Sandiooses (talk) 15:20, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Midpoint Report Accepted

Hello Sandiooses and Wikimedia Ghana User Group Colleagues, thanks for submitting your midpoint report. We have reviewed the metrics, budget, and report and marked them as accepted. Thank you for your work for the Wikimedia Movement! Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 08:53, 1 September 2020 (UTC)