Planning Wikimedia Ghana/Wikimedia Outreach in Ghana

This grant was not submitted or approved. For the correct grant proposal please see Grants:PEG/Nkansah Rexford Nyarko- PWM GH/Wikimedia outreach in Ghana.

Legal name of organization or individual requesting this grant

Planning Wikimedia Ghana

For organizations: Are you a for-profit entity? Not yet registered.

For organizations: If non-profit (US) or equivalent (outside the US) status is available in your country, do you have or are you pursuing such status (please be specific): Not yet registered.

Grant contact name

Nkansah Rexford Nyarko

Grant contact username or email

User:Nkansahrexford, nkansahrexfordgmail.com

Grant contact title (position)

Coordinator, PWMGH

Project lead name

Sandister Tei

Project lead username or email

User:SandisterTei, sandisterteilive.com

Project lead title (position), if any

Operations Manager, PWMGH

Full project name

Wikimedia Outreach in Ghana

Amount requested in USD or local currency (USD will be assumed if no other currency is specified)

$10,545

Provisional target start date

October 15, 2012

Provisional completion date

March 15, 2012

Project goal

The use of online media especially for education is growing rapidly in Ghana. This is the perfect time to introduce Ghanaians to Wikimedia Foundation and the free knowledge for all initiative. We wish to expand our current outreach efforts beyond social media, and have direct contact with educational institutions, other groups and individuals.

To achieve this we are embarking on the "Wikimedia Outreach in Ghana" campaign which will be our first mass project. Our main goal, in line with that of the foundation's is to train Ghanaians to collect, refine and contribute Ghana- related content for free use on some selected wiki projects -- Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikimedia Commons and Wikibooks (Cookbook)

To achieve this, we will

• Train students, educators and other individuals on how to use, edit and contribute to the wiki projects generally
• Focus on the editing and generation of Ghana-related articles towards the making of Wikipedia the prime online source for reliable and rich information about Ghana
• Focus on contributing Ghana's national and ethic cuisine to Cookbook
• Recruit contributors who will cover Ghana's December 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections and submit articles to Wikinews and images to Wikimedia Commons
• Focus on gathering images of Ghanaian cuisine to Wikimedia Commons to support recipes submitted to Cookbook
• Publicize Portal:Ghana as an online hub for educational content covering the country

Project Scope and Activities

Our Wikimedia Outreach in Ghana will gather mainly students and educators and inform other individuals who are going to use, edit and contribute Ghana-related content for Wikimedia Wiki Projects. The outreach will cover institutions in the following 4 cities in southern Ghana over a 5- month period (not consecutive) : Kumasi, Ho, Koforidua, and Accra

In each city, 4 Senior High Schools and 2 Tertiary Institutions (Universities and Polytechnics) will be introduced to Wikimedia Foundation's activities and wiki projects and the processes of using, editing and contributing to them. (Selection of cities and then schools are based on existing ICT infrastructure that will facilitate this maiden outreach)

Outreach events in each month

• There will be no launch event but press releases with be sent out to media houses to announce the intended outreach and areas involved. Targeted institutions will be contacted to finalise approval of participation of students and educators.
• Talk Wikimedia (a 1-hour event for both Tertiary and High Schools) -- This will be a 30-minute introduction to wiki projects, followed by a 10-minute introduction to some events by local chapters worldwide and then a 20-minute question and answer segment. Our aim is to give a spoken and with visual overview of Wikimedia Foundation to students, educators and other attendees. Talk Wikimedia will take place in each institution selected.

Participants of Talk Wikimedia who come to understand our vision of free knowledge for all and are interested in becoming Wikimedians, proceed to join the subsequent events

• Wiki Edit-a-Thon— This will be a 2-hour event in the ICT centres of the various institutions, to:
  • Teach and ensure compulsory user account creation and sync on project sites and the use of talk/ discussion pages
  • Introduce students to article creation and editing
  • Introduce students to media uploading on Wikimedia Commons
  • Introduce students to writing Wikinews articles
  • Get each participant to start or edit an article on a Ghana related topic
  • Distribute Wikimedia branded souvenirs as incentives and promotion
  • To call for volunteering representatives who will start school clubs and foster ambassadorship

• Wikinews and Ghana Election 2012 coverage

This will be an event in Accra only to recruit students and other individuals to help gather articles concerning the December 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana to be submitted to Wikinews.

• Wikibooks Asanka Project

Asanka in Akan means food bowl. Wikibooks Asanka Project will be an event in Accra only to recruit students and other individuals to help gather Ghanaian recipes and images of food for Wikibooks' Cookbook.

Budget breakdown

Previously funded

• No previous funding received

Requested funds

Item	Amount	Description	Unit Price	Total price ($USD)
Laptop (HP)	2	For preparing training, presentation sessions and other Planning Wikimedia Ghana related tasks	700	1400
Google Nexus 7	1	A tablet with GPS functionality for mobile editing and contribution during Wikinews and Ghana Election 2012 project		500
Projector	1	For use in displaying presentations and/or slides in schools and at conferences		750
Travelling bags	2	For carrying the gadgets when travelling	100	200
Camcorder	1	video recording	250	250
Digital Camera	2	To take photos relating to the project and for story telling	200	600
Camera Stands	2	To enable one-man video-recording	30	60
Transportation	To and within 4 cities targeted	Economical road trips to enable photography for uploads	400	1600
Accommodation	Rooms for 3 PWMGH volunteers for 3 days in each city at 50 per night	12 days in all	150	1800
Food for volunteers	$25 each day for each of the 3 persons		75	900
Office Space	A single office with washroom	We have secured an office/ meeting space free of charge for 3 months. However the space needs some furniture and maintenance		500
PWMGH Souvenirs	PWMGH T-shirts (50), Pens (100), Cap (50),	Offer to participating school's students and tutors		1000
Internet Modems	10	For use in schools without internet connectivity but with electric supply and computers.	30	300
Stationery	16x27 stickers (50) and 5x7 stickers (100)	Will print 50 16 by 27 and 100 5 by 7 sticker posters		65
Shipping	12 bags containing stationery from WMDC	Oral received these items when he visited the WMDC.		270
Legal Registration		As a not-for-profit organization, aka Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Ghana		200
Printing and mailing/ delivery of letterheads for official letters to schools				150
Total				$10545

Non-financial requirements

We would like the help of the Wikimedia Foundation's press and communications team in press outreach and communication about the Wikimedia Outreach in Ghana!

We also request the donation of one hundred Wikimedia and/or Wikipedia t-shirts. Other project websites souvenirs are welcomed.

Strategy

This project fits within the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic plan in several ways:

• Increasing Reach & Participation (more people being able to access or contribute to Wikipedia and/or other projects websites): Our above outlined projects are prepared with the view of helping to reach many Ghanaians and expound to them all the good news about Wikimedia and their projects websites. We do not want to only recruit new Wikimedians, rather, we also wish to rekindle the love long-time Wikimedians have in contributing to Wikis. By reaching more persons, we also get the chance to get many persons participate, with creation of Wikimedia account being the first step, even though not mandatory.
• Increasing Quality (more useful content or higher quality existing content): Quality on the Wikis is very essential to providing quality knowledge. With this in mind, we will encourage new contributors to work on their articles thoroughly in providing contents on articles that interests them. In addition, experienced contributors will be assigned to these newcomers and help them to stick to the writing guidelines of the project websites to promote quality on the Wikis.
• Increasing Our Credibility (more trust in our projects): The partnerships and collaborations we plan on pursuing during these months will serve to raise the credibility and reach of the Foundation, its projects, and its chapters. By showcasing the great work that contributors have submitted and through the press and social media coverage we hope to get through this event, more people will become aware of how Wikimedia can be a great resource of quality, informative articles that are all free-use.
• Financial Sustainability (how it will help your chapter achieve more in the long run): As stated above, this period for us is all about building brand and name recognition for our organization through implementation of effective and substantial projects that add to the quality and credibility of Wikimedia projects. Having financial assistance from the Foundation to carry out these events, and particularly financial assistance for logistical support such as legally registering our chapter legally, will help us continue to grow and move forward and will open possibilities for the Ghana chapter to seek funding and support from local companies and organizations. Before we can seek funding from other sources, we need to be able to demonstrate to potential donors that we have a track record for successful events and outcomes.

Other benefits

One of our goals in this month of events is to get some bloggers, journalists and media to release their writings (and photos) under a Creative Commons license which can therefore be used in Wikinews and other sister project websites. Bloggers and journalists write many articles—and we wish to channel some of their efforts into the public domain, and not only in copyrighted works. By reaching out to them through our events, and showing them that Commons is a nice venue for photographic expression, we hope to get them to contribute even a small portion of their unpublished work and/or release some (if not all) of their copyright holdings into the public domain for use on Wikimedia websites

We also hope, at the conclusion of the project, photos and articles of all schools contacted will be recorded on Wikimedia project sites.

Measures of success

There are clear, quantitative measures of success:

1. How many articles and photos were written and uploaded at the end of the project?
2. How many people signed up for Wikimedia account as at the end of the outreach?
3. How many Wikimedia clubs were established in various visited High Schools outreach?
4. How many articles were improved about Ghana during our various Wikipedia-related edit-a-thons?
5. How many recipes and corresponding images were submitted?
6. Did we successfully get any professional writers, bloggers and/or journalists to contribute articles and news and Wikinews?
7. Is there a increased traffic to the Portal: Ghana page?

Team members (optional)

• Rexford Nkansah
• Sandister Tei
• Ato Ulzen-Appiah
• Senam Aseye Bridget