Wikimedia Community User Group Botswana/Report2018/En

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WIkimedia Community User Group Botswana Annual report .

Report for 2017 and 2018

Prepared by Mompati Dikunwane


The Wikimedia Community User Group Botswana is an independent Wikimedia User group which is Officially Recognised by WMF to serve volunteers of the republic of Botswana. This Volunteer group seeks to promote the use of Wikimedia and its sister projects by the residents of Botswana, and to also help in creating awareness on how the everyday Botswana can contribute to the pool of free knowledge, which is Wikimedia; most especially in the translation efforts into the major local languages (Setswana)

User Group information[edit]

Daisy Macheng and Mompati Dikunwane were elected as the two signatories of the group, meaning that the WMF will be contacting them on behalf of the group. We have not committed to opening the group bank account because we have no project proposals made during the time.


Objectives of Wikimedia Community User Group Botswana[edit]

WIkimedia Community User Group Botswana Annual report 2018.
  • To promote the use of Wikimedia projects by people in Botswana
  • To help people in Botswana learn how to contribute to Wikimedia projects
  • To organize in-person gatherings of Wikimedians in Botswana
  • Promoting Open Access and Open Data
  • Advocating for affordable, fast and safe internet
  • Promote glam
  • Open Education and Open Education Resources (OER)

Activities[edit]

Wikimedia Community User Group Botswana focused on the following projectsː

  • Participation at the BW Independence day 2017
  • Girls in ICT day 2017(Masunga Village)
  • Wikipedia Workshop and meet-up 2017 Tuesday 04 April 2017
  • Bill and Melinda library initiative (March 31 2017)

Photo shoot

  • The World telecommunication and information society day 2017
  • Wir Pilot program 2017

Participation at the BW Independence day 2017[edit]

Girls in ICT day 2017(Masunga Village)[edit]

Girls in ICT day 2017(Masunga Village)

-Girls in ICT 2017 at Masunga Senior school

Our group participated in the annual girls in ICT commemoration held in the north eastern part of Botswana, Masunga. We had girls from Masunga senior secondary school participating in Wikimedia and her related projects through the aid and partnership of the BTCL foundation.

Botswana Telecommunication Corporation (BTC) has once again shown commitment to improving the social development of young people throughtout the country Botswana.
As part of the international girs in ICT commemorations, BTC in partnership with the Ministry of Transport and communications and other stake holders took to the village of Masunga to celebrate the day.
The BTC staff partook in technogy awareness activities for students and residents in the village- including demontrating easy webtools for improved learning. To mark the significance of the day, the BTC team handed over the Masunga TeleCentre- which was constructed and fitted by the corporation-at a value of BWP 150 000- which included 20 computers, 1 printer and a wifi. The center is kitted with computers- and printers, for the villagers to use in connecting with the world trough BTC Wifi at any time

Wikipedia and the girls[edit]

Wikimedia and it's sister projects were introduced to the girls in ICT and a mini training which included account creation and shared slides about Wikipedia with them.

Wikipedia Workshop and meet-up 2017 Tuesday 04 April 2017[edit]

On the 4th of April 2017, we conducted Wikipedia workshop and meet-up Workshop which focused on bringing librarians and volunteers together to share a common knowledge on how to improve the public domain using Wikipedia tools. Wikipedia-meet-up and workshop 2017 was a Workshop and edit-a-thorn run by volunteers from Botswana to create and improve articles related to the content of Botswana, and welcoming Newbies to wikipedia and its sister projects

The report for the workshop is available here

Goals of the meet-up and Worskhop[edit]

  • To engage new editors and collaboration / support educational institutions of Botswana, engaging more school students.
  • To improve / increase skills of existing editors
  • To add more and improve content of articles (English and Setswana)
  • Recruit new editors


Activities[edit]

  • Town level meet-up (The whole team took the Shuttle to town)
  • We had refreshments at Nandos after the event
  • We had an edit session, which we used to welcome new bies and create new accounts.

Challenges[edit]

  • We had power cuts which lead to no network.
  • The connection was a little bit poor which delayed some work.
  • Most of the users who availed themselves were new comers.
  • we had a difficult time in commencing on the set date of the Workshop because of heavy rains and disasters

Opportunities[edit]

  • We had a representative from Botho University who took pictures of the event and went on to share them on the Magazine of their school, that is beneficial because people are going to be aware of the Projects offered by Wikipedia and start contributing.

Wir Pilot program 2017[edit]

Wikimedia Community user group Botswana had amazing pilot testing of the Wikipedian in residence program held at Francistown records center in 2017. We had almost all employees showing interest in Wikimedia and her related projects. We had an amazing experience with them learning how to work with Wikipedia tools, Wikimedia commons media repository to upload the media files that are there at the archives.

The report for the event is found here

Masunga Village graduates want to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia[edit]

A meeting with the village graduates was held on the 31 March 2017 at Masunga Kgotla where they got informed about Wikipedia and its sister projects. These graduates benefited from the Bill and Melinda gates initiative which came to Botswana to connect all libraries with free internet and free training to Batswana. The meeting targeted the English, Tswana Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

17-20 November 2017 was the planned year for the funded workshop and meet up but the dates were change due to some challenges we faced, and was moved to October 20 2018. The report for the Workshop is found here

Wikimedia CUG Botswana International participation[edit]

Wiki indaba 2018 Tunis[edit]

Mompati Dikunwane, Scholarship recipient, Report

Wikimania 2018 Cape Town[edit]

Mompati Dikunwane (talk) 10:24, 24 June 2019 (UTC) , Scholarship recipient, Report[reply]


Art and feminism Edit a thorn 2018[edit]

This was part of the larger Art + feminism edit a thorn which aimed at improving the representation and coverage of women and other marginalized groups on Wikipedia. The edit a thorn was also seeking to improve content quality with particular emphasis on improving citations and adding well-researched content. This event took place on the set date 28 May - 29 May 2018. Organiser ː Setsile

Wikimedia Community User Group Botswana Celebration for recognition of being a user group[edit]

The community had to celebrate its first recognition of being a user group after the affiliations committee approval n 2017. The celebraton was amongst the Botswana wikimedians and other interested stake holders. It was an opportunity to learn more from others.


Wikimedia community user group Botswana monthly meet-up[edit]

This was the meet-up organized to take place for a period of 4 months to engage new participants. We targeted the english Wikipedia, Tswana and Wikimedia commons. The events dates were 30 March -30 July 2018 (Organised byː Moabi.othapile)


Wikitswana Ghanzi, Maun and kasane photo Journey[edit]

This event was pioneered to boost the Sekgweng photo shoot event whch took place in 2018. The main aim of the event was to contribute images to wkimedia commons and improve stub articles and articles wanting photos on Wikipedia. The event dates were on the 22 June 2018 - 24 June 2018. Organized by Setsile.