Wikimedia Kenya UserGroup/Reports/2023

Community Overview

This is a report on Wikimedia Kenya User Group’s activities from January to December 2023. Wikimedia Kenya User Group, affiliated in October 2022, is a community aimed at advancing Free Knowledge by contributing in Wikipedia and her sister projects.

Our programmatic approach

In the past few years, our programs have been as follows:

1. Capacity Building & Community Development
2. Advocacy

We increase participation in Wikimedia projects in Kenya by recruiting new editors. The content creation program receives the new editors, and engages them in editor retention activities, alongside existing editors. Our community development activities creates the platform for us to further immerse members into the movement.

Summary: 2023 Campaigns and Outreach

(1) Africa Day Campaign User:Cmwaura and User:Anitah Pezz coordinated the Africa Day Campaign in our community, which took place from 15th June to 15th July. The campaign's objective was to curate and improve online representation of Africa by closing the information divide surrounding the continent on Wikimedia.

(2) Increased Participation & Community Building The campaign attracted new members to the User Group, expanding our network Capacity Building - the campaign provided knowledge on how to contribute to Wiki quotes, which was a first in our community. Our past focus and active engagements were largely on Wikipedia, Wiki Commons and Wiki Data. The wiki quotes training attracted 14 participants who made 39 Wikiquotes during the Africa Day campaign. The Campaign`s Dashboard

(3) Reading Wikipedia in the classroom Users @FaithMwanyolo and @Piedmonter led the campaign in 2022/23. The program attracted 150 applicants, all of whom were educators in Kenya. A total of 90 teachers were shortlisted to be part of the program and 32 graduated having completed the program.

Overall, the pilot program not only equipped high school teachers with essential 21st-century skills but also laid the foundation for a generation of students who would grow up more adept at navigating the digital world. The program’s impact is sure to be felt in classrooms across Kenya, as educators pass on their knowledge and skills to their students, empowering them to be critical thinkers and responsible digital citizens.

(4) Digital Rights & Inclusion Forum (DRIF) 2023 For the first time, our community got a chance to engage in our first major advocacy event which brought together stakeholders from outside the Wiki ecosystem. During DRIF 2023, we not only had a booth at the conference that allowed us to get visible and engage folks around the work we do, but we also collaborated with other EA regional peers to host 2-panel discussion sessions at the conference. One of the sessions that our members participated in was titled "Internet sustainability in Practice: Experiences from Wikimedians in Eastern Africa." during which they shared on different ways in which they experience internet disruptions while contributing to Wikipedia and what can be done to reduce the different challenges they face. Their experiences were published on the Diff blog platform here: [1]

(6) Wiki Indaba 2023: Three of our members attended the Wiki Indaba Conference in Agadir Morocco and got a chance to take part in a panel discussion on "How to nurture female leadership and inclusivity in our affiliates: Case Study of Wikimedia User Group Kenya."

Community Development

Partnership & Collaboration: We collaborated with Code for Africa in a fellowship that saw three of our members namely; CMwaura, Raychep and Queen Asali become Wikimedians In Residence in projects aimed at enhancing content and information on climate change and politics in Kenya. The project activities provided capacity building for the WIR fellows and also helped introduce new contributors to our community. User CMwaura and her team focused on Climate Change while users Raychep and Queen Asali and their contributors focused on Kenya Elections Hate Speech/Misinformation Prevention/Connect with us

Membership: We held our first Annual General Meeting (AGM) in December 2023 during which we brainstormed on our Community Development work, sought to do an audit of our members; understand the challenges they face while contributing to Wikipedia spaces as well as identify opportunities for growth as a community.

Dormant members were flagged and allowed to renew their commitment and those who didn't respond were considered as “not interested” and de-listed. They are, however, welcome to rejoin the community at any time when ready to champion our objectives as per the bylaws that will be ratified soon. We also had a better integration of new contributors into the movement. where a proposal to formulate our community bylaws surfaced.

Regular meet-ups: We also agreed that regular meet-ups were key to community development and enhancing consistency in our engagements. It was also suggested as another way of motivating members to keep contributing on Wikipedia even when we did not have any active campaigns as a User Group.

Bid to host Wikimania 2025

We also successfully bid [to host Wikimania 2025] even though the Wikimania Steering Committee proposed that we consider another East African City such as Kigali(Rwanda) or Dar es Salam (Tanzania)as alternative hosts, in the event that then ongoing proposed legislations undermining the rights of the LGBT were effected in Kenya.

Given the committee recommendation, Community representatives during Wikimania Singapore resolved to have Kigali as the alternative host if the contentious law made it impossible to host Wikimania in Nairobi.

The Supreme Court of Kenya in a ruling made in September 2023 upheld the rights of the LGBT community to associate and convene in Kenya.

We, as a community, are positive that since the issue is no longer a factor, we will make great hosts for Wikima nia 2025. We are grateful for the overwhelming support and endorsement our bid received from fellow Wikimedians across the continent.

We say Asante

2023 was a challenging year for us but we can only become better! Thank you "asante" to all who supported our work and made our 2023 possible to navigate. We also applied for our first APG to help maintain consistency and reduce administrative work that goes to individual grant applications.

If you have questions or feedback, please use the talk page or email us wikimediausergroupkenya@gmail.com.