Grants:IEG/Mbazzi Village writes Wikipedia/Final

This project is funded by an Individual Engagement Grant

Welcome to this project's final report! This report shares the outcomes, impact and learnings from the Individual Engagement Grantee's 6-month project.

Part 1: The Project

Summary

The project has become a fresh start for Luganda Wikipedia. A very small number of new articles had been created since 2011 and when the project started it only had 165 articles. The number of articles was doubled during the project time.

According to the villagers the Wikipedia Center in Mbazzi have changed their lives. It have created a "culture of sharing knowledge" and the farmers have introduced new crops and have invented a new method of small scale fish farming witch is now spreading in the village and in some schools in Uganda.

The project has also established the needed infrastructure in order to be able to continuously work on expanding Luganda Wikipedia in the coming years. Furthermore a strong coalition of partners have formed as a direct result of this project.

We now have a momentum to expand the work around free knowledge in Uganda and we aim to build on it.

Methods and activities

What did you do in project? Please list and describe the activities you've undertaken during this grant. Since you already told us about the setup and first 3 months of activities in your midpoint report, feel free to link back to those sections to give your readers the background, rather than repeating yourself here, and mostly focus on what's happened since your midpoint report in this section.

Our aim with the project was to make relevant knowledge accessible through Wikimedia’s projects to the villagers in Mbazzi. To do this we had to start with the very basics. The technical infrastructure needed to engage the villagers were missing and we started with the novel idea that they way forward was to create a Wikipedia Center.

The Center was inspired by the work done by Wikimedia chapters (in Europe and other parts of the world) with providing a place for volunteers to meet; and also providing some of the technology needed for the volunteers to effectively work with the projects. However, there were some major differences from previous initiatives as no local Wikipedia community existed and that the Center would be set-up in a place where Internet know-how and accessibility in general are very limited. We knew that these factors would mean that a lot of work would be needed initially. But we were betting that the outcome — when people for the first time would be able to regularly and easily access and contribute to crowdsourced free knowledge projects — also would be huge. Creating the Center took a lot of work and dedication but we could finalize it after a few months.

After the Center was established we could initiate the work with the educational activities and start training the villagers how they could utilize Wikipedia as a resource, and how they could contribute back to it. As their experience with using a computer was limited we gave computer training lessons, and shared knowledge about what type of information they could find online (especially on Wikimedia’s projects) and how they could use it.

When the Center was organized we could pick up speed and trained a lot of people. As the trainers experience grew the learning improved and both new and previous learners could use the resources at the Center to deepen their understanding and ability to contribute back to the knowledge gathered on Luganda Wikipedia. Discussions on how knowledge could be shared took place and we built on this by teaching the villagers how to write articles on the Luganda Wikipedia.

The project members then worked to mobilize the Luganda users into the Wikipedia movement in order to get actively involved in sharing knowledge. This was done by creating a platform for Luganda Wikipedia fraternity, with continuous activities at the Center and through many discussions. It was also done by activities on social media, especially Facebook, and by giving presentations about the project. Through the Center's physical presence in Uganda the ownership of Luganda Wikipedia grew and there was a better chance to connect with different organizations in the country.

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

What are the results of your project? Please discuss the outcomes of your experiments or pilot, telling us what you created or changed (organized, built, grew, etc) as a result of your project.

The most important outcome of the project for the Wikimedia movement was that over 100 people were trained to use and contribute to Wikipedia. Over 200 articles were created during the project time 2014. The Wikipedia Center in Mbazzi was a starting point to reutilize Luganda Wikipedia, which has been almost dormant for three years. Our belief is that when a Wikipedia version reaches a certain size more people will organically find it, use it and contribute to it and that we now are closer to that size.

Thanks to the creation of the Center it became possible to get funding for an education tour by two Wikipedia Ambassadors from Sweden, financed by WWF Sweden. During that tour schools, universities, development groups and journalists was introduced to Luganda Wikipedia and learned how to write articles. This was a separate initiative, but it would not have been possible without the support from the IEGrant.

File:Http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryLG.htm

On top of the direct gains for the Wikimedia movement the outcomes from the project has been very direct in the village. At a visit at the Center in July 2015 the instructor at the Center, Peter Kitaka, said that through Wikipedia the farmers have been inspired to cultivate new crops like onions and and rotbeets. The work with Wikipedia have created a culture of sharing knowledge which did not exist there before. Now it is easier to find and test new ways to earn money and the self-confidence has been raised, and also the ability to innovate has increased among the villagers.

• 
  At the Mbazzi Wikipedia Centre
• 
  Mbazzi Wikipedia Centre and Mbazzi Farmers Associations july 2015 04
• 
  Fishfarming in Mbazzi
• 
  Beetroot. One of the new crops in Mbazzi. 01

The Center have increased an interest for learning in the village. The people able to speak and write in English improved their skills, and through Wikipedia they know have contacts with other persons interested in the same subjects around the world. The people that can only speak Luganda is now demanding education in English. And the illiterate people wants to learn writing and reading. It is very clear that Wikipedia inspire learning, connecting and sharing of knowledge.

The idea is now spreading and the next step in this process is that Uganda Red Cross and WWF/Nature Uganda wants to create a new Wikipedia Center in Masaka. WWF and Nature Uganda did an education of their teamleaders in East Africa in september 2015 in Masaka. Especially the group in Kaswa Zinda have since then contributed with many articles about sustainable development in Luganda Wikipedia.

Thanks for this project the interest of develop the Luganda Wikipedia has spread to Makerere University. In July 2015 a Wikipedia Convention was held att Makerere and all the active Wikipedians and new interested students joined for a day hearing about the Center and the work WWF have done in Masaka. A group was formed that will start the process to form a Uganda Wikimedia chapter. After the convention the language departement of Makerere University started to use Luganda Wikipedia in their education. The number of articles raised to over 800 in the autumn of 2015.

Trying to upload article at Luganda Wikipedia Convent 2015

Progress towards stated goals

Please use the below table to:

1. List each of your original measures of success (your targets) from your project plan.
2. List the actual outcome that was achieved.
3. Explain how your outcome compares with the original target. Did you reach your targets? Why or why not?

Planned measure of success (include numeric target, if applicable)	Actual result	Explanation
1. Educate 100 people in how to edit Wikipedia which will be measured by their contributions on Luganda WP.	More than 100 people have been trained	There was great interest exhibited among the learners.They were usually eager to learn.
Have 120 new articles on Luganda Wikipedia in the area of health, agriculture and economic empowerment.	Over 100 articles have been uploaded onto lg.wikipedia.org from 15th January 2014 to 14th January 2015 (See http://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/3982)	Writing articles is also a skill that needs to be trained. Many of the users had less education. The sources were also limited. It is worth noting that the article production on Luganda Wikipedia did not end when the project formally ended, but has continued to increase.

Think back to your overall project goals. Do you feel you achieved your goals? Why or why not?

Global Metrics

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across all grantees. In addition to the measures of success for your specific program (in above section), please use the table below to let us know how your project contributed to the "Global Metrics." We know that not all projects will have results for each type of metric, so feel free to put "0" as often as necessary.

1. Next to each metric, list the actual numerical outcome achieved through this project.
2. Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome. For example, if you were funded for a research project which resulted in 0 new images, your explanation might be "This project focused solely on participation and articles written/improved, the goal was not to collect images."

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

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Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. Number of active editors involved	41 Editors	The Luganda Wikipedia is a new concept in knowledge sharing. It is just the beginning.
2. Number of new editors	the 41 Editors are new. They are basically products of the project.	This is because Mbazzi Writes Wikipedia is the first official project of the Luganda Wikipedia.
3. Number of individuals involved	Over 160 trainees
4. Number of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	Negligible	==Emphasis was put on writing, then later, images would come in. Uploading images would follow, as most articles need images for better delivery of knowledge
5. Number of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	Over 264 articles	= Every trainee was encouraged to write and upload at least one article as a proof that he/she has learnt how to use the Luganda Wikipedia.However, some articles are very small.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects

Learning question

Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?

Indicators of impact

Do you see any indication that your project has had impact towards Wikimedia's strategic priorities? We've provided 3 options below for the strategic priorities that IEG projects are mostly likely to impact. Select one or more that you think are relevant and share any measures of success you have that point to this impact. You might also consider any other kinds of impact you had not anticipated when you planned this project.

Option A: How did you increase participation in one or more Wikimedia projects?

Option B: How did you improve quality on one or more Wikimedia projects?

Option C: How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects? -Through CBS Radio Station,one Presenter Mr. Wamala Bulunabba marketed the Project and invited people to share their knowledge via the Luganda Wikipedia, and to visit Mbazzi Wikicentre. -The trainees also promoted the project. -A Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Luganda-Wikipedia/583213558429794?fref=ts) was opened as a platform for the Luganda Wikipedia network.

Project resources

Please provide links to all public, online documents and other artifacts that you created during the course of this project. Examples include: meeting notes, participant lists, photos or graphics uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, template messages sent to participants, wiki pages, social media (Facebook groups, Twitter accounts), datasets, surveys, questionnaires, code repositories... If possible, include a brief summary with each link.

Link to Wikimedia Swedens project description:

Wikimedia Sveriges projektbeskrivning

Bloggpost about Mbazzi at Dan Frendins blogg before the project started:

:http://dfrendin.com/2013/08/18/mbazzi-mpigi-district-uganda/

Radio broadcast about Internet in Africa and Mbazzi project at Swedish National Broadcasting Corporation (In Swedish) 19 February 2014:

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/326707?programid=3345

Slides from presentation at UNESCO Mobile Learning week 2015:

http://www.slideshare.net/danfrendin/ganda-wikipedia

Link to the presentation of the project:

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/m4ed/mobile-learning-week/symposium/ganda-wikipedia-a-knowledge-channel-for-human-survival/

Link to the stats page of Ganda Wikipedia:

Http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryLG.htm

Bloggposts about the project at Wikimedia Swedens blogg (In Swedish):

Del 1: Wikipedia som verktyg för hållbar utveckling på den Ugandiska landsbygden

https://wikimediasverige.wordpress.com/2015/08/25/wikipedia-som-verktyg-for-tillvaxt-pa-den-ugandiska-landsbygden/

Del 2: Besök på Mbazzi Wikipediacenter i Uganda

https://wikimediasverige.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/besok-pa-mbazzi-wikipediacenter-i-uganda/

Del 3: Ett besök på Mbazzi Wikipediacenter i Uganda del 3

https://wikimediasverige.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/ett-besok-pa-mbazzi-wikipediacenter-i-uganda-del-3/

Bloggpost at Wikimedia Foundations blogg 28 May 2014

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/28/luganda-wikipedia-project/

Link to Luganda Wikipedia:

https://lg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olupapula_Olusooka

Learning

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you took enough risks in your project to have learned something really interesting! Think about what recommendations you have for others who may follow in your footsteps, and use the below sections to describe what worked and what didn’t.

Successes:

1. Pioneering the Luganda Wikipedia in Uganda. It is an unknown Wikipedia with nearly no users. With this project, it has been unveiled anew. If the momentum is upheld, the future is promising.
2. Showing People that sharing knowledge has no bounds: anybody can provide knowledge, anybody can use the knowledge on Wikipedia.
3. The project created a culture of sharing knowledge in the village and a wish among the villagers to learn more language to be able to communicate better.
4. The project increased the spirit of innovation in the village because of the access to English Wikipedia witch gave the farmers access to new knowledge. The invented a new method of fishfarming and introduced new crops to the farming.

Challenges:

1. 1. Low spirit of voluntarism in knowledge sharing.
   2. Limited access to e-resources by trainers. Especially lack of internet.
   3. Failure to see the benefits of the Luganda Wikipedia among some trainees.
   4. Limited computer knowledge among people.
   5. Inadequate sources available to use in the articles.

What worked well

What did you try that was successful and you'd recommend others do? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

• Starting Mbazzi Wikicentre at Mbazzi Village basically for the rural farmers.
• Initiating the idea that e-learning has no boundaries and it is the way to go in order to cause sustainable development through access to knowledge.

• Your learning pattern link goes here

What didn’t work

What did you try that you learned didn't work? What would you think about doing differently in the future? Please list these as short bullet points.

• Little time was given to training by the Wikipedia ambassadors.
• The project goals were rather too ambitious to measure true impact in just one year.
• It is important to accord more time to the rural communities to fully understand how the Luganda Wikipedia can be useful in sustainable development.
• Lack of internet after the project time (2014) has been very limiting to new editing.

Other recommendations

If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please list them here.

• Bring Universities and tertiary institutions on board to promote the Luganda Wikipedia project faster.
• Non-Government organizations should be persuaded to join the Wikimovement to share the knowledge they have in sustainable development etc with the masses.
• An umbrella network for Luganda Wikipedia users should be started to coordinate all activities.
• The Buganda Kingdom should become a big player in the Luganda Wikipedia.
• In the beginning of 2015 we and people from WWF Sweden, Nature Uganda, Uganda Red Cross, Wikimedia Sweden, Wiki Africa center in South Africa, SWEDESD and Dan Frendin worked on an upscaling of the project to write about sustainable development in Luganda Wikipedia. In the new project we wanted to create a national office for Luganda Wikipedia in Kampala and use Uganda Red Cross local offices in Masaka region as local ”Wikipedia Centers” for volunteers and workers at

Uganda Red Cross and WWF/Nature Uganda. Mbazzi Wikipedia center should continue to work as it had during 2014 if we get funding for another year. The center needs funding for internet, security instructor and four new computers to meet the demands. A library would also improve the work with sources and literacy. We applied for funding from Swedish Institute but did not receive any at that time. Wikimedia Sweden is now trying to find other funds for this.

• SWEDESD (Swedish International Center for Education for Sustainable Development) has applied for funding for a research project where the learning from Luganda Wikipedia is one part of it. They failed to get funding.
• WWF East Africa educated a core team of leaders from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania in how to write articles in Wikipedia in february 2015. After the education we had a stakeholder meeting for the new project. The ESD EA Programme Core Team of trainers have started to contributing articles. In summer 2015 Dan Frendin and Daniel Åkerblom visited some of the leaders and schools around Katonga River. There was a big interest in the project but the challenge was lack of computers and internet.
• WWF/Nature Uganda has now began to cooperate with Uganda Red Cross and will start a new ”Wikipedia center” at a Red Cross local office outside Masaka as soon as we get funding for that.
• Dan Frendin has presented the project at UNESCO mobile learning week in Paris February 2015 and at the World Environment Education Congress in Gothenburg June/July 2015. Both UNESCO and UNEP are interested in the concept of Wikipedia centers for sustainable development.
• In january 2016 a new application for funding from Swedish Institute fundingprogram "Creative Force" was submitted. We have had no answer yet if we get the money.
• In march 2016 an application for an Internet Society project was submitted. The application mainly want to fund Wikipedia Work at two schools in Uganda and establish a group of editors at department of African Language at Makerere University. It will also fund a start for a national Wikipedia office at Red Cross office in Kampala.

Next steps and opportunities

• The next step in this process is that Uganda Red Cross and WWF/Nature Uganda shall create the new Wikipedia Center in Masaka. WWF and Nature Uganda did an education of their teamleaders in East Africa in September 2015 in Masaka. Especially the group in Kaswa Zinda have since then contributed with many articles about sustainable development in Luganda Wikipedia. We are waiting for funding for an instructor, some equipment and internet access.
• Thanks for this project the interest of develop the Luganda Wikipedia has spread to Makerere University. In July 2015 a Wikipedia Convention was held att Makerere and all the active Wikipedians and new interested students joined for a day hearing about the Center and the work WWF have done in Masaka. A group was formed that will start the process to form a Uganda Wikimedia chapter. After the convention the language departement of Makerere University started to use Luganda Wikipedia in their education. The number of articles raised to over 800 in the autumn of 2015. The next step is to get funding for Internetaccess and more training.
• The project was presented at the first Nordic ICT4D Fair in Kista, Stockholm 17 February 2016 by Dan Frendin. In the coming month there will be an opportunity to apply for funding at Spider Center. That is the Swedish International Development Aid program for ICT in developing countries.

Think your project needs renewed funding for another 6 months?

Part 2: The Grant

Finances

Actual spending

Please copy and paste the completed table from your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed the actual expenditures compared with what was originally planned. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided to explain them.

Expense	Approved amount	Actual funds spent
Trainer for 12 months at the Center	$1920	$1920
Guard for 12 months at the Center	$960	$960
Total	$2880	$2880

Remaining funds

Do you have any unspent funds from the grant?

• No, all funds were spent as per plan

Please answer yes or no. If yes, list the amount you did not use and explain why. If you have unspent funds, they must be returned to WMF. Please see the instructions for returning unspent funds and indicate here if this is still in progress, or if this is already completed:

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadminwikimedia.org, according to the guidelines here?

Please answer yes or no. If no, include an explanation.

• Yes.

Confirmation of project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement? Please answer yes or no.

• Yes.

Is your project completed? Please answer yes or no.

• Yes.

Grantee reflection

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on what this project has meant to you, or how the experience of being an IEGrantee has gone overall. Is there something that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed, or that you’ll do differently going forward as a result of the IEG experience? Please share it here! Being an IEGrantee has been a new experience. As a pioneer means you have to learn as you you go along. Sharing knowledge in Luganda via Wikipedia is a new paradigm. People are used to doing this through international languages like English. Some people even think this cannot happen. Changing people’s mindset is an uphill task.But there is always a beginning for everything. I would like to involve the tertiary institutions of learning in Uganda especially Makerere University to play a leading role in the promotion of the Luganda Wikipedia. THE Buganda Kingdom should also become a major player in the Luganda Wikipedia.All in all, this project was an ice-breaker. The future can be made brighter.