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Grants:MSIG/Examples/Skill Development Needs Assessment

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Before you apply

In November 2021, Skill Development was selected as a priority for Movement Strategy implementation. In partnership with the Community Development Team, several tracks have been identified to start implementing the initiatives of “31: Global approach for local and skills development” and “32: Leadership development plan”.

You are not obliged to follow any of these three tracks in your application, but they are meant to help you formulate your approach to implementing these initiatives and to structure the review process. Additionally, there’s an example provided to each track to help guide your grant proposal.

Tracks

The proposed three tracks are as follows:

  1. Needs Assessment for Skills Development. Assess and define the skill development needs of a community or region. This involves conducting needs assessment research to understand learner profiles and needs. Based on the research, the grantee should be able to identify and define the priority skills of a community or region.
  2. Translation of a Learning Resource. Translate, localize and re-launch an already existing skill development resource for your local community. The grantee will need to find and outline the skill development resource they plan to adapt for their community. The grantee’s responsibilities include finding the suitable resource, translating the material and localizing or adapting it for their audience.
  3. Creating a New Learning Resource or Activity. Create and deliver a skill development activity that helps learners develop skills needed to sustain and grow our movement (for more information, see the sections: Skill Development Activities and skills). This may involve some research into previous resources or activities to understand their impact and how they have been used in the past. It also includes fully planning and launching the new resource or activity in a community. You can refer to the extended guidance and tips for creating a new activity.

Examples

  1. Needs Assessment: Example of a needs assessment for skills development grant proposal
  2. Translation: Example of a grant proposal for translating a learning resource
  3. Creation: Example of a grant proposal for creating a new learning resource or activity
statusdraft
xx.wikipedia.org
This is a made up example of a well-organized grant proposal on skill development needs assessment.
targetThe Hobbitish Wikipedia community
start date15 November
start year2021
end date15 March
end year2022
budget (local currency)(N/A)
budget (USD)(N/A)
grant typeOrganization
grantee• Frodo Baggins
contact(s)• SGamgee(_AT_)hobbiton.org• Merry(_AT_)hobbiton.org
organization (if applicable)• Wikimedians of the Middle Earth
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Share your results

Applications are not required to be in English. Please complete the application in your preferred language.

The following is a made-up example of what a well-structured grant request for skill development may look like. There’s no requirement to follow it: it can be a starting point or a reference to help you formulate your own grant request. Your grant request should both meet the grants criteria (which are practically shown in this example), as well as your own unique goals.

Summary

This is an example for a needs assessment project for a growing community of volunteers who want to improve their skills. The hypothetical community that is applying for the grant had never conducted such a needs assessment. Consequently, they have to understand the skills that they should focus on to grow their community.

The hypothetical community is centered around a specific language with a medium-size wikiproject. There, however, smaller languages that are closely connected to them geographically and culturally. The support for these kinds of smaller communities is also a part of the grant example.

Project Goal

What will be the outputs of your project and how will those outputs contribute to advancing a specific Movement Strategy Initiative?

What specific Movement Strategy Initiative does your project focus on and why? Please select one of the initiatives described
31. Global approach for local skill development - gathering data, matching peers, mentorship, recognition. Skill development is a priority for our community. Although our community has grown several times in size over the past few years, there has not been a parallel growth in our organized activities and user rights holders. There are certain barriers in terms of skills that are keeping people from contributing in certain areas, but we’d like to start by identifying them through “gathering data”, before moving to other steps

Project Background

When do you intend to begin this project and when will it be completed?
Start date: 15 November 2021 End date: 15 March 2022
Where will your project activities be happening?
The project will take place online:
  • Research plans and materials will be created on Google Docs/Sheets and the surveying tool Qualtrics.
  • Research will be conducted using Qualtrics for surveying and Skype for face-to-face interviews
  • Analysis will be conducted through Google Sheets
  • Reporting will be written and shared on xx.wikipedia.org
What specific challenge will your project be aiming to solve? And what opportunities do you plan to take advantage of to solve the problem?
The challenges that this project aims to address:
  • Lack of information about capacity needs: As far as we know, our community has never conducted a skill development assessment. Although the community lacks skill sets to handle advanced tasks in various areas, we don't know what skills are the highest priority to develop and who needs to develop those skills, which makes it hard to start developing skill resources.
The opportunities that this project aspires to seize:
  • Community growth: Even though we still lack capacities, the size of our community has been increasing, which means there are more people available to learn new skills and use them to progress our work.
Does this project aim to apply one of the examples shared in the call for grants and if so which one?
N/A: This, itself, is an example.

Project Activities

What specific activities will be carried out during this project? Please describe the specific activities that will be carried out during this project.
We will carry out the skills assessment with the following steps:
  1. Designing a survey of community skills: We will first agree on the exact group of volunteers who we want to target, then we will design a survey based on the Community Capacity Map. The survey will be both a needs assessment, to define what are the skills that the community lacks, and a skill survey, to also define what are the skills that the community has. The survey will be translated into the local language for future use. A budget will also be allocated for translations to some of the closely-connected and marginalized languages, whose communities may be interested and are likely to need support.
  2. Collecting data: The survey will be distributed as much as possible among the community. We will announce it and collectively fill it during community meetings, and will also conduct 1:1 interviews where we verbally collect the answers (for those who prefer it). We hope to receive diverse responses in terms of: newcomers, admins, editors, technical contributors, women contributors and others.
  3. Defining needs: A professional analyst will be hired to look through the data, categorize it and extract the needs: Not only of our community altogether, but also of individual groups within (for example: newcomers). The needs assessment will not show areas where training is required, but also how the training should be best conducted (e.g. with what tools and in which exact topics?). The results will be shared in a public report.
  4. Prioritizing: Once the needs have been identified, we will conduct a general meeting with the community and a follow-up discussion on Wikipedia to agree on the priorities. The priorities will be added to our final report, and we hope to use them to request a future grant in “track 3: create and deliver”.
  5. Sharing: Our final needs and priorities will be not only shared on a local level, but also within a broader “global mapping” to help represent our region’s specific needs among the rest of the Wikimedia communities.
How do you intend to keep communities updated on the progress and outcomes of the project? Please add the names or usernames of these individuals responsible for updating the community
Grant request:
  • We will announce the grant request to our community in its planning as well as the approval decision, if we receive it. Call for participation:
  • The call for participation will be openly shared in the community channel, including: village pump, IRC and the mailing list.
  • Target outreach to certain groups might be conducted through social media or others.
  • Community meetings will be conducted to gather as many people as possible. Sharing the results:
  • The final report of the research project will be shared through the same channels: village pump, IRC and the mailing list.
  • A meeting will be organized to present the final results and share our plans for the next grant to develop the needed skills in the community.
  • The results will be shared in the global skill development needs assessment and surveying to help represent our communities specific context.
Who will be responsible for delivering on this project and what are their roles and responsibilities?
The project will be led by a group of volunteers from the xx.wikipedia community. Roles will include:
  • Outreach: Announcing the project, distributing surveys and sharing the results.
  • Facilitating: Facilitating the verbal 1:1 interviews and the community meetings.
  • Logistics: Handing the survey and reports for translation and hiring a freelance analyst to process the data.
  • Survey design: Carefully designing the questionnaires to collect the relevant data. This step could require the collaboration of the data analyst.
  • Writing reports: Apart from the data report (which the analyst will handle), a volunteer will be responsible for writing a report about the project’s execution and finance.
  • Translation: Freelance translators will be contracted (the languages are mentioned in the additional information section).

Additional information

If your activities include community discussions, what is your plan for ensuring that the conversations are productive? Provide a link to a Friendly Space Policy or UCoC that will be implemented to support these discussions.
If your activities include in-person events or activities, you will need to complete the steps outlined in the Risk Assessment protocol. Please provide a link to your completed copy of the risk assessment tool.
(N/A)
If your activities include the use of paid online tools, please describe what tools these are and how you intend to use them.
  • We may request any tools that the data analyst may request from us to perform their job.
  • We have allocated the budget for a single standard-priced business tool with a subscription for one month. The budget will be kept flexible, though.
Do your activities include the translation of materials, and if so, in what languages will the translation be done? Please include details of those responsible for making the translations.
We will translate the surveys and reports into the following languages:
  • The primary language of our local communities.
  • Up to 2 more languages to support closely-connected communities.
Are there any other details you would like to share? Consider providing rationale, research or community discussion outputs, and any other similar information, that will give more context on your proposed project.
(N/A)
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