Grants:MSIG/Examples/Skill Development Translation

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:

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.
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.
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

statusdraft

Movement Strategy

xx.wikipedia.org

This is a made up example of a well-organized grant proposal on skill development resources translation.

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

hobbiton.org• Merry

hobbiton.org

organization (if applicable)• Wikimedians of the Middle Earth

give feedback

join

endorse

friendly space expectations

browse all requests

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 project aims to minimize the effort needed for creating new learning materials by collecting existing resources in the English language and both translating and adapting them to our community. We are aware that there is a large amount of material available through Wikimedia projects and communities about the work of developing partnerships. The materials will be first collected and evaluated through a research stage. Afterwards, we will work to translate and edit these resources to make them better fit to our community.

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 here: 31. Global approach for local skill development - gathering data, matching peers, mentorship, recognition: In November 2020, we selected the Skill Development recommendation as our top priority for Movement Strategy implementation. Skill and capacity is really needed due to the large number of small communities in our region, which makes the sharing of the limited amount of precious expertise that each of those communities has a serious need. One specific area that is especially relevant to these communities is partnerships development, which gives them a way to work with the many existing organizations that curate rich content about these languages, and which they can really use. We would like to adapt the global experience in the area of partnerships with learning materials tailored to our community’s own needs and context.

Project Background

When do you intend to begin this project and when will it be completed?

Start date: November 2021

End date: January 2022

Where will your project activities be happening?

Both in-person in our local country and on the online platforms of Wikimedia projects and learning platforms.

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:

Language barrier: While there are some great learning resources out there, those resources remain completely inaccessible to our community, the majority of whom do not speak English. For those people, language is the single biggest barrier to acquiring new or improved skills.
Relevant resources: Even though some resources can be relatively easily utilized by translation to our language, some resources that we need seem completely lacking. For example, most English-language learning materials seem oriented towards an advanced audience, whereas we would like to provide our community with more basic and introductory materials.

The opportunities that this project aspires to seize:

Online learning: Learning resources have become more abundant and on-demand since the COVID-19 pandemic, which has prompted many new people to use online resources and to become comfortable with them. This can be used to the advantage of Wikimedia activities.

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.

Our project will be conducted through the following steps:

Gathering the team: We will gather a team of Wikimedians who are interested in translation, content creation and organized activities to help run the project.
Surveying existing material: We will start by looking at the rich existing material about developing partnerships, and defining which of those materials best suit the purpose of introducing our community to this project.
Researching impact: We will reach out to the creators of existing resources and have conversations with them in order to: 1. Better understand their work and how it can be best localized, and,2. To learn about its impact on their community and any issues it had. Based on this and any other available data, we will try to identify the most successful partnership learning resources and the ones with a potential of high impact for our local community.
Designing a localization program: Having identified the best learning resources for us to adapt, we will plan how to merge content from across these resources and whether we need to edit or add to it things that are missing or presumably relevant to our community. The result will be a coherent outline of the new localized program and where each part needs to come from. Any special tools or needs, such as dubbing videos or filming new material, should be identified at this point.
Assigning responsibilities and delivering: The team will be assigned responsibilities for translation, editing and content creation, according to the predefined outline. A timeline will be agreed upon to deliver the results.
Piloting the course: Collecting the content from across the different creators, the localized learning course will be shared with a limited target audience for feedback and impressions. Once the learning course is complete, we will distribute it as widely as possible among the community.
Learning group: We will create social groups for learners and those interested in partnerships to keep working together.

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

We will announce the grant request to our community in its planning as well as the approval decision, if we receive it.
Due to the large scale of this project, we will be offering chances for volunteers to learn about the project and join as collaborators at different stages.
The initial content of the learning course will be shared with a limited number of community members who show interest, in order to receive their feedback and impressions.
The final learning course will be shared through the different community channels, including: the village pump, IRC, mailing list and social media.
Learning groups will be created on social media and mailing lists to allow learners, as well as those interested, to connect together and keep communicating.

Who will be responsible for delivering on this project and what are their roles and responsibilities?

This is a large project that requires several paid roles as well as committed volunteers. We expect the following roles and responsibilities:

Project manager: In charge of setting up the timeline, organizing meetings, distributing the work and ensuring the delivery of the work. Likely to be an affiliate staff or a temporary contractor.
Translators, editors and writers: Responsible for planning and creating the content of the learning course. They are expected to be Wikimedians, probably volunteers, with experience in the area.
Dubbers: Responsible for voicing the dubbed versions of videos. Can be a freelance or a volunteer, according to the availability.

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.

The Wikimedia Foundation’s friendly space policy will be applied.

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 will use open source or free online translation tools, such as Crowdin and Amara. We do not plan to use paid tools at this point in time.

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.

If the learning course proves successful in our community, we will offer support to translate it into the biggest three languages in our regions to help benefit from it.

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)