Grants:PEG/Nkansah Rexford Nyarko- PWM GH/Wikimedia outreach in Ghana

Funded
This submission to the Wikimedia Foundation Grants Program was funded in the fiscal year 2012-13. This is a grant to a group.

IMPORTANT: Please do not make changes to this page now. They will be reverted.

  • This project has been funded, completed, and a project report has been reviewed and accepted by WMF Staff.
  • To review a list of other funded submissions by fiscal year, please visit the Requests subpage, and to review the WMF Grants Program criteria for funding please visit the Grants:Index.
Legal name of organization or individual requesting this grant
Planning Wikimedia Ghana
For organizations: Are you a for-profit entity? Not yet registered.
For organizations: If non-profit (US) or equivalent (outside the US) status is available in your country, do you have or are you pursuing such status (please be specific): Not yet registered.
Grant contact name
Nkansah Rexford Nyarko
Grant contact username or email
User:Nkansahrexford, nkansahrexford(_AT_)gmail.com
Grant contact title (position)
Coordinator, PWMGH
Project lead name
Sandister Tei
Project lead username or email
User:SandisterTei, sandistertei(_AT_)live.com
Project lead title (position), if any
Operations Manager, PWMGH
Full project name
Wikimedia Outreach in Ghana
Amount requested in USD or local currency (USD will be assumed if no other currency is specified)
$3,306
Provisional target start date
January 1, 2013
Provisional completion date
June 1, 2013

Project goal

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The use of online media especially for education is growing rapidly in Ghana. This is the perfect time to introduce Ghanaians to Wikimedia Foundation and the free knowledge for all initiative. We wish to expand our current outreach efforts beyond social media, and have direct contact with educational institutions, other groups and individuals.

To achieve this we are embarking on the "Wikimedia Outreach in Ghana" campaign which will be our first mass project. Our main goal, in line with that of the foundation's is to train Ghanaians to collect, refine and contribute Ghana- related content for free use on some selected wiki projects -- Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikimedia Commons and Wikibooks (Cookbook)

To achieve this, we will

  • Train students, educators and other individuals on how to use, edit and contribute to the wiki projects generally
  • Focus on the editing and generation of Ghana-related articles towards the making of Wikipedia the prime online source for reliable and rich information about Ghana
  • Focus on contributing Ghana's national and ethic cuisine to Cookbook
  • Recruit contributors who will cover Ghana's December 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections and submit articles to Wikinews and images to Wikimedia Commons
  • Focus on gathering images of Ghanaian cuisine to Wikimedia Commons to support recipes submitted to Cookbook
  • Publicize Portal:Ghana as an online hub for educational content covering our country

Project Scope and Activities

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Our Wikimedia Outreach in Ghana will gather mainly students and educators and inform other individuals who are going to use, edit and contribute Ghana-related content for Wikimedia Wiki Projects. The outreach will cover institutions in the following 3 cities in southern Ghana over a 3-month period (not consecutive) :Koforidua, Accra and Tema

In each city, 4 Senior High Schools and 2 Tertiary Institutions (Universities and Polytechnics) will be introduced to Wikimedia Foundation's activities and wiki projects and the processes of using, editing and contributing to them. (Selection of cities and then schools are based on existing ICT infrastructure that will facilitate this maiden outreach)

Outreach events in each month

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  • There will be no launch event but press releases with be sent out to media houses to announce the intended outreach and areas involved. Targeted institutions will be contacted to finalise approval of participation of students and educators.
  • Talk Wikimedia (a 1-hour event for both Tertiary and High Schools) -- This will be a 30-minute introduction to wiki projects, followed by a 10-minute introduction to some events by local chapters worldwide and then a 20-minute question and answer segment. Our aim is to give a spoken and with visual overview of Wikimedia Foundation to students, educators and other attendees. Talk Wikimedia will take place in each institution selected.

Participants of Talk Wikimedia who come to understand our vision of free knowledge for all and are interested in becoming Wikimedians, proceed to join the subsequent events

  • Wiki Edit-a-Thon— This will be a 2-hour event in the ICT centres of the various institutions, to:
    • Teach and recommend user account creation and sync on project sites and the use of talk/ discussion pages
    • Introduce students to article creation and editing
    • Introduce students to media uploading on Wikimedia Commons
    • Introduce students to writing Wikinews articles
    • Get each participant to start or edit an article on a Ghana related topic
    • Distribute Wikimedia branded souvenirs as incentives and promotion
    • To call for volunteering representatives who will start school clubs and foster ambassadorship
  • Wikinews and Ghana Election 2012 coverage

This will be an event in Accra only to recruit students and other individuals to help gather articles concerning the December 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana to be submitted to Wikinews.

  • Wikibooks Asanka Project

Asanka in Akan means food bowl. Wikibooks Asanka Project will be an event in Accra only to recruit students and other individuals to help gather Ghanaian recipes and images of food for Wikibooks' Cookbook.

Budget breakdown

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Previously funded

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  • No previous funding received

Requested funds

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Item Amount Description Unit Price Total price ($USD)
Chromebooks 3 2 Samsung Chromebook 550, 1 Acer C7 Chromebook (449 x 2) + 119 1017
Google Nexus 10 1 A tablet, Camera 5MP for photo taking, GPS 399
Projector 1 For use in displaying presentations and/or slides in schools and at conferences 750
Travelling bags 2 For carrying the gadgets when travelling 100 200
Camcorder 1 video recording 250 250
Camcorder Stand 1 To enable one-man video-recording 30 30
Transportation Within 3 cities targeted Economical road trips to enable photography for uploads 60 180
PWMGH Souvenirs At least 100. Requested below from WMF. Offer to participating school's students and tutors. Start of outreach dependent on the time of arrival of these souvenirs.
Internet Modems 3 For use in schools without internet connectivity but with electric supply and computers. 30 90
Stationery 16x27 stickers (50) and 5x7 stickers (100) Will print 50 16 by 27 and 100 5 by 7 sticker posters 65
Reserves (possibly later used for Legal Registration) If/when the group is recognized as Wikimedia Ghana, these funds will be used for incorporation as a not-for-profit organization, aka Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Ghana. Otherwise, they are reserves. 300
Letter printing and mailing 25
Total 3306

Non-financial requirements

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We would like the help of the Wikimedia Foundation's press and communications team in press outreach and communication about the Wikimedia Outreach in Ghana!

We also request the donation of at least one hundred Wikimedia and/or Wikipedia t-shirts. Other project websites souvenirs are welcomed.

Commencement of the outreach is dependent on the time of arrival of these items from the WMF.

Strategy

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This project fits within the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic plan in several ways:

  • Increasing Reach & Participation (more people being able to access or contribute to Wikipedia and/or other projects websites): Our above outlined projects are prepared with the view of helping to reach many Ghanaians and expound to them all the good news about Wikimedia and their projects websites. We do not want to only recruit new Wikimedians, rather, we also wish to rekindle the love long-time Wikimedians have in contributing to Wikis. By reaching more persons, we also get the chance to get many persons participate, with creation of Wikimedia account being the first step, even though not mandatory.
  • Increasing Quality (more useful content or higher quality existing content): Quality on the Wikis is very essential to providing quality knowledge. With this in mind, we will encourage new contributors to work on their articles thoroughly in providing contents on articles that interests them. In addition, experienced contributors will be assigned to these newcomers and help them to stick to the writing guidelines of the project websites to promote quality on the Wikis.
  • Increasing Our Credibility (more trust in our projects): The partnerships and collaborations we plan on pursuing during these months will serve to raise the credibility and reach of the Foundation, its projects, and its chapters. By showcasing the great work that contributors have submitted and through the press and social media coverage we hope to get through this event, more people will become aware of how Wikimedia can be a great resource of quality, informative articles that are all free-use.
  • Financial Sustainability (how it will help your chapter achieve more in the long run): As stated above, this period for us is all about building brand and name recognition for our organization through implementation of effective and substantial projects that add to the quality and credibility of Wikimedia projects. Having financial assistance from the Foundation to carry out these events, and particularly financial assistance for logistical support such as legally registering our chapter legally, will help us continue to grow and move forward and will open possibilities for the Ghana chapter to seek funding and support from local companies and organizations. Before we can seek funding from other sources, we need to be able to demonstrate to potential donors that we have a track record for successful events and outcomes.

Other benefits

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One of our goals in this month of events is to get some bloggers, journalists and media to release their writings (and photos) under a Creative Commons license which can therefore be used in Wikinews and other sister project websites. Bloggers and journalists write many articles—and we wish to channel some of their efforts into the public domain, and not only in copyrighted works. By reaching out to them through our events, and showing them that Commons is a nice venue for photographic expression, we hope to get them to contribute even a small portion of their unpublished work and/or release some (if not all) of their copyright holdings into the public domain for use on Wikimedia websites

We also hope, at the conclusion of the project, photos and articles of all schools contacted will be recorded on Wikimedia project sites.

Measures of success

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There are clear, quantitative measures of success:

  1. How many articles and photos were written and uploaded at the end of the project?
  2. How many people signed up for Wikimedia account as at the end of the outreach?
  3. How many Wikimedia clubs were established in various visited High Schools outreach?
  4. How many articles were improved and or added about Ghana during our various Wikipedia-related edit-a-thons?
  5. How many recipes and corresponding images were submitted?
  6. Did we successfully get any professional writers, bloggers and/or journalists to contribute articles and news and Wikinews?

# Is there a increased traffic to the Portal: Ghana page?

Follow Up Strategy

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  1. PWMGH or Wikimedia clubs will be established and leaders would be asked to submit reports on progress. Communication with these club leaders will be via emails and/or phone calls. Any difficulties in editing would be addressed during communication.
  2. In 10 months or when needed, if any club is facing issues that can be addressed only our presence there, such schools will be revisited.

Equipment Re-use and Future Projects

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A page such as the one found here on the PWMGH Meta page will publicize the souvenirs and/or equipment that are in our possession and available for use in future local projects.

As and when others will want to have these equipment for use in a project, a draft of the project, its scope, and other details similar to the WMF Grant draft proposal will be posted on the PWMGH meta page by the project organizers for open consideration consideration.

During the project (after approval), the coordinator of the PWMGH will keep in touch with the project lead for project updates via emails and/or phone calls. At the end of the project, the project lead will submit a report to the PWMGH which will be documented and saved on our meta page.

Team members (optional)

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  • Rexford Nkansah
  • Sandister Tei
  • Ato Ulzen-Appiah
  • Senam Aseye Bridget
  • Samuel Adzaka
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