Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Alliances Fund/Accessible knowledge digitizing Libyan culture
- Build a community of researchers and editors through partnerships to form a nucleus for the Wikipedia user group, which will also focus on digitizing information about different Libyan groups.
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Applicant information edit
A. Organization type
- Mission-aligned organization
B. Organization name
- Media in Cooperation and Transition (MICT) Tunisie
E. Do you have an account on a Wikimedia project?
- No
E1. Please provide the main Wikimedia Username (required) and Usernames of people related to this proposal.
- N/A
G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?
- Did not apply previously
H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?
- Yes
- H1. Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?
- Canadian embassy in Libya (Canada Fund for Local Initiatives - CFLI)
UNESCO north Africa under the Global Media Defense Fund - GMDF
- H2. Please state the size of these grants from the following options.
- Between 5,000-50,000 USD
- H3. What type of organization (s) did you receive grants from?
- International NGO
- H4. What percentage of your program budget do other funders contribute to?
- More than 75%
1. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- Yes
1a. Fiscal organization name.
- Media in Cooperation and Transition
2. Are you legally registered?
- Yes
3. What type of organization are you?
- Non profit organisation
4. What is your organization or group's mission and how does it align with the Wikimedia movement?
- For NAMA (MiCT Tunisie), the digital transformation is an opportunity to develop media landscapes that reflect the realities of the region and are designed with evidence-based foundations. in the other hand, in order to have an independent media you need more free access to independent information, and requires these information to be fact checked, linked to other information to build a complete understanding, and to be accessible online.
5. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)
Is an online learning platform that aims to provide open and free courses in different domains for Arabic speaking youth.
Is a community Facebook page, includes around 650 arab journalists, advocating for changing narratives of media about women, Part of a project funded by UNW.
Grant proposal edit
6. Please state the title of your proposal.
- Accessible knowledge digitizing Libyan culture
9. Where will this proposal be implemented?
- Libya
10. Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries?
- Local
10a. If you have answered international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.
10b. Are there any specific sub-regions or areas where your proposal will be implemented?
- The project will be implemented in Libya, will be in Arabic language.
11. What is the challenge or problem you are addressing and why is this important?
- Amid the formation of a provisional unity government in March 2021, internet freedom declined in Libya. Local authorities throttled mobile service during protests corruption and deteriorating living conditions in September 2020. Journalists, activists, and bloggers also continue to face online harassment, arbitrary detention, and, in some cases, physical violence relating to their online activity. While investments are being made to begin to rebuild some of the internet infrastructure damaged during the ongoing conflict, internet penetration remained low. Much of this online environment is a product of the previous dictatorship that controls all resources, and carefully monitored all publications regarding the country’s history, culture, ethnic diversity and even its sociological and geopolitical nature.
The end of rule placed the Libyan people in a space where they could more freely express themselves a little bit more, however, society was used to the norm of one culture, one language and one religion. This has left little information available online about Libyan history, diversity, and culture. In Libya, the freedom to share information online while also accessing, even on an open-source sites such as Wikipedia remains a hurdle for individual citizens, Yet, while figures vary widely, internet penetration and speeds appear to be increasing in Libya. There were 3.19 million recorded internet users in Libya in January 2021, according to the Digital 2021 report, marking an internet penetration rate of 46.2—an increase of 18 percent from the previous year. This is good news and is perceived to be a positive indicator to address and support the access to information. Through a quick search on Wikipedia, for example, for articles containing information about the most important Libyan Amazigh personalities, we will find separate articles that do not provide coherent information on the subject, and we will find miscellaneous under the "Libyan Amazigh" classification, which remains a broad classification under which many fall, and here we are talking about the most active ethnic component, while Components such as Tebu and Touareg are less present. The goal of this project aims to bridge the gap in online published content by training young editors who are interested passionate about knowledge and Libyan history and customs, in cooperation with specialized research centers that can provide reliable information that has been collected and scientifically verified.
12. What is the main objective of your proposal? Please state why you think partnering with Wikimedia Movement helps to achieve this objective?
- - Build an online training program to support digitization history/culture in Libya, this program will support spreading knowledge about Libya, that keeps pace with the rapid changes have occurred in the last couple of years and guaranteeing free and equal access to information.
- Build a community of researchers and editors through partnerships to form a nucleus for the Wikipedia user group, which will also focus on digitizing information about different Libyan groups.
13. Describe your main strategies to achieve this objective?
- - Training of 30 participants from Libya (online), who should be researchers in different specialties on how to write/edit a Wikipedia article and upload them to the website.
- Organize a serious of meetings and discussions (online) to establish Wikipedia user group in Libya in partnership with research centers and universities studies centers.
- Build training course with tutorials on NAMA platform (https://courses.na-ma.org/) on the editorial policy of Wikipedia and on how to verify and upload a content, and make them available for free for all users.
14. Are you running any in-person events or activities?
- No
15. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified content knowledge gaps?
- Content Gender gap, Geography, Language, Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context), Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial
16. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or thematic focus.
- Education, Culture, heritage or GLAM , Public Policy, Diversity
- history, public figures
17. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select all categories that apply.
- Geographic , Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background, Linguistic / Language, Digital Access
18. Please tell us more about your target participants.
- In this project, we aim to target people interested in knowledge gaining and sharing, who have a standard skill of writing, who have worked or collaborated in research work.
This project will also consider the participants gender, geographical location, ethnic and linguistic representation, in the selection criteria when selecting the participants.
The selection of participants will be done through a public call for applications that will be promoted through our SM channels and will try to target the different regions and diversity groups in the country. we will also be contacting our organization partners to find potential participants from their networks.
We are aiming to collaborate with research centers through experts who would help give consultations during the training on. For example: (Where to find historical / cultural information in Libya? How to fact check this information in order to publish them?), Ultimately, the expert/s would be participating as trainers’ assistants.
19. Do you have plans to work with other Wikimedia communities, groups or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?
- No
19a. If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.
- N/A
19b. If no, please tell us the reasons why it has not been possible to make these connections.
- The project is to be implemented in Libya, there is no active Wikipedia usergroup in Libya.
20. Will you be working with other external non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?
- Yes
20a. If yes, please describe these partnerships.
- Study centers that are specialized in cultural studies, as well as cultural movements that are working on engaging the different groups with different culture / history / Languages background in the national culture of the country and try to reflect it in the public celebrations of different occasions, the suggested partners are:
- The center of studies and research of Benghazi university.
- The center of law and society studies.
- Tanarout culture organization.
- Tanweer culture organization.
20a. If yes, indicate sharing of resources from these partners (in kind support, grants, donations, payments).
- They will provide an in-kind support, with trainers' assistants (teachers), and continue to give a knowledge support to the group of participants in the program.
21. Please tell us how your organization is structured.
- NAMA is a small organization that is depending on projects for funding it's activities, therefore we have only three staff members as follows:
- Academy Director, Rana Al Akbany.
- Projects Officer, Marwa Al-Naas.
- Academy Advisor, Yousr Abid.
all will be directly involved in this project, together with the freelancers and external experts will be hired to implement the activities.
22. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?
- - Academy Director, Rana Al Akbany:
- 1. designing the activities and contacting potential partners and experts to have all the needed team on board with the full understanding of the activities and objectives.
- 2. supervising the selecting process of participants to be committed to the criteria.
- 3. supervise the production of the video tutorials.
- 4. managing the project's budget and followup the financial procedures.
- 4. quality controlling the implementation of the project.
- Projects Officer, Marwa Al-Naas.
- 1. publishing the call for applications and do the first selection of participants.
- 2. finalizing the procurement procedure for all experts needed to be hired for the activities implementation.
- 3. organizing the training and follow up all logistics needed.
- 4. prepare and collect all the financial documents, invoices, proof of payments needed to close the budget.
- 5. follow up the production of the video tutorials.
- Academy Advisor, Yousr Abid.
- 1. technical / financial support of the project's implementation.
- 2. follow up the project's reporting and deliverables.
- 3. provide consultations on the contractual and payments transfers need to be done from WMF to NAMA.
additionally will have: 1- trainer and trainers' assistants: will be responsible for designing and conducting the training. 2- graphic designer: will design the training guide and any visuals needed for the SM or NAMA platform. 3- facilitator for the meetings to create the Wikipedia usergroup in Libya.
23. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.
- No
Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation edit
24. What do you hope to learn from this proposal?
- we wish to answer the following questions:
- 1. Is the impact of the difficult phase of the dictatorship experienced by Libyans still controlling their desire to know and share facts?
- 2. Will such initiatives motivate people from socially oppressed groups on cultural, ethnic, or linguistic backgrounds to change the narratives around them, and encourage them to improve the social acceptance they need?
These two questions can be measured through the demand for this training program, which leads to acquisition of knowledge that helps them to work voluntarily to achieve these goals.
- 3. How can we improve our mechanisms to promote and achieve this kind of projects?
We can get answers through the evaluations we would receive from the different stakeholders of the project during the different stages of implementation.
Core Metrics edit
25. Enter a description of the metric and a number in the target field. If the metric does not apply to you, enter N/A for not applicable.
| Core metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | New participant: 30 trainees.
Returning participant: non |
30 |
| Number of editors | The participants are supposed to become editors on Wikipedia | 25 |
| Number of organizers | planners and coordinators: 2
trainers: 1 teachers: 2 advisors: 1 graphic designer: 1 facilitator: 1 |
8 |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | We aim to improve 30 articles at least, and create 15 articles at least. | 45 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
25a. If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation. (optional)
- The mentioned content suppose to be improved during the training. we aim to have much more than this number of improved or created content over the after training time period.
26. What other information will you be collecting to learn about the impact of your work? (optional)
- Will be comparing the number of articles about a specific topic in Libya before ant after the training.
27. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?
- Not sure!
28. How do you hope to share these results so that others can learn from them?
- Make a short presentation of the experience, Share results on social media, Share results with our communities, Develop learning material for other users, I would like to receive support from the Foundation to discover how I can share my learning
Financial Proposal edit
29. What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency.
- 19065.6 EUR
30. What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?
- 21478 USD
31. & 32. Please provide a budget for the amount of funding requested.
33. What do you do to make sure there is a good management of funds?
- Nama experience to run project in Libya for and we were able to deal with the financial compliance for international donors in Libya.
34. How will you contribute towards creating a supportive environment for participants using the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy?
- Nama has implements projects with participants from different areas in the country man and women and we were able to create a save environment for everyone to participate.
35. Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.
- Other public document(s):
Final message edit
By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.
36. We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
- Yes
Feedback edit
- Please add any feedback to the grant discussion page only. Any feedback added here will be removed.