Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Alliances Fund/Ensuring the Palestinian Narrative:Wikipedia and Palestine
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Applicant information edit
A. Organization type
- Mission-aligned organization
B. Organization name
- 7amleh - Arab Center for Social Media Advancement
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?
- CLFI
EU Norwegian Rep. Office IMS OSF DW Action AID German Rep. Office Access Now SDC Oxfam UNICEF PAX APC FMEP UNDP KAS
- 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?
- Government, International NGO, Bilateral or Multilateral Organizations
- H4. What percentage of your program budget do other funders contribute to?
- More than 75%
1. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
1a. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
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?
- 7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media is a non-profit organisation that advocates for Palestinian digital rights. 7amleh’s mission is to create a safe, fair and free digital space for Palestinians. 7amleh studies and researches issues related to Palestinian digital rights, provides digital rights, digital activism and digital security capacity building opportunities to Palestinian activists and civil society, and manages local and international advocacy campaigns.
5. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)
- 7amleh.org
Grant proposal edit
6. Please state the title of your proposal.
- Ensuring the Palestinian Narrative: Wikipedia and Palestine
9. Where will this proposal be implemented?
- Palestine
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 participants will primarily be from the occupied Palestinian territories, as the university students and professors involved in the activities will be selected from the 5 main Palestinian universities. Furthermore, the geographical locations that will be visited during the field trips will be in these areas as well.
11. What is the challenge or problem you are addressing and why is this important?
- Wikipedia is one of the largest and most popular sources of information on the Internet. There are Wikipedia sites in 300 languages that cover a variety of topics including history, geography, architecture, ecology, culture and art,with 46 million articles viewed by 1.4 billion unique visitors every month. Of these figures, there are 1.16 million articles in the Arabic language and at least 2.25 million Arabic speaking registered users.
Wikipedia offers an exceptional opportunity as a space for the production of free and accessible knowledge, especially for marginalized and disadvantaged communities, histories, cultures, and narratives. In the case of Palestine, there are numerous geographical sites, historical events, and oral narratives that are yet to be documented. Previous efforts to conduct such documentation have often remained restricted to academic avenues and formats, preventing average people from both participating in creating such knowledge as well as accessing it.
For example, on Wikipedia’s general page on Palestinian depopulated villages, around 12 villages do not have personalWikipedia pages. Even villages that have a Wikipedia page, are often short and limited to brief historical and demographic information, excluding the cultural, architectural, ecological and visual richness and depths of these places.
Therefore, organizing efforts to work on further populating existing pages on Palestinian society, geography, history, ecology, and art, as well as creating new pages and categories on topics unexplored in the past, presents a very exciting opportunity. There is ample information of this sort that has yet to be mainstreamed, and even more information that is waiting to be captured and documented. Wikipedia, as a widely accessible and visited resource, presents an ideal avenue for such a project to take place.
This project would also have a large impact on many levels, given the ongoing struggles Palestinians face to tell their stories, due to heavy censorship on the Palestinian narrative by multiple parties. Furthermore, many Palestinians across the diaspora and others alike are unable to access much of these geographical sites and explore their cultural, architectural, and ecological heritages, due to restrictions on freedom of movement due to political unrest and restricting policies.
12. What is the main objective of your proposal? Please state why you think partnering with Wikimedia Movement helps to achieve this objective?
- To empower accessible knowledge production on Palestinian geography, culture, architecture and ecology and enhance the Palestinian narrative on Wikipedia.
13. Describe your main strategies to achieve this objective?
- In the first phase, the project aims to build 5 student groups in 5 different Palestinian universities, who are able to create new Wikipedia pages and contribute to existing Wikipedia pages with original content (documents, photos, additional information, academic resources, etc.) relating to Palestinian towns and villages, with special focus on their geographic, architectural, cultural, and ecological aspects.
On top of expanding available information on Palestine on Wikipedia in the short term, in the long term, the capacity building aspect of this project, will generate a group of Palestinian students with enhanced research and editing skills, which can have a prolonged and sustainable impact on multiple levels. Precisely, this project can contribute to supporting the production of accessible and free knowledge in Palestine, which can engage wider sectors of society in the production and consumption of knowledge. The project can also contribute to supporting a more rigorous and sustainable Palestinian academic community, that is better able to document and disseminate knowledge about their surroundings, ultimately expanding the pool of information available about Palestine, which can ultimately work to the benefit of a platform like Wikipedia – the more knowledge is out there, the more knowledge there can be on Wikipedia.
Further, instilling a genuine interest in research among the student groups, and supporting them with the needed tools to embark on studies they are interested in, and granting them access with an avenue like Wikipedia, to share their knowledge, enhances the sustainability of this project. Further, immersing these students with an existing local community of Wikipedia editors, will guarantee that the groups continue to be engaged in Wikipedia editing even after the end of the first round of the project.
14. Are you running any in-person events or activities?
15. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified content knowledge gaps?
- Geography, Language, Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial
16. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or thematic focus.
- Education, Culture, heritage or GLAM , Human Rights
17. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select all categories that apply.
- Geographic , Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background, Digital Access
18. Please tell us more about your target participants.
- Palestine on Wikipedia will work with students from 5 Palestinian universities, An-Najah, Bethlehem, American University in Ramallah, Bir Zeit, and Al-Quds with academic interest and/or skills in areas of history, culture, archeology, architecture, ecology, urbanism, and media. The project aims to create 5 groups in each respective university, and build their capacities in research and editing to become active and diligent editors on Wikipedia in Arabic and English. Participants will enroll in a training on Wikipedia editorial policies, and a training on ethical and objective academic research skills, and embark on field trips to conduct data collection. Ultimately, the project aims to empower these 5 groups to contribute to Wikipedia pages of Palestinian towns, focusing on angles of geography, history, culture, ecology, and architecture, with diligent, accurate, and multi-media content. The project will work closely with the existing Palestinian Wikipedia community and other collectives and projects in Palestinian universities and centers working on Wikipedia as well.
7amleh will use the connections through the universities, as the organisation has done multiple projects with university students and youth throughout the years, to engage student participants in the project activities. 7amleh will also use social media, through outreach to promote the activities and engage participants. Through this project, 7amleh hopes to still a genuine interest in research among the student groups, and support them with the needed tools to embark on studies they are interested in, and grant them access with an avenue like Wikipedia, to share their knowledge, enhances the sustainability of this project. Furthermore, immersing these students with an existing local community of Wikipedia editors, will guarantee that the groups continue to be engaged in Wikipedia editing even after the end of the first round of the project. With the success of this project, 7amleh hopes to continue this project in a similar capacity in the future.
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?
- Yes
19a. If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.
- During the planning of this project, 7amleh consulted with partners in the Palestine Wikipedia community and will continue to work closely with them and other collectives and projects in Palestinian universities and centers working on Wikipedia as well.
19b. If no, please tell us the reasons why it has not been possible to make these connections.
- N/A
20. Will you be working with other external non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?
- No
20a. If yes, please describe these partnerships.
- N/A
20a. If yes, indicate sharing of resources from these partners (in kind support, grants, donations, payments).
- N/A
21. Please tell us how your organization is structured.
- Organisational diagram and staff structure has been uploaded
22. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?
- The staff who will be assisting in the implementation of this project as follows;
Executive Director: will be responsible for networking with other wikimedia partners, and overseeing the general implementation of the project.
Project Coordinator: will be responsible for the implementation of the project activities, coordinating with universities, and with the trainers for this project. The coordinator will also be responsible for collecting the necessary information for monitoring and evaluation.
Administrative and Financial Officer: The Administrative and Finance Officer will be responsible for ensuring necessary administration, documentation and financial aspects of the project are maintained on an ongoing basis and prepare regular financial reports.12 months *
Reporting Officer: The reporting officer will be responsible for following up on all narrative reporting for the duration of the project activities.l
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?
- It is the organisation's intention to find the best possible way to engage youth in important social and cultural projects for Palestinians. As the main aim for 7amleh is protect digital rights online, the online narrative of an oppressed people, is also a very important part of those digital rights, including freedom of expression and the right to free speech. Through this project, 7amleh will learn the best practices for engaging youth and how to properly tackle the issue of minimisation and erasure of the Palestinian narrative online. 7amleh also hopes to learn from and create better network with Wikimedia alliance partners, who will engage with 7amleh during this project. Additionally, as we will be tracking engagement with the created articles and uploaded photos through the outreach dashboard. This is a new and interesting tools for us and as we work extensively with tracking many types of online data through our programming we see this tool as very meaningful to building our own capacity and not only learn about the impact of this project, but also improve our approach to measuring impact in all of our programming. Finally, in the Palestinian society, Youth often find it difficult to find space to express themselves, it will be very interesting for us as an organization to track how given such an opportunity how young people contribute and participate in the development of articles and visuals that highlight the reality of their society.
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 | 250 Palestinian university students(50 students from each of the 5 main Universities), will participate in the training workshops and build relevant wikipedia pages for Palestinian content throughout the duration of the project. They will gain knowledge and understanding of Palestinian history, culture and society, and use the information to improve the Palestinian narrative and visual representation online. | 250 |
| Number of editors | 250 Palestinian university students who will participate in the training workshops and build relevant wikipedia pages for Palestinian content throughout the duration of the project. | 250 |
| Number of organizers | Organizers of this project include, project coordinator, 2 trainers, and Palestinian university professors will also engage with the students, using their knowledge to contribute to a better understanding gained knowledge of Palestinian history, culture and society (5-6 in total) | 6 |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | Number of articles improved: 250
Number of articles created: 500 |
750 |
| Wikimedia Commons | Number of Photos: 250 | 250 |
| 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)
- N/A
26. What other information will you be collecting to learn about the impact of your work? (optional)
- At the start of the project we will conduct a baseline survey among our experienced project staff who work extensively with the various communities as well as our network of civil society and community organizations to help categories and define the categories of content gaps that are in need of most attention throughout this content. Additionally, we will conduct a pre and post tests with participants to help identify the impact of the training on the participants' capacity development. Furthermore, will have a survey following the tours in order to help support participants determine the topics and lessons learned about the areas explored. In our endline assessment process we will examine the final content created and assess the extent to which the various identified gaps in the baseline have been addressed and what areas of content need further development.
27. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?
- The tools to be used to measure each metric selected include, outreach dashboards, Stats, wikipedia.org. Additionally we will conduct a pre and post test to help identify capacity building develop of participants and will have a survey following the tours in order to help support participants determine the topics and lessons learned about the area explored.
28. How do you hope to share these results so that others can learn from them?
- Create a video of our experience, Share results on social media, 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.
- 319750.2 ILS
30. What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?
- 90000 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?
- The Administrative and Finance Officer will be responsible for ensuring necessary administration, documentation and financial aspects of the project are maintained on an ongoing basis and prepare regular financial reports.
34. How will you contribute towards creating a supportive environment for participants using the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy?
- 7amleh's policies will be followed throughout the project activities stages. These policies including the safeguarding policies and gender equity and sexual harassment policies. 7amleh seeks to create a safe space for all participants, trainers, and project coordinators and follows strict guidelines to ensure this, including our complaints system. In all projects, 7amleh aims to have at least 50% female engagement to ensure gender equity in all projects as well.
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.