Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Alliances Fund/Wikipedia Educational Development Outreach in Mongolia/Final Report

Final Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 08 March 2024

Funding program: Wikimedia Alliances Fund

Report type: Final

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General information

This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results.

Name of Organization: Progress Gateway NGO
Title of Proposal: Wikipedia Educational Development Outreach in Mongolia
Amount awarded: 22500 USD, 59112540 MNT
Amount spent: 76243516 MNT

Part 1 Understanding your work

1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.

Activities and strategies proposed by the project were implemented successfully. We also proposed to organize the first-ever Wikipedia Summer School that focuses on Wikipedia and English language learning in Mongolia. Mongolian Public School #23 and US Peace Corps volunteers participated in our key outreach efforts and helped us to achieve our project goals. The participating teachers and students were highly cooperative throughout the project duration.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?

We faced some school scheduling conflicts during our project. Being flexible when planning and coordinating multiple participants was crucial to successfully achieving our goals.

3. Would you say that your project had any innovations? Are there things that you did very differently than you have seen them done by others?

We integrated Wikipedia editing proceses with English language learning process. What we did differently was we launched the first-ever Wikipedia Summer School specifically for Wikipedia-based English language learning in Mongolia. The Wikipedia Summer School was held July 17-August 5, 2023. Because the Summer School was a success, the host partner Public School #23 and US Peace Corps volunteers requested to repeat the training in January 2024. The Wikipedia Summer School will be organized in the Summer of 2024.

During our project an English textbook based on Wikipedia elements is being developed and this is very new approach to present Wikipedia into wider educational communities.

4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.

We announced our summer school to selected area school English teachers first. The teachers nominated the participant students. There were a total of 45 students from 16 different schools. However, our host partner Public School # 23 is located in the downtown area of the capital city Ulaanbaatar, we invited mid and low income-level students to our Summer school. Also, our staff offered lessons at the public libraries and invited librarians to the Wikipedia training. We announced the Wikipedia training seminars in advance through the library event calendars. Please refer to the photos for library outreach activities among the general public.

And we are in due process to teach Wikipedia editing with the local libraries workers which will expand our outreach effort.

Our cooperation with the Youthinc NGO has allowed us penetrate into young professionals group that enabled us to introduce Wikimedia atmosphere and possibilities to them. And more activities are planned with them.

5. Documentation of your impact. Please use the two spaces below to share files and links that help tell your story and impact. This can be documentation that shows your results through testimonies, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, etc.) social media posts, dashboards, etc.

Upload Documents and Files

Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6yHF3uooEs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4pxXUVMfzg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyi-uuV5WeA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDqOfCd_A8

https://www.facebook.com/devshliin.garts

6. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups	Strongly agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community	Strongly agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups	Strongly agree
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Strongly agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors	Strongly agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	Strongly agree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement.	Strongly agree

7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?

One of the main key elements of the Wikipedia Summer School was being taught by and interacting with native English speaker teachers who were US Peace Corps Volunteers. Teachers offered advanced English language exercises in conjunction with Wikipedia editing and English Wikipedia translating in addition to creating new articles in local Wikipedia. This approach was very refreshing and innovative for students. It also helped Volunteers’ skills development. In summary, expanding the local Wiki encyclopedia alongside English language learning was a fresh exciting experience for our students. Participants of our Wikipedia Summer School were from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Low-income household students were as active as middle-income household students, especially in translating from English Wikipedia. The 20 public schools that participated were public schools #3, #6, #14, #16, #17, #18, #24, #35, #39, #45, #49, #50, #57, #72, #81, #87, #115, #122, #148 and Ulaan-Uul provincial school. 12 schools out of the total 20 participating public schools were from low-income areas.

Part 2: Your main learning

8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?

We learned the following during this period:

Currently in Mongolia, there is a lack of awareness about the positive educational impacts of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. We learned that we could increase awareness through local needs-aligned projects such as ours which included offline Wikipedia DVDs and Wikipedia-based English language learning. Based on the enthusiastic collaboration of the 20 public schools in our project, we realize we can increase the interest in incorporating Wikipedia knowledge resources in educational practice in Mongolia. As of this local Wikipedia viewership graph rb.gy/ekfbmd since our project launching of January 2023 the March to May usage rates and October to January usage rates are much higher than previous year. Hence our offline media distribution approach to penetrate into newer users groups were very successful as of the statistics showing.
Offline Wikipedia distribution through DVDs was very efficient approach to awaken many unknown users groups to break out their barriers and eventually use online version thus we have sudden online usage increases got registered.
It is clear that educational needs fulfillment scarcity was key barrier and Wikipedia gave passive users much resource. But we need more expanded project and manpower to determine other less known factors through more deeper penetrating into other communities.

9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?

One of the highlights of our Wikipedia Summer School was the development of new advanced training textbook that include English Wikipedia translation and English Language learning. It is an innovative educational approach in Mongolia. All participating students and teachers were highly satisfied with the result of new local Wikipedia articles and new learning experiences. We re-offered the Wikipedia Summer School during winter break for another group of students in addition to 10 previous participants. The key exciting result we observed was the productivity or translation accuracy of the repeat participants was increased. Those users are Yumjirdulam0501, Nrantuya, Shinetungalag, Egshig06, Uchrl1222, Ulzynaa, Bdma2224, Tseegii0721. From these accounts contributions their progress can be studied. This experience is a very important breakthrough to use the Wikipedia process as an English learning enhancer and as an educational booster process. We need to work further on this through additional projects.

10. How do you hope to use this learning? For instance, do you have any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future?

Our learned knowledge will be used to develop more efficient ways and methods for distributing open online knowledge resources including Wikimedia resources to local and international educational communities. We will apply for another round of project funding and expand our current project and will apply more calibrated and improved approaches to further distribute Wikipedia in our communities and to improve our local Wikipedia.

Our current learning outcomes will be used for more effective measures development for our future more impactful and evolved operations.

This chart rb.gy/dyzzp3 is very important fact about our 2017 and 2023 projects impacts that as a sole Wikipedia project in the country we have achieved 276% usage hike during our project period thus it will be used for many future presentation purposes to educate public, to recruit our supporters, to recruit new Wikipedia editors, to establish strategic partnerships and others.

11. If you were sitting with a friend to tell them one thing about your work during this fund, what would it be (think of inspiring or fascinating moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes, or anything that feels important to you)?

One of our Wikipedia Summer school students, Ms. Shinetungalag O. was awarded a Mongolian Presidential Scholarship to attend an international college after her Summer school and she said that translating English Wikipedia articles during the Summer 2023 was her most productive college entrance preparation. We collaborated with her between November 2023 through January 2024 giving additional translating tasks and observing her progress. It was a very important educational experiment and experience. From her account of Shinetungalag her translating progress and improvement can be observed.

12. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).

Upload Documents and Files

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N/A

Part 3: Metrics

13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
N/A	N/A	N/A	3100 and 19980	During our project 2 860 offline Wikipedia DVDs were distributed to 20 public schools, 188 DVDs were distributed 11 public libraries, 52 DVDs were distributed to Summer school attendants. And 19 350 Wikipedia editing guides were distributed to 20 public schools as their English class exercise tool. 330 were distributed through various public events and lectures and 300 are kept with us for further 2024 events use.	Controlling of distribution activities.
N/A	N/A	N/A	2	We offered editing events to various parties and succeeded in organizing Wikipedia Summer School during July 2023 in cooperation with a host public school #23. The US Peace Corps 5 volunteers helped us for these training events. An additional training event was organized with the same parties involvement in January 2024.	Organizations cooperations.
N/A	N/A	N/A	1	Our English textbook authoring that involved Wikipedia elements went very well. But the book editing process is going longer than expected. Therefore, our book distribution to 20 public schools will take place during March 2024. It is due to short staffing.	Project team work. Collaborations.
N/A	N/A	N/A	3	We created 2 Wikipedia article creation instructional videos and uploaded into youtube to be shared and learned with local and international communities. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4pxXUVMfzg) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyi-uuV5WeA) And created 1 general project report video about project process and results. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6yHF3uooEs)	Staffs teamwork. Collaborations.
N/A	N/A	N/A	1	Because of the big success of our Wikipedia Summer School during 2023, our project team and the host Public School#23 will co-organize another Summer School during July 2024. The US Peace Corps volunteers expressed their interest to help us.	Parties cooperation.

Additional Metrics
Additional Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A	2	From our Wikipedia Summer school 2 students liked to get additional translation tasks to create additional local Wikipedia articles as part of their regular English exercise. Their activities can be seen from here: Nrantuya, Shinetungalag. Since we cooperated with high school students and their study workload is usually very tight so most interested students cooperated with us.	Collaborations.
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A	2	Our partner school #23 continued with us after the Wikipedia Summer School and we successfully repeated our training during January 2024. And the Chingeltei childrens development library cooperated with us during June and December 2023 and February 2024 regarding our Summer school training preparations.	Collaborations.
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	N/A	N/A	2	23-rd public school and Chingeltei district development library are expressed their interest to cooperate with us for further Wikipedia activities. They cooperated with us very well during our project process during 2023.	Collaborations.
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	N/A	20	bar\|2017-12-15~2024-02-21\|~total\|monthly	Collaborations.
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	N/A	N/A	2	Recruiting of US Peace Corps volunteers was key step for us to successfully organize Wikipedia School. Involving big international organizations volunteers is big strategic allience experience for further operational advantages creations. Plus we are cooperating with Youthinc NGO which has certain operational diversity and alignment possibilities.	Collaborations.
Number of people reached through social media publications	N/A	N/A	600	Through facebook and youtube channels we released periodic news and project work related contents.	View counts and like counts accounted but most local people do not press like especially on facebook contents they just check out.
Number of activities developed	N/A	N/A	8	1. Distribution of Wikipedia DVDs and Editing guides to 20 public schools; 2. Organizing of experimental English classes with Wikipedia elements at 10 public schools; 3. Doing research on experimental classes; 4. Development of English textbook with Wikipedia elements; 5. Collection of English teachers contact information from 20 public schools and debating with selected teachers; 6. Organizing of Wikipedia Summer School and Wikipedia editing training with a local library. 7. Distributing of Wikipedia editing guides to various local gatherings and ewvents. 8. Doing research on Wikipedia articles translation educational outcomes by summer school students.	Team work. Collaborations.
Number of volunteer hours	N/A	N/A	240	8 volunteers contributed total 240 hours.	Collaborations.

13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of participants	The project will add 450 new articles to local Wikipedia Mongolia, 30 articles to Wikivoyage English, and 500 files into Wikimedia Commons.	400	100	Our key participants from Wikipedia Summer School and Shine ue public schools were key contributors for Wikipedia editing and file uploading operations.	Wikipedia Summer school participants and other school cooperation.
Number of editors	From planned each editing events we plan to recruit 400 editors.	400	88	With total 88 editors we achieved total Wikipedia articles creation and files uploading quotas. However through our distributed Wikipedia editing guides few thousands of other Wikipedia editors will contribute into local Wikipedia in coming years it is little slow process inside schools.	Wikipedia Summer school participants and other school cooperation.
Number of organizers		9	23	Our organization and other 21 public schools participated to organize various training and editing events plus one library is participated for editing event.	Cooperation between organizations.

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Wikipedia	new articles will be added into local Wikipedia	450	630	Thanks to our Wikipedia Summer School during July 2023 and January 2024 plus educational cooperation with the Shine Ue school we have created 630 new articles into local Wikipedia which managed to create 180 more articles than expected result of 450 articles. Working closely with schools helped us plus combining advanced English course with the Wikipedia editing was important fresh approach to create many new articles alongside improving English learning process. The US Peace Corps volunteers total 5 people worked as our Summer school teachers which were key driving force for this effort.	Teacher closely checked and counted each new articles creation plus teachers daily checked Recent Changes link of the local main Wikipedia page to confirm new article creation.
Wikivoyage	Wikivoyage	30	4	In English version of Wikivoyage the team added 4 articles. We tried to add articles into local version of Wikivoyage and certain glitches prevented us.	Counted by staff.
Wikimedia Commons	new files upload	500	820	In Commons local students and project staffs have added 320 more photos than expected result of 500 photos during the project process. And nearly 20% of photos got attached to local and international Wikipedia articles.	Each users upload links were used to count new uploads. Key uploaders: MN5, Yumjirdulam0501, Nrantuya, Orgio89, Shinetungalag, Egshig06, Uchrl1222.
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?

Yes

15. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future.

N/A

16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).

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US_Peace_Corps_Darcy_Maier_Wikipedia_Summer_School.jpg

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Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships

17. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension
A. Financial capacity and management	This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
B. Conflict management or transformation	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values)	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
D. Partnership building	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
E. Strategic planning	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
F. Program design, implementation, and management	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer)	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers)	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
J. Governance	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
K. Communications, marketing, and social media	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability	This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
M. On-wiki technical skills	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
N. Accessing and using data	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
O. Evaluating and learning from our work	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
N/A
N/A

17a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Peer to peer learning with other community members in conferences/events, Peer to peer learning with other community members in community/ies of practice* (structured and continuous learning and sharing spaces)

17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Lack of staff time to participate in capacity building/training, Lack of financial resources

18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?

Our cooperation method with public school has grown dramatically. And libraries expressed their interest to cooperate with us for distribution of Wikimedia projects. And for these we needed further projects funding to provide active fulltime staffs and material availability such as DVDs and editing guides to encourage our future partners to develop local Wikimedia projects.

19. Partnerships over the funding period.

Over the fund period...
A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame)	Strongly agree
B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups	Strongly agree
C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups	Strongly agree

19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Permanent staff outreach, Volunteers from our communities, Partners proactive interest

19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Limited funding period, Lack of knowledge or capacities to reach out to strategic partners

20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?

Cooperating with the 23-rd public school was very successful that they are very open to cooperate with us within their general educational frame and most other schools were very open to cooperate with us. The only key reason of choosing school 23 was their strategic location of central spot in the city and their general educational quality and infrastructure were much better than most other schools to organize our Wikipedia Summer school.

Currently we are cooperating with one local library and Youthinc NGO to further spread Wikipedia editing and learning activities which offering us many different operational possibilities to enrich our operation.

Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration

21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?

Through our project outcomes we acted and performed as Wikimedia knowledge distributor subject to our local communities and our project operation enabled us to provide professional level of details about Wikimedia possibilities to the communities. As a free knowledge base the Wikimedia projects were very well aligned with our current public interest and if sufficient support was provided then our local communities will quickly catch up other international Wikimedia communities. Another key point is as open source knowledge base Wikimedia possibilities enable our under represented communities one important channel to express themselves openly and exchange knowledge with the international sources and for this our strategies are aligned.

22. How has your (for individual grantees) or your group/organization’s (for organizational grantees) sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Increased significantly

23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

During our project we evolved as main Wikipedia promoter in the country in case of our partners cooperation. In partially free press limiting society we strategically push Wikipedia environment as very friendly educational resource for all levels of learners thus it is better to spread this open knowledge base in more educationally aligned ways so our society must evolve into more open and public interest friendly society.

24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Increased significantly

25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

Thanks to our cooperation with schools and Summer school we recruited highly skilled individuals to let them edit Wikipedia and upload photos into Commons. Being good cooperator partner has taught us how to find skilled editors from educational community. And related methods were learned and acquired.

26. Are there other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in your motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects? (for example, Black Lives Matter, Feminist movement, Climate Justice, or other activism spaces) If so, please describe it below.

Women's rights and Climate protection movements are another concerning subjects for us and during our Wikipedia articles creation we have translated few dousens of related articles from English Wikipedia into local Wikipedia.

Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration

We are interested in better supporting peer learning and collaboration in the movement.

27. Have you shared these results with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Yes

27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?

Our project outcomes are well shared through our social networks channels to our local communities. And to share our outcomes through English Wikipedia we need more public source creations, if we create an article with only one or two local sources especially in English Wikipedia it gets deleted quickly. So gradually after our source creations we will share to other Wikimedia affiliates.

28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?

We do this occasionally (less than once a month)

29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?

Through our facebook page other Wikimedia affiliates especially from Indonesia some members check our progress and we also check their progress.

Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance

30. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

76243516

31. Local currency type

MNT

32. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.

Budget_Final_PG.xls

Report funds received and spent, if template not used.

Final financial report file is uploaded into the Files and Documents section.

33. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.

N/A

34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

Actual spent amount from the WMF funding is $21,953; $504 will be returned which consists of one employee could not work for one month and with related tax amount added will be $324 plus $148 unspent amount from the internet fees plus $24 from one batch of DVD orders currency exchanges difference gain. $8 from exchange rates difference remainder from staffs pay will be returned. And during last batch of DVD orders outside source donated $65 for the extra DVD production.

34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

B. Propose to use them to partially or fully fund a new/future grant request with PO approval

34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

With the remaining unspent fund we can duplicate another 290 Wikipedia DVDs and can donate those to two more public schools which will help for our outreach effort.

35. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

36. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

Yes

37. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.

Yes

38. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.

This project was very important educational support and local Wikipedia revival booster that our communities needed. We appreciate Wikimedia Foundation for supporting our project that enabled us to develop our local Wikimedia projects and alongside developing our local education.