Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Free Knowledge Africa Development Support/Midpoint Report
Report Status: Accepted
Due date: 2023-01-15T00:00:00Z
Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund
Report type: Midterm
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General information
editThis form is for organizations receiving Wikimedia Community Funds (General Support) or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their mid-term learning and results. See the Wikimedia Community Fund application if you want to review the initial proposal.
- Name of Organization: Access to Knowledge Africa Initiative
- Title of Proposal: Free Knowledge Africa Development Support
- Amount awarded: 25000 USD, 25000 NGN
- Amount spent: 5188296 NGN
Part 1 Understanding your work
edit1. Briefly describe how your strategies and activities proposed were implemented and if any changes to what was proposed are worth highlighting?
- We planned on organizing two writing contests (Explore Africa and Afrosports), Explore Africa has started and we will complete it soon. We also organized an open GLAM Advocacy campaign in Plateau State Nigeria, where we visited cultural heritage institutions and carried out oral documentation of the Tarok tribe in Langtang.
We canceled the Free Knowledge Africa Leadership Program due to the paucity of funds. We will be starting the monthly podcast in March 2023.
2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you feel are being effective in achieving your goals?
- We believed our open GLAM advocacy campaign was a major breakthrough in penetrating through the thick walls of opposition, mainly bureaucracy, digital gap, lack of trust that has been against open sharing of cultural heritage works.
It gave us an opportunity to understand what the challenges are on the part of the cultural heritage institutions, and the regulatory limitations due to the organization of the public cultural heritage institutions.
We also believe that contests have provided an opportunity to recruit, onboard and train new people who have also become members of the Wikimedia movement. We have also been able to reach many people with social media promotions.
3. What challenges or obstacles have you encountered so far?
- Contest participants contributing low-quality articles and violating copyright/copy and paste rules.
Coordinators from other communities/user-groups not participating as expected. Difficulties in GLAM institutions open up their collections that are not yet in the Public Domain. Difficulties in identifying focal point persons in communities we are trying to setup campaigns.
Strategies to Address the obstacles: Temporarily paused contests on Wikivoyage and taught the participants how to properly contribute to the contest. Revise contest rules to place more focus on improving existing articles than on creating new ones.
4. Please describe how different communities are participating and being informed about your work.
- We have shared the announcements on the African Wikimedians Telegram Group and African Wikimedia Mailing list.
We have published the announcement on our website, mailing list and social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram).
We collaborated with community leads from Wikipedia Community User Group Kenya African Wikimedia Technical Community Gurene Wikimedia Community Wikimediens du Benin User Group Wikimedians of Democratic of Congo User Group Wikimedia Community User Group Burundi
We worked with them as facilitators in the Explore Africa 2022 Writing Contest to drive engagement in their communities.
5. Please share reflections on how your efforts are helping to engage participants and/or build content, particularly for underrepresented groups.
- The Open GLAM Advocacy campaign raised awareness about the importance of representation and the need for diverse voices on the platform. The writing contest provides a specific task and goal for participants to work towards, and also provides prizes or recognition for winners, which can further motivate and engage participants. We provided a dedicated team or community to support and encourage participation from underrepresented groups which help to create a welcoming and inclusive environment.
6. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What have you learned so far about these areas during this period?
- We are still trying to learn how the volume contributions in value will be quantified over time as it relates to the economic influence of the open movement in the continent of Africa. A series of surveys and research will enable us to get this data.
A major challenge that volunteer editors in Africa encounter while contributing is the high cost of internet and poor understanding of the policies guiding contribution on Wikipedia and its sister project.
We have discovered that the opportunity for young people in Africa to contribute their quota to bridging the knowledge gap is part of what excites them to contribute.
We also noticed that a mix of recorded and live training sessions works best in training people.
7. What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your work?
- Going forward, we plan to explore other avenues to get people involved in the movement and free knowledge other than contests. We also plan on carrying out digitization campaigns as a core aspect of our strategy.
Part 2: Metrics
edit8a. Open and additional metrics data.
| Open Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Participants | This will include people who participate in our campaigns, attend our events and webinar, participate in our surveys and outreaches. | 1000 | 274 | 274 Participants
Number of people we interacted with during the campaign and contests (training sessions, webinar etc) |
Registration forms |
| Editors | Editors who participate in our writing and photography contests (Afro Sports and Explore Africa) | 250 | 92 | 92 Editors
Participants list on Contest Page on Meta {https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Explore_Africa/Participants} |
Meta sign up for the contest |
| Organizers | At least 25 people would be involved in organizing activities and events for this project. There are five core team members. | 25 | 7 | 7 Organizers | Members of Free Knowledge Africa |
| ' | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
| ' | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | We would ensure that at least 50% of editors in our programs continue to actively contribute after the project ends. | 125 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | We would support some of the organizers to set up their own projects and provide support during execution. | 5 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | We would be establishing strategic long term partnerships with GLAM institutions in Nigeria and travel, tourism, sports organizations. | 25 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | We would carry out a feedback survey for all our activities to measure and evaluate our impact for further improvements in subsequent projects and share learnings with other organizers in the movement. | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of people reached through social media publications | The number of people reached through our social media publications related to the work developed within this proposal. | 500000 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of activities developed | At least 6 activities would be carried out during the project. | 6 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
8b. Additional core metrics data.
| Core metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | We would ensure that at least 25% of participants become volunteer editors on Wikimedia projects. | 250 | 274 | 274 Total Participants
50 (estimated) participants in the Open GLAM Advocacy Campaign 224 participants in the Afrosports contest |
Registration forms and contests participants |
| Number of editors | We would ensure that at least we have 100 newly registered users (editors) | 100 | 92 | Newly Registered Users (new editors): 27
Returning editors: 65 |
|
| Number of organizers | 7 | 7 Organizers ( 3 paid staff, 4 Volunteers) |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikimedia Commons | Images collected through the Explore Africa and AfroSports contests as well as GLAM collections opened up | 1000 | 140 | 140 new articles created on Wikivoyage | Explore Africa Outreach Dashboard {https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/FKA/Explore_Africa_Contest_(December_and_January,_2022)/articles/edited?} |
| Wikivoyage | Articles created about African destinations during the Explore Africa contest | 1000 | 30 | 30 pictures and videos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons | https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_Knowledge_Africa |
| Wikipedia | Articles created during the Afrosports and articles that are within the scope (cities, villages, geographical areas/regions, churches, monasteries, buildings, schools) of Explore Africa contest. | 1000 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
9. Are you having any difficulties collecting data to measure your results?
- N/A
10. Are you collaborating and sharing learning with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?
- No
10a. Please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how?
11. Documentation of your work process, story, and impact.
- Below there is a section to upload files, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g. communications materials, blog posts, compelling quotes, social media posts, etc.). This can be anything that would be useful to understand and show your learning and results to date (e.g., training material, dashboards, presentations, communications material, training material, etc).
- Below is an additional field to type in link URLs.
Part 3: Financial reporting and compliance
edit12. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
- 5188296
13. Local currency type
- NGN
14. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Provide links to your financial reporting documents.
15. Based on your implementation and learning to date, do you have any plans to make changes to the budget spending?
- No
15a. Please provide an explanation on how you hope to adjust this.
- N/A
16. We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being a grantee has been so far.
- It's been a great learning experience so far