Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Open Foundation West Africa Annual Plan 2023
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Applicant details
editWikimedia username(s):
Organization:
- Open Foundation West Africa
G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?
- Applied previously and did receive a grant
H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?
- No
H.1 Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?
- N/A
M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
M1. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Additional information
editR. Where will this proposal be implemented?
- Ghana
S. Please indicate whether your work will be focused on one country (local), more than one or several countries in your region (regional) or has a cross-regional (global) scope:
- Regional
S1. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.
- We have countries that have been participating and benefiting from our programs, campaigns and training. These includes countries like Ghana, Togo, Burundi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Cameroon, Togo, Uganda etc
T. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)
- Social Media
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/ofwafrica LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/ofwafrica Twitter- https://twitter.com/OFWAFRICA Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/ofwafrica/ Youtube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmoG8dQ8KsbWb7_kanElMfQ Website- https://ofwafrica.org/
M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
M1. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Proposal
edit1. What is the overall vision of your organization and how does this proposal contribute to this? How does this proposal connect to past work and learning?
Our vision for the next 3 years is to strengthen our structures for community development and the sustainability of our programs. For the past 2 years or so we have focused on building our organizations programs and priority areas of work. Developing our priority areas of work has helped provide a guiding lens to scrutinizing what projects or initiatives we take on.
In this new request for 2023, we hope to strengthen our developed programs such as the hub and club model for growing and expanding into new states/regions in the country, the newbie model – a quarterly training dedicated to new recruits separate from our progressive training model to reduce redundant training for existing members, etc. We are also by the requests in this grant hoping to improve engagement with our communities and partners, design and develop a robust system for recruiting and training volunteers, and providing programs that ensure retention of the leaders in our hubs/clubs to ensure the sustainability of our hub/club model. We will also want to strengthen and innovate our impact in the area of GLAM, education, and sustainability. Our lines of activities and programs will be developed along the core functional areas of our organization and in line with the 2030 movement strategy.
2. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important?
There are many changes that we seek to bring into our community. Also, we have identified certain challenges and how we intend to solve them with the changes we intend to bring. Some of these include;
Wikipedia and its sister projects are not widely known in the subregion and we believe much can be done to create awareness among the youth so that they can become active users and contributors. We hope to do this through awareness creation and capacity building with projects such as the Wikipedia Student Ambassadors Program (WSA) We also want to address the huge gap when it comes to digital literacy because we strongly believe that once we are able to address this, we will bring about new readers and contributors. We are seeking to accomplish this with our new Newbie Model trainings Stagnant digital skills amongst Educators and learners: Most educators and learners are stuck with the basic knowledge of tech and the digital world and aren’t informed on the dynamics and evolution of tech across the globe. We intend to improve information literacy skills amongst educators and learners like the use of Kiwix and other open projects. Difficulty in accessing educational materials online: In our part of the world, access to educational materials online in the rural sectors is extremely difficult due to the high cost of internet charges or the unavailability of internet in such areas. We seek to increase access to educational materials especially in rural areas through the Kiwix4schools project which seeks to make these resources available without the use of the internet. Low representation of content about Africa on Wikimedia projects. Africa’s visibility on Wikimedia projects is still extremely low and appalling. This is why we encourage Wikimedians and non Wikimedians to contribute their quota to increase content about the continent online through our campaigns and contests such as Africa Wiki Challenge, Founders Day. Lack of knowledge around topics for impact campaign organizing. This problem is more apparent with topics that seem to be very specialized like climate change, human rights, etc. Our organization intends to provide a regional hub service (continental support) for all affiliates that want to participate in the next round of WikiforHumanrights based on recent capacity gained through the Campaigns Fellowship Program at the WMF. Inconsistent culture of contributing on Wikimedia projects: To address the aforementioned challenge coupled with Africa’s low representation on the web, we believe it is very necessary to instill a consistent culture of contributing on Wikimedia. We intend to encourage the culture and habit of active contribution on Wikimedia projects amongst the youth through our structured hub/club activities. These meetups bring experienced and new volunteers together on a regular basis so as to ensure consistent contribution.
3. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.
The main approaches in helping us achieve them include, Working with educational institutions like secondary sch and universities to help identify teachers and learners with whom we establish clubs to promote Wikimedia activities on their campuses. This has been the model until now, but we are learning that these students need to be interested to take leadership of the clubs, so we are launching a Wikipedia Student Ambassador program to allow only interested people a chance to be selected and trained to man these clubs. This we believe plays on the social model of responsibility and trust since they applied on their own accord. In the last 2 years, our annual community engagement survey spells out the unhappiness about redundant training which mostly happens because newbies trickle in all the time and for that matter a lot of repeats on Wikipedia for starters. Developing the newbie month as part of a quarterly training cycle means that newbie training can be pushed towards the beginning of each quarter (providing 4 cycles of training annually) and leaving 8 full months for our progressive course models. This means existing volunteers can skip training or be present to help in those newbie months without the burden of having to sit through something they already know. Work with community ICT centers, libraries, and tech hubs to ensure continued engagement and capacity building opportunities are decentralized across the country through our hub model. Our hub model runs such that, they are established in collaboration with these ICT centers, Library, and tech hubs to encourage the attitude of inclusiveness and also create a sense of community as they are being enhanced with digital skills. In furtherance of our goal of increasing the visibility of the continent on Wikimedia projects, we will incorporate a hybrid system of training to ensure that capacity-building and learning opportunities are extended across and beyond the borders of Ghana to attain this goal collectively. We will work with user groups and affiliates in other regions to implement campaigns and build capacity. These campaigns will focus on both non-Wikimedians and Wikimedians alike so as to reach a significant number of individuals to participate in our various campaigns. We are going to work with partner organizations, non profits, government agencies to leverage on their network, expertise and in kind support to amplify the impact of our work. Our Kiwix4schools project solves the fundamental access problem, we have been iterating on this for about 2 years and are confident that our activities are yielding impact in regards to providing access. Our strategy is to work through government agencies to ensure more acceptance Our organization has invested in honing our team's skills in the climate and sustainability area. So our focus of providing that regional service is definitely a build up on our capacity and goodwill from a member of our team leading this same project at the WMF
4. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?
Some of the activities we seek to develop as part of our approach includes but not limited to; Organizing content campaign drives to bridge thematic gaps on Wikipedia and other sister projects that are a priority in the movement. Most of these gaps have its relevance based on the community in question. As a growing community, we often leverage partnerships or existing partnerships with other organizations in our campaigns to encourage global participation on content around thematic topics such as gender, history, Afrofuturism, etc. Holding these campaigns often draws in new audiences and creates opportunities to collaborate with other like minded institutions to work towards these major content gaps on Wikipedia. Organizing quarterly sustainability campaigns to increase awareness about the SGDs, and the role Wikipedia plays in achieving some of these goals. Organize Wikiforhumanrights regional campaign and capacity building in the region. Following the Fellow opportunity by one of the staff members, the conversation for a regional conversation was communicated by the staff at the foundation. Organize (GLAM) & Content Creation Program which focuses on opportunities that translate directly into content that improve Wikimedia projects. These contents are targeted at projecting the culture, history, natural heritage, scenic landscape, architecture, monumental structures and artifacts of the country which increases the visibility of diverse aspects of the African continent. Organize Wikipedia in Education program: These projects are primarily focused on the application of Wikipedia and its sister projects in education. This involves activities centered around in-class assignments, clubs and societies and on campus events which inadvertently lead to contributions on Wikipedia and its sister projects through students, instructors, patrons, etc. or making wikipedia and other open educational content accessible by schools which are offline all within an academic setting. We seek to organize the Wikipedia student Ambassadorial program to ensure continuity of student led activities on campus. The Wikimedia ambassador program has been designed as a means to effectively recruit student club leaders on University campuses. These programs seek to provide a sustainable and effective way of running student led clubs on university campuses. Over the years we have identified some shortfalls in the way we recruit and sustain student leaders in clubs. Some of the shortfalls include; Lack of proper transition in leadership Lack of training and capacity building of these students around leadership, community engagements and building to help them manage and grow their communities
5. Do you want to apply for multi-year funding?
No
5.1 If yes, provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan?
- N/A
6. Please include a timeline (operational calendar) for your proposal.
- Here is a link to our timeline - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ewohVQkt2VMo-GXSv9knmWLKO47tfpzwnT6OKKWumO0/edit?usp=sharing
7. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?
We have a team that will be implementing this proposal successfully. The team is made up of volunteers, contractors and staff
We have a diverse and dynamic team capable of championing and stirring our organizational goals and reaching the objectives of our programs. Our team members bring an array of expertise and come from different backgrounds that complement our organizational trajectory:
The Board: Raphael Berchie (User:Rberchie)-Co Founder and Organizational Strategist who helps to provide strategic direction and support for the organization. D.r Harry Barton Essel: University Lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah Science and Technology (KNUST) who supported in the implementation of a Wikimedia Education Program at KNUST Dr. Anima Wiafe-Akenten: A lecturer at the University of Education Winneba language school and the first person to have a PHD in a local Ghanaian language. She brings her expertise on board as a language expert and educationist and helped us establish the Wiki Club on campus. Kweku Berko (User:Kweku Berko)- A community representative on the Board and Language enthusiast who supports developing language communities.
Core Team Ruby Damenshie-Brown (User:Ruby D-Brown)- Programs manager role(Paid staff) Eugene Masiku (User: Kaffzz) - Communications officer (Paid staff) Administrative Executive Jesse Asiedu (User:JWale)- Training Associate (Volunteer) Maxwell Benjamin (User:xhibit)- Training Associate (Volunteer)
Volunteer Hub & Club Leaders in respective regions and universities who coordinate, organize and manage our communities in the various locations
8. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.
Content Gender gap, Age (regency) , Geography, Language, Socioeconomic Status, Sexual Orientation, Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context), Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial
8.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.
We build the capacity of old and new editors through our campaigns to empower more Africans to bridge the African content gap. We achieve this through our annual AWC campaign, which focuses on bridging gaps around geography, age and socioeconomic status. OFWA currently operates and supports communities in different geographical locations that churn out content about their respective locations and interests in diverse topics. We also organize writing and photo contests which tackle topics around culture and through our advocacy campaigns we also create awareness about the content gaps and this becomes a clarion call or call to action to get people to contribute to address these content gaps.
9. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.
Education, Advocacy, Human Rights, Public Policy, Climate Change and sustainability, Culture, heritage or GLAM , Open Technology, Diversity
10. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Please note, we had previously asked about inclusion and diversity in terms of CONTENTS, in this question we are asking about the diversity of PARTICIPANTS. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.
Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, Geographic , Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background, Linguistic / Language, Socioeconomic status, Age, Digital Access
11. What are your strategies for engaging participants, particularly those that currently are non-Wikimedia?
Our programs focus on reaching underrepresented communities, the youth, activists and civil society organizations. Through partnerships we have been able to reach non-wikimedia audiences. Our wikimedia training programs have been designed to be inclusive and make room for newbies who are interested. The newbie program is organized in respective hubs to reach new people, our Wikipedia student Ambassador Program tackles youth recruitment and our partnership with institutions such as the AU have unlocked newer and expertise communities.
12. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants and promoting the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy, and/or equivalent local policies and processes?
By ensuring that members are made aware of the UCOC and friendly space policy this will be linked to our registration forms, social media platforms and places where it will be visible for others to read about it.
13. Do you have plans to work with Wikimedia communities, groups, or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?
Yes
13.1 If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.
All of our projects are conveyed using a variety of platforms, both within and outside of the Wikimedia community. We also urge our partners to post our work on their channels to increase visibility. These platforms include, but are not limited to, social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as our website, campaign sites on meta and their discussion pages, partner platforms, and word of mouth. We also publish on news websites such as City News, Ghana Web, Graphic Online, and others. Here are some popular places where we have put the word out for the next fiscal year: Wiki pages
Our current annual plan is currently featured on our Open Foundation West Africa meta page - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_Foundation_West_Africa
We will be presenting our full 2023 annual plan to the community at our upcoming AGM Social Media Facebook- @ofwafrica LinkedIn- @ofwafrica Twitter- @ofwafrica Instagram- @ofwafrica Youtube-
14. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?
Yes
14.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.
Partnerships are very vital for the work we do. Although most of the partners don’t support us in cash they still add value to our projects. Here are some ways partners support our work; Media partners - Media partners support the work we do by offering us free airtime to share insights about Wikimedia and our ongoing projects.
Technology Hubs - These partners are integral to our growth strategy and they support us with training spaces where our hub networks across the regions convene for their meetups.
Project partners - We collaborate with partners on specific projects who support us in diverse ways. The Geothe institut, our partner on the DTI Contest which focuses on language contributions to Wikimedia projects provided a myriad of prizes and resource persons.
Universities - These institutions provide us with free training space on campus, and access to their students through the establishment of campus clubs.
Government agencies - Governmental organizations can be great allies and strategic partners to amplify one's work. We have partnered with institutions such as the Ministry of Information, GMMB, National Film Authority and Ministry of Tourism.
15. How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?
Ensuring sustainability through strategic alliance with Tech Hubs- Our strategic alliance with tech hubs across the country provides a unique and sustainable growth strategy for us. Each of these regional hubs are somewhat autonomous due to their affiliation with our partner hubs, meaning that in the absence of OFWA these partnership structures can continue to empower their communities and create awareness about Wikimedia projects.
Ensuring a sustainable legacy through our regional organizers framework - Through our regional hub structures we are growing and building the capacity of new organizers at the regional level. Through this leadership structure we are empowering communities across the country of Ghana and in other West African countries to sustain their activities without the help of OFWA.
Initiating the next generation of users and contributors of Wikipedia through the Kiwix4school project: Wikipedia becomes more powerful when it is read, hence empowering the next set of users to identify Wikipedia as that meta platform for knowledge is crucial, which is what the Kiwix4schools project seeks to achieve. Initiating these youth to this program creates awareness about Wikipedia and inspires these students to contribute to it.
Building academic pathways to Wikipedia through universities in Ghana: With our education project, we will empower the librarian community to create awareness about Wikipedia and encourage its continued use in their respective universities
16. What kind of risks do you anticipate and how would you mitigate these. This can include factors such as external/contextual issues that may affect implementation, as well as internal issues, such as governance/leadership changes.
- Kindly see link to our risk mitigation plan - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zHxPGAZW331QpDCyM1-f7duT76I45FuMDVxlvaBCy1U/edit?usp=sharing
17. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of three options that most apply.
Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Improve User Experience, Provide for Safety and Inclusion, Ensure Equity in Decision-making, Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Manage Internal Knowledge, Identify Topics for Impact, Innovate in Free Knowledge, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt
18. 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
edit19. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?
There are many lessons we are hoping to collect but we will focus our energies in better understanding these top areas:
The impact of our work in the 20+ schools that are currently running the Kiwix4Schools project. Test the robustness of our training courses and delivery options. We currently run a newbie training and progressive training model focused on ensuring separate spaces for training newbies while continuing to train existing volunteers. It will be great to check if this is creating a missed opportunity for each of the audiences here or if there are things about the courses itself that need improvement. We wish to learn how to effectively organize around topics for impact and our regional hub for Wikiforhuman rights will provide that space to learn and improve the support we give in this area. Which community, regions and countries are we seeing participation from and why What volunteers leaders and community need support What innovative programs the community wants to initiate Which new wikimedia projects are our communities most interested in
20. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following space provided.
| Main Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
Here are some additional metrics that you can use if they are relevant to your work. Please note that this is just an optional list, mostly of quantitative metrics. They may complement the qualitative metrics you have defined in the previous boxes.
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | N/A | N/A |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | N/A | N/A |
| Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | N/A | N/A |
| Number of people reached through social media publications | N/A | N/A |
| Number of activities developed | N/A | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | N/A | N/A |
21. Additional core quantitative metrics. These core metrics will not tell the whole story about your work, but they are important for measuring some Movement-wide changes. Please try to include these core metrics if they are relevant to your work. If they are not, please use the space provided to explain why they are not relevant or why you can not capture this data. Your explanation will help us review our core metrics and make sure we are using the best ones for the movement as a whole.
| Core metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | Participants from all 10 regions in Ghana and via our online training/campaigns from across the continent will benefit from our activities. We target about 3000 participants throughout the year. 1500 new participants and 1500 returning participants. | 3000 |
| Number of editors | The number of editors in all activities; 400 particularly females and students from the various universities where we have clubs and other Africa countries who participate in international campaigns and programs. | 400 |
| Number of organizers | Our organizers include 5 core team members, 20 hub and club leaders across the region, 10 affiliate organizers across the continent, 15 community volunteers to implement Kiwix project. | 50 |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | Matrics description- our programs will seek to derive content surrounding gender, biographies of notable women, and increase information about the regions of Ghana as well as bridge thematic gaps like culture, history, geographic locations, Africa, etc. | 4000 |
| Wikimedia Commons | Matrics description-We seek to generate audiovisual content on Wikimedia Commons through our Wiki Loves campaigns and other related campaigns on WIkimedia through images, videos etc. We want to be able to generate over 1800 images 200video files on Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikipedia and other sister project. | 4000 |
| Wikidata | Matrics description-We seek to generate wikidata items from existing articles, newly created articles and uploads on Wikimedia commons by encouraging members and participants about the importance of wikidata as well as build their capacity around it. | 3000 |
| Incubator | Contribute to language incubator projects | 100 |
| Wikiquote | Build capacity and skills on this wiki | 50 |
21.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.
N/A
22. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?
Programs & Events Dashboard Google forms to collect information about participants as well as feedback Event metrics Creating categories for photo contest
- tools
Financial Proposal
edit23. & 23.1 What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency. If you are thinking about a multi-year fund, please provide the amount for the first year.
- 2219119.76 GHS
23.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?
- 238615 USD
23.3 Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.
- 2023 annual budget- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kdWIVfbkkzcUvNETNIc2JhAPvhMDZZBkHXZrCfmW_og/edit#gid=0
23.4 Please include any additional observations or comments you would like to include about your budget.
- N/A
Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.
- Other public document(s): Staffing plan - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rg3YNm3BkYKeYqOHpu4_tzInJq0KVD4riw4Vg1dD0yo/edit?usp=sharing
2023 program proposal - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1klqx3T039KvftFSCvA73IYy8YG4Opp2HVjuiailvPSU/edit?usp=sharing
Final Message
editBy 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.
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.