Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/DCW September 2023 - February 2024 Half-Yearly Plan (ID: 22215414)
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Applicant Details edit
- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
TheAafi
- Organization
Deoband Community Wikimedia User Group
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
I'm a group leader of a Wikimedia User Group (submitted to the Affiliation Committee).
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
I am the founder and primary lead for the Deoband Community Wikimedia. Most of my activities for the user group so far have been voluntarily however I have created a separate account for my individual role at DCW. Please see User:TheAafi (DCW). I lead the DCW Conversation Hour (voluntarily), supervise strategic research since February 2023 (a little commissioned role), and have recently begun leading the Leadership development and skills infrastructure plan which is supported by a Movement Strategy Implementation Grant. Nonetheless, I have been leading DCW voluntarily in all of its runs.
Main Proposal edit
- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
DCW September 2023 - February 2024 Half-Yearly Plan
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2023-09-01 - 2024-02-29
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
India
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Other (please specify) Thematic, relevant to the vision and themes supported by Deoband Community Wikimedia
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
DCW proposed a strategic research to define a trajectory for its future development and contribute to the growth of the Wikimedia movement, in December 2022. The primary focus of this research is to make a future plan and trajectory that the DCW could utilize in addressing the representation gaps in global Muslim academia, scholarship, history, and culture within Wikimedia projects, alongside giving strategic direction to other affiliates of the movement.
Subject to its own vision and theme, the DCW has implemented various initiatives. These include organizing a monthly open conversation hour (which aims at the strategic development of the DCW alongside helping other affiliates form their basis), establishing collaborative projects like the Deoband Yoruba Collaborative Project and the DCW-K Editathon. The aim is to combat misinformation, provide training to individuals, raise awareness, and ensure the availability of thematic content related to these topics on Wikimedia projects. The DCW is committed to working on all these fronts in alignment with its strategic recommendations, which involve creating educational sets and other impactful measures.
Through these efforts, the DCW strives to foster inclusivity, enhance knowledge sharing, and amplify the voices and contributions of global Muslim academia and cultural heritage on Wikimedia platforms.
Having discussed the changes that we want to bring, and the strategies that we have in place to take care of these challenges - we have some limitations in mind concerning the making of more leaders who could lead these thematic knowledge-sharing initiatives in future, and among our main approach to mitigate this challenge is the making of our leadership development and skills infrastructure program which would be ready by November 2023. Keeping all of these things in our purview, we want to have the inaccessible and generally unavailable knowledge around our theme - be made available for free on Wikimedia projects. We think of limitations related to our thought of institutional partnerships but since we have debuted the collaborations with the English Researchers Collective at Jamia Millia Islamia and the Bayt al-Hikmah in Deoband, we believe we would be able to mitigate this risk as well.
There is a major challenge and it is the notability guidelines on Wikipedia projects related to several subjects and these effect our projects as well. However, this has been a question in our strategic trajectory research project - and we hope to conduct training sessions similar to those that we connected during/alongside our recent iteration of Heritage Lens on three different topics that concern Wikimedia Commons.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
Deoband Community Wikimedia/Proposed activities September 2023 - February 2024
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.
This semi-annual plan would be done under my lead (tentative) because we do not have any other person available who is aware of the vision of the DCW in the way that I am as its chief architect and the founder. As a Program Lead, for which I would be taking a meagre stipend of 15,000 INR, I cannot do this work voluntarily since this involves necessary commitments and accountability - although all of my other contributions to the encyclopedic projects are outside this role and I aspire to be the best as a volunteer. The roles as a Program Lead require me to adjust a lot from hectic academic schedule which is otherwise impossible as a volunteer since volunteer role is not subject to such commitments and accountability as an organisational role. The second reason for seeking a stipend is to make the work more creative and help DCW establish and further its strategic base subject to its strategic learnings - which is nonetheless not something I would be able to surf my mind-processing and thoughts on. In this role, I would deal with leading all of the DCW initiatives, formation, sharing, caring, and the results. I would also lead the DCW Conversation Hour, help it strategically grow, and thus be helpful to the entire global movement, and also help lead the formation of institutional partnerships and collaborations. To invest in such foundational role in order to help the DCW fundamentally grow and further its initiatives at a global level is justified. As such I would serve as the Lead, Supervisor, Trainer, and Guide for every other initiative at the DCW - alongside contributing to the encyclopedia as a volunteer.
The second person receiving a stipend is User:Musical starlight, who would be serving as a Creative Head for the DCW. They would help with taking care of and leading all of the issues that deal with Communications, for instance, help in producing volunteer graphics designers (in order to reduce this expenditure in future), and take care of all the social media channels in order to make sure that these channels are utilised in the best possible manner and we reach a better and more audience from where we can recruit more volunteers. This is subject to our strategic learnings from June 2023.
The entire Deoband Community Wikimedia volunteers would be involved in the activities, and if they are guided whilst keeping the accountability and commitment part of this answer in view, they can do wonders, and in such a case we would be able to keep our volunteers contribute not just on four projects but more. We recently launched Heritage Lens, and similarly we would be launching projects such as DCW-K Editathon - guided by our strategic trajectory - I believe DCW volunteers would strive themselves to be the best in terms of contributions on these multiple projects - Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata, and Wikiquote - in multiple languages, for instance, English. Urdu, Kashmiri and Hindi.
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
The target participants are students and academicians of Muslim minority institutions and madrasas. We plan to engage the participants through conversation hours, productive activities such as contests, edit-a-thons etc. and and aim to use our mailing list as a follow up, apart from having these participants on Telegram groups etc. DCW engages through social media and remains in touch with its members, and tries to bring more people in.
We firmly believe that appreciation is the key to nurturing a thriving and expanding community. We value and cherish our community, recognizing the incredible dedication of our volunteers. As a token of our appreciation, we have curated a range of merchandise that serves as another form of recognizing and honoring our dedicated volunteers
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
Yes
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
We will adhere strictly to the Wikimedia friendly space policy, WMF Youth Safety policy and the Universal Code of Conduct all through the project activities.
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
The ideas of the semi-annual activity plan have been discussed with the DCW members and volunteers internally through meetings and discussions. The plans about associating with students and academicians from Muslim minority institutions and madrasas have pretty much been summarised in our past strategic learnings that we shared with the wider movement. Subject to these initiatives, DCW drafted the need for having a leadership development and skills infrastructure plan to effectively work on all of these fronts, including retaining all the participants. However, engaging students would be a slightly different process than the other one - though institutional partnerships would effectively help us with that. We have been successful in this, and an explicit proof for this is our recent workshop that we co-organised with the English Researchers Collective at Jamia Millia Islamia, and the Digital Empowerment Seminar, that we co-organised with Bayt al-Hikmah, a premier Islamic studies institute in Deoband, India.
The ways forward to engage the students and academicians also include our creation of several educational sets in partnership with these institution and help formulate an assignment module program. For instance, with the Bayt al-Hikmah, we plan to introduce the EveryBooksItsReader in order to make them contribute about books produced by Muslim scholars, historians and researchers - which lack representation on Wikipedia projects. This would include writing articles about books that are in Urdu and Persian language - and particularly those that have been contributed from the subcontinental region. We also try to formulate certain article writing contests similar to our DCW-K Editathon that we initiated with the Kashmiri Wikimedians User Group in order to bridge this gap of thematic knowledge on Kashmiri Wikipedia. The first iteration of DCW-K helped in creation of 77 articles on Kashmiri Wikipedia, Kashmiri being a language which lacks even the basic infrastructure support.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Other
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Identify Topics for Impact
Learning and metrics edit
- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
We hope to learn about diversity of content and information related to DCW's theme, through passionate young volunteers, and how better we can support them in continuing their works for the upliftment of Wikimedia's goals.
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 40 | |
| Number of editors | 15 | |
| Number of organizers | 5 |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 500 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 600 |
| Wikidata | 500 |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | 30 |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
N/A
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
No
| Main Open 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 |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
Fountain, and we would likely try using Outreach dashboard this time.
Financial proposal edit
- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
- 22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
342620 INR
- 22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
4174.94 USD
- We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
Endorsements and Feedback edit
Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).