Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Tea knowledge and culture in Taiwan
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Applicant details edit
Wikimedia username(s):
- Hsiaopu.Chen
Organization:
- Taiwanese Specialty Tea Society in Europe
G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?
- Applied previously and did not receive a grant
H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?
- Yes
H.1 Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?
- Ministry of Culture, Taiwan
M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
M1. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Additional information edit
R. Where will this proposal be implemented?
- Taiwan
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:
- Local
S1. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.
T. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/251951379989390 https://www.joinclubhouse.com/club/%E8%8D%89%E4%BA%BA%E6%9C%A8x%E6%AD%90%E6%B4%B2%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3%E7%B2%BE%E5%93%81%E8%8C%B6%E5%AD%B8%E6%9C%83
M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
M1. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Proposal edit
1. 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?
- Taiwanese Specialty Tea Society in Europe aims at facilitating the development of an environment in which Taiwanese specialty tea culture can thrive internationally through education, events, and collaborations with relevant stakeholders. Our goal is to create a clear identity for Taiwanese tea and Taiwanese tea culture through assembling, examining, studying, and recording the local shreds of evidence of the tea history, and the building process of tea culture along with tea-related aesthetics in Taiwan.
A major challenge we faced in the past is that information about tea is scant on the internet and even harder to access in printed form, such as books and journal articles. Such a lack of access, as we believe, had been a significant obstacle we would have to address. If we can't acquire the information we need, even as native speakers with an above-average understanding of the topic among the population, it can be frustrating for people with different cultural backgrounds to learn more about the knowledge.
To overcome this issue, we aim at making reliable tea knowledge more accessible in Taiwan as a starting point. Once this is done, this knowledge can be scrutinized, translated, and distributed more efficiently to fulfill our organization's mission. The proposed project aims at overcoming these difficulties by adding and updating information and media on Wikimedia and Wikimedia Commons. We choose to do so mainly because:
- 1. Compared to popular social media, such as Facebook, Wikipedia is a more efficient platform to organize factual articles.
- 2. Compared to publications of books or academic journal articles, a larger population can contribute with more diverse points of view and sources by using Wikipedia. Also, information on Wikipedia is a lot more accessible.
For decades, different organizations and individuals have attempted to popularize knowledge about tea in Taiwan by publishing books. While many of these books contain valuable content, they are usually not digitalized and hard to distribute. The digital-native generation, including us, recently attempted to spread tea knowledge through social media. However, due to how social media works, this approach usually ends up with limited impacts mainly as people typically spend too little time on each post so that not much information can be delivered for each post. As such, we believe contributing to a platform dedicated to knowledge sharing with a sufficient reach of audiences, such as Wikimedia, is a more suitable one for our purpose.
2. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important?
- We are trying to solve the challenges mainly regarding the lack of accessible information on a wide range of topics fundamental to tea knowledge. The potential viewership of tea articles on Wikipedia is expected to be high. The strong demand for tea knowledge in Taiwan can be illustrated with information on Google Trends, a website that analyzes the popularity of search queries on Google Search. In terms of the number of searches conducted on the Google search engine, the popularity of tea has been slightly below the one of coffee, while tea has been over 50 times more popular than wine since 2017 in Taiwan. The consequences of the lack of this information on the internet include misinformation and the threat of cultural extinction.
Precisely, we aim to target three forms of fundamental information about tea:
- 1. Basic statistics about tea, such as tea-producing regions and the amount of tea produced in these regions, are not easily accessible.
Lacking such statistics, even experts can find it hard to tell whether specific yield figures in certain regions are realistic. As a result, tea producers commonly mislabel their products for higher profit while consumers lack the ways to make informed decisions. Mislabeling, practiced by many tea providers locally, has been a major factor inhibiting the development of the tea industry in Taiwan. Besides undermining consumers' trust in the product they purchase, mislabeling makes source-tracing hard so that people's health is at risk. As pesticides residuals tend to be high and the residuals are more complex in tea produced in specific regions lacking proper regulations or monitoring efforts, it is crucial to have more transparent information regarding basic statistics about tea.
- 2. Basic information about tea, such as cultivars, major components, and processing methods, is not easily accessible.
The extent of misinformation regarding the health benefits of tea is enormous as the fundamental knowledge is not easily accessible for accurate information to base for the public. As tea is commonly associated with health benefits, more reliable information regarding basic information about tea is desirable. For example, two common misinformation pieces are about caffeine content and losing weight. Contrary to some tea roasters' claims, different processing methods typically lead to negligible differences in the caffeine content in tea. Also, some tea cultivars contain specific ingredients which amplify the feeling of hunger, cultivars that better be avoided for people who hope to lose weight by drinking tea. More recently, misinformation regarding how tea prevents the spread of the coronavirus has been widely circulated in Taiwan, an arguably undesirable phenomenon that can be addressed with a timely report of the latest scientific findings.
- 3. Tea culture in Taiwan
While having vibrant tea cultures for centuries, documentation of tea culture in Taiwan is scant. Several hidden gems of the culture are under the threat of extinction under the pressure of autocratic government in the latter half of the 20th century and rapid globalization since the 1990s. For example, Sio-Po-Kua, a form of work song/banter poem popular in the tea-producing regions in Taiwan before WWII, can only be performed by a handful of people, all above 80 years old. Such a phenomenon is generally perceived to be one result of a 38-year martial law, the longest imposition of martial law by a regime anywhere in the world at that time, terminated in 1987. The preservation of some tea cultures under threat in Taiwan is still neglected by both the local and central governments partly because of ideological issues. At the same time, non-profit organizations usually lack the capacity to carry the burden of preservation.
3. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.
- Through this project, we aim at making fundamental tea knowledge accessible through three main approaches:
- 1. Gaps Alleviation Program:
The distribution of information about tea is largely inhibited by geography and age gaps. This program aims to alleviate these gaps by collaborating with two associations, Taiwan Tea Society 台灣茶葉學會 and 昊天嶺文史工作室, dedicated to tea knowledge and Taiwanese literature. While these professional networks hold valuable knowledge and are willing to share, they haven't engaged with Wikimedia communities mainly because they lack a bridge between their networks and the existing Wikimedia community.
Some knowledge stayed in the remote areas because these materials are not digitized. The aging population, which usually lacks the capacity to digitize these materials, is also commonly seen in these regions. To collect these materials, the most effective way is to visit key areas and institutions, such as the local farmer's associations and libraries, and interview or scan the material we need. It has been a proven way to collect these materials, as one of our members Lin JIn-Cheng 林金城 has been conducting these activities for two decades, with good connections, and has published nearly twenty books on folk literature in tea regions in Taiwan.
- 2. Capacity-building Program:
The collected materials from the Gap Alleviation Program will help contribute to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. By building a crew of regular workshop participants, we aim at enhancing their capacity to convert the collected raw materials into quality Wikimedia content. As the demand for quality information about tea is high, we expect to recruit sufficient motivated participants to contribute. In a small-scale recruitment event held by us last December, nearly 80 individuals contacted us expressing their interest in joining our project. With larger pubic recruitment events through social media, we expect to recruit members from various backgrounds capable of taking leadership for different aspects of our project and for developing potential future projects.
- 3. Public Relation Program:
Familiar with tea events in Taiwan, we expect to reach audiences who are not familiar with Wikimedia communities. As tea is one of the essential aspects of people's daily life in Taiwan, there is a great potential to grow the population of the Wikimedia community in Taiwan through various media channels. For example, tea exhibitions are among the most important events for tea enthusiasts every year. By participating in these events, we expect to reach many tea enthusiasts who are likely to contribute their knowledge on Wikimedia and tea producers who commonly stay in remote areas except for events like exhibitions.
4. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?
- - Monthly workshops, six online and six offline.
- Visiting remote tea regions to collect folk literature and interviews to preserve the endangered knowledge and culture.
- Visiting farmer’s associations and local libraries to collect materials that are not accessible online and turn them into content on Wikipedia.
- Private contribution contests among key participants every two months (six in total).
- Public contribution contests among the general public every four months (three in total).
- Regular high-quality social media campaign to promote and recruit new members
- A three-day field trip traveling through the western tea production regions of Taiwan to collect materials for Wikimedia, meet key stakeholders in the tea industry, and familiarize them with the Wikimedia movement for future potential collaboration.
- Participating in the Taiwan International Tea Expo 2022 or Global Tea Expo 2022, the largest two tea exhibitions in Taiwan, to recruit new participants and introduce the newly established articles and media to the visitors.
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.
- Aug. 2022: Get the workshops started
Sep. 2022: First private contribution contest Oct. 2022: Nov. 2022: Taiwan International Tea Expo, Second private contribution contest Dec. 2022: First public contribution contest Jan. 2023: Third private contribution contest Feb. 2023: Mar. 2023: Forth private contribution contest Apr. 2023: Second public contribution contest, three-day field trip in the spring harvesting season May 2023: Fifth private contribution contest Jun. 2023: Third public contribution contest Jul. 2023: Sixth private contribution contest
7. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?
- The volunteered planners in the organization Taiwanese Specialty Tea Society in Europe will become the team to initiate and executive this proposal, which includes 4 core members. The responsibility for the development of the project plan will be shared by Chen Hsiao-Pu 陳孝溥, Angie Yitsu Chen 陳安吉, Hsieh Yu-Wen 謝郁文, and Fu Yu 傅郁. Chen Hsiao-Pu, the current vice president of the organization will be responsible for managing deliverables according to the plan; Angie Yitsu Chen, the president of the organization, will be in charge of establishing a project schedule and determining each phase; Hsieh Yu-Wen, the HR Director of the organization, will recruit project volunteers and assign key tasks to project team members; Fu Yu, the media manager of the organization, will arrange thus release the press materials and document the process of the project. Till today, the Taiwanese Specialty Tea Society in Europe is an organization that runs on the donation and the time dedication of its members.
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.
- Age (regency) , Geography, Language, Socioeconomic Status
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.
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, Culture, heritage or GLAM , 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.
- Geographic , Linguistic / Language, Age
11. What are your strategies for engaging participants, particularly those that currently are non-Wikimedia?
- Since its establishment in 2020, the Taiwanese Specialty Tea Society in Europe has been continuously involved in community-building and international cultural promotion projects for the tea industry in Taiwan, therefore, the organization's social network is regarded as solid and could become an advantage when engaging non-Wikimedian within the tea industry and academic field in Taiwan. For example, we signed a cooperation agreement on providing digitalization services to their research findings and formed a strategic partnership with one of the most credible tea researcher's groups, the Taiwan Tea Society 台灣茶葉學會, in March 2021 (https://twnewshub.com/archives/13799). Many projects led by us can be found publicly reported. Most partners from the former projects keep working with us on a regular basis, including the Overseas Community Affairs Council Taiwan, Ministry of Culture Taiwan, National Taiwan University, and National Chung Hsing University.
Besides attracting current partners within our network to the alliance project with Wikimedia, the TSTSE reaches out frequently using Instagram, Clubhouse, and Facebook. The tea knowledge shared by us has kept raising the interest of the vast audiences; accordingly, there are 10% more followers in the last 90 days on the online Taiwanese Tea knowledge-share platform set up by our members.
The community-building projects are also believed to be powerful channels to raise awareness among non-Wikimedians for the organization. Tea is never just a beverage for people in Taiwan throughout history, the development of the Taiwanese tea culture is interwoven with many other social movements and art-related subjects such as the democratization and the building of the ideology of the local aesthetic. Unfortunately, many topics are being left out for decades and were only mentioned by individual groups occasionally. TSTSE focus on bridging different researchers' groups, recording and creating access for both masses and researchers to Taiwanese tea and tea culture-related knowledge by hosting conferences, talks, and workshops across countries (11 workshops were hosted in the past 10 months). All experiences could accumulatively assist us to attract more volunteers and contributors to the project. In fact, during the first round of volunteer recruitment for the joint workshop with Wikimedia Taiwan in December 2021, we received nearly 80 applications in 20 days.
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?
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.
- We first launched our idea of forming a series of joint workshops with Wikimedia Taiwan to improve the quality and quantity of Taiwanese tea-related pages on Wikipedia via the following Wikimedia communities on Facebook: Wikimedia Taiwan, Taiwan Wikimedia Community, and A Room of Wikiwomen's Own. On-going, valuable conversations have then taken place between our members and the staff of Wikimedia Taiwan since last August, as we continually learn about the realistic expectation regarding the steep learning curve in the initial capacity building phase, and in what way our project can be challenging, and why it can be important to Wikipedia.
We also begin to gather partners from the former corporations and interest them with the proposal. Our press releasing partners such as "僑委會全球資訊網", "歐台聲", "台灣光華雜誌與中央廣播電台/光華在線", "台灣茶葉學會" and so, in which a several have already joined the discussion or reported the proposal, and others have shown their attentiveness to participate.
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.
- With the establishment of our organization, we aim to create a clear identity for Taiwanese tea and tea culture through assembling, examining, studying, and recording the local shreds of evidence of the tea history and the building process of tea culture and tea-related aesthetics in Taiwan. The following mentioned partners are those who have cooperated with us in the past year; our overlapped goals show a high possibility of us working accordantly on our proposal to Wikimedia.
D-School of National Taiwan University 台大創新設計學院, 昊天嶺文史工作室, and the Ministry of Culture Taiwan had strongly involved in the cultural project we built to collect and introduce the knowledge of Sio-Po-Kua 相褒歌, the assemblage of banter poems in Taiwan's tea fields, to the audiences in Germany (https://www.lkee.de/Unser-Landkreis/PressPI-Landrat-er%C3%B6ffnete-mit-Repr%C3%A4sentant-von-Taiwan-Ausstellung.php?object=tx,2112.1&ModID=7&FID=2112.4614.1&NavID=2112.7&La=1). Prof. Chia-Fen Tsai and Jin-Cheng Lin have been dedicated to preserving and creating a database for the almost forgotten Sio-Po-Kuan materials for over a decade, and even Sio-Po-Kua has been recognized as the embryonic form of the famous Taiwanese Opera 歌仔戲, but until today, many Taiwaners have never heard of it and there is no related page about Sio-Po-Kua on Wikipedia.
農委會茶業改良場 and 台灣茶葉學會 are two of the most credible organizations that focus on collecting and researching the local tea knowledge in Taiwan. 農委會茶業改良場 is a national level tea research center that specializes in tea cultivar breeding, technical development in tea cultivation, tea processing, and tea crafting machinery. 台灣茶葉學會 is a group composed of tea academics who study either from tea science, agriculture, to the art history of tea. These two institutes probably hold up the richest Taiwanese tea-related knowledge database throughout their periodicals, papers, and book collections. We have signed a cooperation agreement with 台灣茶葉學會 in March 2021 and gradually started to assist them to digitalize their database, and we also have begun to involve in a few projects that is originally initiated by 農委會茶業改良場 via 台灣茶葉學會.
In each project, we tried to connect a few organizations that have never worked together before. For instance, one current project we work on is introducing the flavors and the notes of Taiwanese tea in artistic ways to the audiences of Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Germany from October 28 to 30, 2022, which we invite governmental units like the Ministry of Culture Taiwan to fund the project partially, museums like Museums für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg and 坪林茶葉博物館 to provide insight of curation, local tea farmers associations and academic institutes like 台灣茶葉學會, 鹿野紅烏龍合作社 and 中興大學產學研鏈結中心 to participate as curators. Through such an example, we have shown the ability of how our organization can reach out and find the connections between potential collaborators, thus organizing a strong network to benefit all our partners.
15. How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?
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.
- External factors:
- 1. COVID-19
The uncertainty of another outbreak and public policies regarding COVID-19 can affect our project grandly. As our project relies heavily on travels and offline events, the uncertainty might make it hard for us to implement our original plan, especially regarding interviewing the elderly. Assisting the elderly that we wish to interview to learn smart tools beforehand might be one of the solutions when needed.
Internal Issues:
- 1. Decreasing Willingness
Based on former experience, volunteers' willingness to participate in regular basis-workshops may decrease through time. Such reality should be considered when designing a series of events in need of participants' responses. For example, a reward system or an entertaining path that encourages participants to "level up" should be included in the user experience.
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, Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Identify Topics for Impact
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 edit
19. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?
- 1. Are people living in remote regions more aware of Wikipedia and the value of knowledge sharing in general? Do they know how to share their knowledge and culture with others, either through Wikimedia or other channels?
- 2. What factors motivated participants in our regular workshop to continue to connect and maybe contribute more actively? What factors act as barriers?
- 3. What types of support and activities are most interesting to participants who want to learn more about the Wikimedia community?
- 4. How was our new approach/ strategy effective in bringing in communities we hadn’t worked with before? What didn’t work out as expected?
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge channel | Number of people living in remote regions knowing how to share their knowledge and culture | 50 |
| Recruiting strategies evaluation | The number of strategies' effectiveness analyzed for recruiting and retaining participants | 10 |
| Access of the hard-to-reach population | The number of people who are not aware of the Wikimedia movement knowing more about Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. | 300 |
| 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 | The number of people continue to participate by contributing at least twice a week. | 10 |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | 5 |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | The number of organizations that we've reach and credibly show interest in further collaboration with Wikimedia Taiwan or contribution to Wikimedia movement. | 2 |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | N/A | N/A |
| Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | Number of elderly and non-mandarin speakers reached | 150 |
| Number of people reached through social media publications | N/A | 50000 |
| Number of activities developed | Workshops, public events, field trips, exhibition | 18 |
| 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 | N/A | 150 |
| Number of editors | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers | N/A | 6 |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | created 100 Wikipedia articles (主要品種、主要產區、工藝、文化、重要人物、重要出版品) | 100 |
| Wikipedia | improved Wikipedia articles （台灣茶、台灣茶藝、文山包種茶、臺灣高山茶、台茶八號、台茶十八號、台茶12號、東方美人茶、梨山茶） | 9 |
| Wikimedia Commons | images | 800 |
| Wikimedia Commons | videos | 50 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
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?
Financial Proposal edit
23. & 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.
- 620200 TWD
23.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?
- 20673 USD
23.3 Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.
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):
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.
We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
- No
Feedback edit
- Please add any feedback to the grant discussion page only. Any feedback added here will be removed.