Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/University Students Wikimedians 2022/2023/Midpoint Report

Midterm Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 15 January 2023

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Midterm

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General information

This 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: N/A
Title of Proposal: University Students Wikimedians 2022/2023
Amount awarded: 31421.43 USD, 30000 TZS
Amount spent: 35990506 TZS

Part 1 Understanding your work

1. Briefly describe how your strategies and activities proposed were implemented and if any changes to what was proposed are worth highlighting?

We were able to use our main strategy, which is establishing, monitoring, and mentoring Wiki Clubs in different educational institutions. This strategy currently works well and no major changes were made.

This was achieved by:

(a). Identifying universities and colleges that would be willing to participate in starting a Wikimedia club. This was done by reaching out to professors, librarians, or other staff members who are interested in promoting Wikipedia education and outreach within their institution.

(b)Recruiting and training a mentor: Identifying an experienced Wikipedia editor who would be willing to act as a mentor for the club. This mentor would need to be able to provide guidance on how to edit Wikipedia, help students navigate the community, and assist with any issues that may arise.

(c)Forming the club: Once the school and mentor are identified, the next step was to form the club. This was done by promoting the club to students

(d)Organize events and campaigns: Organizing activities such as edit-a-thons, Wikipedia writing competitions, etc, that would attract students' attention and interest to join the club.

(e)Regular mentoring: Once the club is established, regular meetings were held to give students an opportunity to learn from one another and work together on editing projects. The mentor should be present to provide guidance.

The train-the-trainer program really helped us acquire qualified editors who stood as mentors in different Wiki Clubs.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you feel are being effective in achieving your goals?

Having mentors in the clubs is one of the best working strategies for our project. They have been doing a great job even when we do not have official gatherings.

However, the establishment of Wiki Clubs has enhanced the introduction of Wikimedia projects to many students and teachers.

3. What challenges or obstacles have you encountered so far?

Currently, we have experienced the following issues:

(a) Legal issues We have faced legal issues mostly over the credibility of our work being known to the government. We are currently working on being registered as an NGO. Also, other educational institutions need to see proof of registration from the government as one of the basic routines to them.

(b) Inactive members We had some members who were inactive in our communities. The community base had over 300 members but 35% were inactive. We had to come up with a way of facing this issue, where, we called each member to see what the problem was some said they had no equipment and some didn’t have access to the internet and some couldn’t access the network due to their location.

To tackle these challenges, we decided to rent Laptops and provide internet support to the designated members. We had a positive comeback where over 50% of the inactive members come back to contributing.

(c) Resource (funding) We are facing this challenge due to the awarded amount compared to the requested amount where we only received 25.75% of the requested amount. The program runs in 3 different regions in Tanzania and has a base of over 10 clubs in different educational institutions. We had to adjust the budget to accommodate the awarded budget. This has led to the inability of accommodating all the members in our events which might lead to the loss of members.

(d) Tools (Mostly for teachers) It would be great to have the Education team have the Wikipedia assignment available in other regions rather than just the U.S.A and Canada.

4. Please describe how different communities are participating and being informed about your work.

We are working closely with members from the Wikimedia Community Arusha, Jenga Wikipedia ya Kiswahili and Wikimedia Community User, and Wikimedia Community User Group Tanzania by interacting in different events. However, through our social media platforms and diff, we post about different activities performed by our communities.

Jenga Wikipedia ya Kiswahili members (many are administrators), have been advising us on what is to be done so that we generate good content in the Swahili Wikipedia. We have had members from Wikimedia Community Arusha and Wikimedia Community User Group Tanzania coming to our events as facilitators but also as members and we also have been attending their activities as a community.

5. Please share reflections on how your efforts are helping to engage participants and/or build content, particularly for underrepresented groups.

We have been able to engage with many youths and created awareness of free knowledge sharing through the Wikimedia projects. Also, we have been able to create and update content related to youths and women/girls at large.

Currently, we have a 50% - 50% policy in all of our events and leadership where we do gender balancing so as to give an opportunity to all gender in the community.

6. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What have you learned so far about these areas during this period?

These answers are based on the activities performed between June and December 2022 in different Colleges and Universities.

How can teachers change their perception of Wikipedia? What are the strongest arguments that help in that?
We can change teachers’ perspectives on Wikipedia by providing knowledge on how Wikipedia work and its mode of operations. Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom will be a great program to support them.
What are the best strategies to retain teachers in the Wikimedia community?
Through the provision of continuous support and training.
What are the best techniques used by teachers to encourage students to participate and contribute to Wikimedia projects?
Have the students use Wikipedia in their learning process.
Did the program answer the expectations of the teachers?
So far theoretically, Yes. However, practice is needed.
How many of them are willing to use Wikipedia in their classroom?
So far, many are willing to use Wikipedia in the Classroom.
Manage and strengthen existing partnerships and establish new ones
We have been able to partner with a few Students Organizations in implementing the project.
What activities are students more interested in so as to make them more active in contributing to the Wikimedia movement?
So far students are more interested in having activities outside of their campuses. They love interacting with other students from different educational institutions.

7. What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your work?

- We will be working on other Wikimedia projects rather than just Wikipedia.

We will engage more with teachers to have them adapt Wikimedia projects mostly Wikipedia.
Engaging more with students in the institutions that we are already operating in.
Try to introduce the projects to the government departments mostly tourism which directly interact with the Wiki Voyage project.
Work on the registration of the NGO so as to evade the legal issues that we will are currently facing.

Part 2: Metrics

8a. Open and additional metrics data.

Open Metrics
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Joined Teachers	We will focus on seeing how many teachers were ready to join the Wikimedia Movement after training has been provided.	30	12	N/A	In-person events conducted during the awareness creation of Wikimedia projects on teachers
Retained teachers	How many teachers will be retained and what strategy worked best	30	0	This metric is to be measured during the second season of the project and the metrics will be provided in the final report.	N/A
Wikipedia usage in class room	How many teachers are willing to use Wikipedia in the classroom?	25	12	Currently, 12 teachers have shown interest in using Wikipedia in their teachings.	N/A
Partnerships	How many new partnerships will we be able to make?	10	3	We have been able secure full partnerships with 3 Student governments who we are working closely with.	in-person meetings
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	NA	NA

Additional Metrics
Additional Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	550	270	We have been able to retain all the editors	dashboard outreach
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	20	23	All the organizers were retained	google form and in-person attendance.
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	N/A	10	3	we are still working on securing more partners	meetings
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	N/A	270	we collected data/feedback from members after every event and after every 3 months of the project.	Google forms
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	N/A	350	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications	N/A	100000	80000	through boosting posts we were able to reach a wider audience	Facebook business suite
Number of activities developed	N/A	81	45	15 in-person and 30 online	This was achieved through different activities including: Edit-a-thons workshops competitions seminars
Number of volunteer hours	N/A	2000	1250	More time was devoted to the project to make it a success.	N/A

8b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of participants	Includes all people attending the events even if they do not decide becoming contributors or editors.	800	467	We had a high number of participants than anticipated before, this is due to high engagement and collaboration with some of the Colleges' and Universities' departments.	Google forms, in-person attendances.
Number of editors	This includes all members who will be ready to join Wikimedia's movement and become editors	600	270		outreach dashboard
Number of organizers	This includes the COT, Volunteers (club leaders), and facilitators	20	23	Due to high demand and many activities the number of organizers was increased so as to meet the needs. Many were volunteers.	google forms & in-person attendances

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Wikipedia	Includes English Wikipedia and Swahili Wikipedia	2500	1833	We have accomplished 1833 new articles and 5890 edited articles	Outreach Dashboard.
Wikimedia Commons	N/A	350	440	N/A	Outreach Dashboard
Wikiquote	N/A	1500	0	To be worked on in the second season of the project	NA
Wikidata	N/A	500	477	We received a great response from members of the Wikidata project	Outreach Dashboard
Incubator	N/A	300	0	To be covered in the second season of the project.	NA

9. Are you having any difficulties collecting data to measure your results?

No

10. Are you collaborating and sharing learning with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Yes

10a. Please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how?

As the project coordinator, I was responsible for overseeing the various aspects of a project, including planning, organizing, and managing the resources needed to complete the project successfully.

However, collaborating and sharing learning is one of the key aspects of a Wikimedia project. We did collaborate with other communities by posting our learnings and sharing learning resources via email, social media, and Diff blog posts.

We still intend on sharing learning and collaborating with other communities through the documentation of activities. Also, we are currently preparing an eBook that will focus on our work and the Wikimedia Projects.

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.

(a) Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/unistuwikimedians/

(b) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unistuwikimedians/?hl=en

(c) Diff posts: https://diff.wikimedia.org/?s=magotech

Part 3: Financial reporting and compliance

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

35990506

13. Local currency type

TZS

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.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qFFjLT3LJUTIm4RTvSzZJsPjtzsRbX3FKbtur6oysD8/edit?usp=sharing

15. Based on your implementation and learning to date, do you have any plans to make changes to the budget spending?

Yes

15a. Please provide an explanation on how you hope to adjust this.

We are hoping to reduce the amount in the Salaries section so as to cover project activities due to high demand from the community.

16. We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being a grantee has been so far.

Truly speaking at first I was frustrated due to the granted amount which was very low compared to the amount requested. It came to a point my team members were giving-up, however after so many talks as a community we came back together and had to lay out plans on how we can accommodate the community with the granted amount.

It has been a short and long journey at the same time in the learning process through which we have both learned how we can utilize the resources we have to run a community without considering how big the community is compared to the resources.

All in all, we thank the Wikimedia Foundation for trusting and believing in us and that we were able to handle the project and we hope to work more in the near future.