Grants:Project/MSIG/DCW/Movement Charter Phase 2 Discourses

statusFunded
DCW/Movement Charter Phase 2 Discourses
Conduct offline/online discourses with DCW community members and also with Indic community of Urdu language projects, about Movement Charter chapters and have their voices heard.
targetIndic Urdu language community and the thematic community of the Deoband Community Wikimedia
start date15 September
start year2023
end date15 December
end year2023
budget (local currency)61,500
budget (USD)747.5509
grant typeIndividual
granteeNumis Zuhair
contact(s)Numis Zuhair
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Applications are not required to be in English. Please complete the application in your preferred language.

Project Goal edit

What will be the outputs of your project and how will those outputs contribute to advancing a specific Movement Strategy Initiative

  • The aim of this project is to support the movement-wide community consultations related to the Movement Charter which affects the global Wikimedia community. The project will help advance the Movement Charter chapters viz. The Global Council and Decision-Making, Hubs, Roles and Responsibilities, and the Glossary by means of community consultation and feedback-collection from within the Indic-Urdu language community and the Deoband Community Wikimedia.
What specific Movement Strategy Initiative does your project focus on and why? Please select one of the initiatives described here
This proposal would focus on more initiatives but since this is a part of the Movement Charter Ambassador Program, the main focus would be to advance the Movement Charter. The angles that this proposal would cover in side include #25 The Global Council and #26 Regional and thematic hubs, and #22 Local capacity development for advocacy.
The answer to "why" could be complex. The Indic-Urdu is a lot underrepresented community in the global arena of the Wikimedia movement, so is the Deoband Community Wikimedia unheard a lot; and these communities have a lot of potential that could add more to the sustainability of the movement. The aim of this proposal is to create a sense of knowledge advocacy and awareness - and get their voices heard about the Movement Charter's selected chapters so that we come to know how they want the "Movement Charter" to help them and where they believe they have been entirely or partially "sidelined".

Project Background edit

When do you intend to begin this project and when will it be completed?
15 September 2023 - 15 November 2023
Where will your project activities be happening?
In-person: New Delhi, , Deoband, Hyderabad and Online: To get wider feedback from those who can't join offline
Are you collaborating with other communities or affiliates on this project? Please provide details of how partners intend to work together to achieve the project goal.
This project would be done with the help of the Deoband Community Wikimedia (DCW). Guidance on this project will be provided by TheAafi, who leads the DCW. The project would be a combined effort for the Indic-Urdu community and the DCW since a lot of Urdu language community people are associated with the DCW in any way. I make sure that every voice is heard.
What specific challenge will your project be aiming to solve? And what opportunities do you plan to take advantage of to solve the problem?
The aim of this project is to support the movement-wide community consultations related to the Movement Charter which affects the global Wikimedia community. The project will help advance the Movement Charter chapters viz. The Global Council and Decision-Making, Hubs, Roles and Responsibilities, and the Glossary by means of community consultation and feedback-collection from within the Indic-Urdu language community and the Deoband Community Wikimedia.

Project Activities edit

What specific activities will be carried out during this project? Please describe the specific activities that will be carried out during this project.
Translations: These make an essential part of this project. The following Movement Charter content pages will be translated into Urdu to invite a broader feedback, and relevant announcements/reports/surveys/invitations will be translated as well in order to get the most of the project.
  1. Movement Charter/Content/Roles & Responsibilities
  2. Movement Charter/Content/Hubs
  3. Movement Charter/Content/Global Council
  4. Movement Charter/Content/Glossary
  5. Movement Charter
  6. Movement Charter/Content
  7. Template:Movement Charter/Header
  8. Conversation event and other pages
Drafting invitations is an important task and we hope to keep the relevance alive depending on where we are posting the invitations (in both on-wiki and off-wiki channels).
We have a target of twenty community members to directly/indirectly participate in the consultations. This would be done by one-on-one meetings, group discussions, and online meetings.
Community Engagement:
  • Outreach: Whilst taking care of the translations, we will also take care that the content is distributed to a wider reach of community. Subject to this, we will host several online/offline meetings explaining about the Movement Charter chapters viz. The Global Council and Decision-Making, Hubs, Roles and Responsibilities, and the Glossary, and how are these connected with DCW's feedback work from Movement Charter Phase 1 consultations.

The Indic-Urdu and DCW community of volunteers will be engaged in the decision-making ecosystem and I will have their voices heard. I will subsequently let our communities know of practical examples of why their contributions to the Movement Charter discussions are important.

Timeline:
  • The translation of the available Movement Charter content will be completely taken care of before 15 October 2023.
  1. Offline conversation at Deoband and New Delhi These conversation would be hosted from 16 October to 15 November.
  2. Online conversations with other members will also be carried between 16 October to 15 November
  3. One-to-one Meetings: I would also host one-to-one meetings with community members who are not able to join in any online/offline meetings.
  4. The number of the participants in the conversations should be about 20 and more.
  5. The feedback received will be composed, edited, and published on Meta-Wiki from 16 November to 30 November, included the entire documentation on a sub-page of the DCW.
  6. I also hope to publish the community engagement and their activities during the whole project in a Diff blog around 5 December, and have everything wrapped up until 15 December 2023.
How do you intend to keep communities updated on the progress and outcomes of the project? Please add the names or usernames of these individuals responsible for updating the community.
Since this proposal involves working with two distinct communities, we would tend to use all of the the relevant and available offline and online channels to reach to the communities. This includes but is not limited to Village pumps of Urdu projects, related mailing lists, WhatsApp and Telegram groups associated with both of the communities. For the DCW, the wikimedia-dcw mailing list will be used.
Communications is of course an area where one finds communities suffering from crisis, and for that purpose, we look forward to having this task carried out by such a person who is better in this area. Muntaqibah, who is currently working on DCW's strategic trajectory project, could lead this part in the best possible way. She will be assigned the task of communications, and she will get to the communities in both the online and offline venues where there's possibility to get a response from Indic-Urdu community, alongside the DCW channels. She will keep both the communities updated through all of the available channels.
Who will be responsible for delivering on this project and what are their roles and responsibilities?
Numis Zuhair would be responsible for delivering on this project. He would lead this program taking help and guidance from TheAafi.

Additional information edit

If your activities include community discussions, what is your plan for ensuring that the conversations are productive? Provide a link to a Friendly Space Policy or UCoC that will be implemented to support these discussions.
We will abide by the Friendly space policies of Wikimedia Foundation.
If your activities include the use of paid online tools, please describe what tools these are and how you intend to use them.
We plan to use Google Meet and/or Jitsi for online conversations.
Do your activities include the translation of materials, and if so, in what languages will the translation be done? Please include details of those responsible for making the translations.
This proposal involves translation to be done from English to Urdu and I, Numis Zuhair, would myself be responsible for making these translations. Translations would include translating the new draft chapters of the Movement Charter, translating content, surveys, and all other relevant information related to the Charter, and to review the previous available translations, in order to have the communities feedback' received at the best. My educational background includes me having been through juristic studies and I believe this would help me maintain the legal accuracy in the translations related to the Movement Charter since it is a document that would be something "constitutional" in the entire global Wikimedia movement.

Outcomes edit

After your activities are complete, we would like to understand the draft implementation plan for your community. You will be required to prepare a document detailing this plan around a movement strategy initiative. This report can be prepared through Meta-wiki using the Share your results button on this page. The report can be prepared in your language, and is not required to be written in English.

In this report, you will be asked to:

  • Provide a link to the draft implementation plan document or Wikimedia page
  • Describe what activities supported the development of the plan
  • Describe how and where you have communicated your plan to relevant communities.
  • Report on how your funding was spent

Your draft implementation plan document should address the following questions clearly:

  • What movement strategy initiative or goal are you addressing?
  • What activities will you be doing to address that initiative?
  • What do you expect will happen as a result of your activities? How do those outcomes address the movement strategy initiative?
  • How will you measure or evaluate your activities? What tools or methods will you use to evaluate your activities?

To create a draft implementation plan, we recommend the use of a logic model, which will help you and your team think about goals, activities, outcomes, and other factors in an organized way. Please refer the following resources to develop a logic model:

Please confirm below that you will be able to prepare a draft implementation plan document by the end of your grant:

  • ... I confirm.

Optionally, you are welcome to include other information you'd like to share around participation and representation in your activities. Please include any additional outcomes you would like to report on below:

Budget edit

How you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!

TOTAL AMOUNT REQUESTED USD: 2103.95 USD 747.5509 USD

Completing your application edit

Once you have completed the application, please do the following:

  • Change the application status from status=draft to status=proposed in the {{Probox}} template.
  • Contact strategy2030 wikimedia.org to confirm your submission, as well as to request any support around your application.

Endorsements edit

An endorsement from community members (especially from outside your community) will be part of the considerations when reviewing your application. Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!

  •   Support I know Zuhair in real life and have seen his enthusiasm for the development of the DCW and its initiatives. I confirm that this proposal has been discussed with me and has been shared internally with the people associated with DCW. He has my support, and I would be more than happy to guide him in the process. I discussed with him on the budget plan for this project and I feel it is pretty much justified, and even afterwards the completion of the initiative, if there remains any underspent amount, it could be utilised in mission-aligned activities but if there aren't enough funds available, it puts the entire work in danger. I really hope that Zuhair is guided towards the right direction in making the community heard in the larger community, and is helped with required resources. I must make a mention of certain things that have been considered by Zuhair whilst framing this proposal. Any sort of internet support, tools, data etc., would be taken care of by the DCW from other available grants (having several works taken care of under a single support), and I pretty much liked his idea. He is someone who values community resources. Best wishes, ─ The Aafī (talk) 19:17, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
    • However, please note that this is an individual request from Numis Zuhair and DCW hopes that he is supported, and is willing to guide/support him as much as possible. We have forwarded the relevant concerns to strategy2030 in a an email initiated by Zuhair. ─ Aafi @ DCW (talk) 07:24, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Endorsement from User:Ifteebd10 edit

I'll try to organize my thoughts in Glow (strong sides of this proposal) and Grow (aspects in the proposal where there are scope to improve) format and provide my support depending on them:

Glow
Organizing this conversation is undoubtedly a bold and giant leap for the people who are the driving force behind this. I can sense an attempt to decentralize and sustain leadership which is the true desire of the movement. Organizing experience itself is empowering for organizers. Hats off to the brave people behind it.
Indic urdu and deoband communities - two overlapping communities, are full of hidden intellectual treasure and heritage but yet underrepresented in Wikimedia and elsewhere on the internet. Kudos to the organizers for the attempt to bring their voices that would surely add new perspective to the MC that will be polished by century long intellectual essence.
It is good to see that DCW is working as the organizational backbone. Its recent track record is mindblowing and having a backing from a recognized affiliate will increase the effeciency of the project inshallah. DCW's eagerness to support this project is highly appreciated.
I appreciate the decision of arranging this conversation online and offline at three places (Delhi, Deoband and Hyderabad) that will increase sense of ownership of the conversation among participants and their visibility. People covering these distant places having long tiresome journeys just for this conversation deserve a big round of applause. Keeping online opportunity besides offline activities will ensure involvement of the wider community.
The decision of producing translated materials is praiseworthy. Just one suggestion, the translations need to done carefully. Translating legal document like the MC needs some extra level of expertise and care, the translator should be able to balance readability and appropriateness in the meaning of the translation, which is tricky.
The proposal looks satisfactorily SMART, specially the timeline. I personally think that the timeline representation could be slightly more specific and accurate. What I understood from the proposal is,
  • July 5 - Sep 15 : Proposal submission, discussion & approval
  • Sep 15 - Oct 15 : Not clear from the proposal; I guess translation of materials and preparation for calls and meetups
  • Oct 15 - Nov 15 : On and offline conversation; I believe that breaking down this part would be helpful, for example, tentative dates of the online and in person discussions can be added.
  • Nov 15 - Nov 30 : Analysis of the previously collected feedback
  • Dec 5 : Diff blog with outcomes
  • Dec 5 - Dec 15 : Extra time in hand
Grow
I personally believe that there are possible areas in communication, where things can be improved. Telegram, whatsapp and DCW mailing lists may not be able to reach the whole Indic-Urdu part of the community, specially people who are not comfortable in off wiki spaces. I suggest delivering messages on relevant wikipedia (and other wikimedia projects) village pumps, wikipedia talk page and project dedicated mailing lists and collect feedback in written format also. Besides this, I personally think that the answer to What specific challenge will your ... could be slightly healthier and it shouldn't be repeated. For example, challenges may include, 1. MC may seem a complex and irrelevant topic to the target population, 2. long journeys can cause burnout of the organizers, 3. the proposed budget may overfit or underfit and so on. In the same way, possible solutions to these challenges can also be planned.
I personally believe that the fact that it's MC discussion doesn't prevent us from involving other MS initiatives outside #24. We can involve other MS initiatives, plan and measure the impact of this project under those initiatives. For example, #22 can also be included in consideration. And according to the suggested logic model, the "Outcome" will be "Results in terms of changing action" in "Intermediate term" - that is, making people more comfortable in movement governance process and making them comfortable in taking decisions that affects the movement in whole or locally. Identifying metrics to evaluate these factors is suggested and qualitative and quantitative surveys can be used to measure the metrics. The suggested logic model can be used to make this proposal more coherent and justified. I understand that these work needs high capacity and it's okay if it can't be done, it's just a suggestion of how it may look like.
Breaking down the budget into smaller parts may help evaluating its quality. What will happen if the budget over or underfits?
I fear that the proposed amount for "Venue and space" and "Food and Beverage" will get short considering the fact that this conversation will take place in three distant parts of India. The comfort of the volunteer participants should never be compromised with anything else. I could provide more detailed feedback on this if the budget in these sectors was broken down in smaller parts. Never hesitate to increase the budget if it's justified, I think increasing the budget in these two places is very much needed.
The number of participants could be broken down per on/offline meetup. Just the number 20 isn't enough IMO to plan the budget and the overall project. For example, the tentative number of participants in Delhi meetup is P, in Hyderabad meetup is Q, in Deoband meetup is R and online meetup is S. It's okay if the expectation doesn't match with the reality, but it will help to make the plan more concrete.
As mentioned earlier, making translated materials available is highly appreciated and it needs to be done with utmost care. However, it's necessary to measure the payment rate of the translation per 100 words - to understand if it's appropriate according to the standard. I can't pass any evaluation on this since I don't have the possible word count of the materials, but I think having this USD/100 words rate would help making the proposal more concrete.
Additional suggestions and concerns
Use Jitsi instead of Meet or zoom. Jitsi's UI can be an issue for people with less technology-fluency tho it has been upgraded a lot in recent times. Meet has limited its free version to one hour for attendees more than three.
This is for the staff taking care of the grant template; Blank logic model template on Google Drive is denying permission. Please ensure the accessibility of the suggested materials before making them public.

The impact of this project is justified against the amount proposed according to me, I don't want any reduction of the scope of this project since that would harm the overal coherence of the project goals. Considering the Glow and Grow points, and the overall impacting factors, I believe that this proposal deserves to get a valuble and heartfelt   Support from me. The planning and specially the enthusiasm is far bigger than their current capacity which deserves a big shoutout. --Ifteebd10 (talk) 06:25, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

    •   Strong support -- Aafi's strategic direction w.r.t DCW & movement contribution is commendable. Brahmavadini (talk) 10:38, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
    •   Strong support FromPunjab (talk) 09:04, 9 August 2023 (UTC)