Grants:Project/MSIG/Shared Knowledge/Sign language content as a new form of knowledge

statusFunded

Movement Strategy

MK-SK/Sign language content as a new form of knowledge

The project aims to produce videos documenting scientific terminology in the fields of economics and law in the Macedonian Sign Language.

targetMacedonian Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Macedonian Wiktionary

start date1 April

start year2024

end date30 September

end year2024

budget (USD)24,377

grant typeorganisation

grantee• Kiril Simeonovski

contact(s)• Kiril Simeonovski• Toni Ristovski

organization (if applicable)• Shared Knowledge

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Share your results

Applications are not required to be in English. Please complete the application in your preferred language.

Project Goal

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

What specific Movement Strategy Initiative does your project focus on and why? Please select one of the initiatives described here

41. Continuous experimentation, technology, and partnerships for content, formats, and devices. Our project includes activities aimed at identifying high-impact topics for users of the Macedonian Sign Language as well as producing videos that document the identified topics as a new form of knowledge.

Project Background

When do you intend to begin this project and when will it be completed?

Start date: 1 July 2023 (flexible) Start date: 1 April 2024

End date: 31 December 2023 End date: 30 September 2024

Where will your project activities be happening?

The project activities pertaining to the research of high-impact topics and the content production will take place off-wiki, whereas the produced content will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and subsequently used as secondary materials on the Macedonian Wikipedia.

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.

We intend to collaborate with professional sign language interpreters who will feature in the videos to interpret the scientific terminology on the identified high-impact topics in the Macedonian Sign Language.

What specific challenge will your project be aiming to solve? And what opportunities do you plan to take advantage of to solve the problem?

Users of the Macedonian Sign Language oftentimes face difficulties when they have communication in public or private institutions (e.g. when visiting a bank, when requesting a legal service etc.). These difficulties are primarily caused by their inability to comprehend the meaning of some economic and legal terms, which puts them in disadvantage and makes them more vulnerable to hoaxes by other parties. In order to solve this problem, we would like to increase the economic and legal literacy of this group of people by creating content in their native language. Considering the open access and free re-distribution of the content on the Wikimedia projects, we plan to use this opportunity to produce video materials as a new form of knowledge that will be of educational value.

Does this project aim to apply one of the examples shared in the call for grants and if so which one?

Yes, partly. We plan to use the research example in order to identify the high-impact topics that will feature in the produced videos.

Project Activities

What specific activities will be carried out during this project? Please describe the specific activities that will be carried out during this project.

The project will be implemented in three phases:

• Research (from 1 August to 30 September 2023). (from 1 April to 31 May 2024)
• Implementation (from 1 October to 31 December 2023) (from 1 June to 31 August 2024)
• Evaluation (from 1 to 31 January 2024) (from 1 to 30 September 2024)

1) Research. The research phase aims to identify relevant high-impact economic and legal terms that need to be documented with clear explanations in the recorded videos. This phase will engage economic and legal experts who will collaborate with the Macedonian Sign Language community with the help of sign language interpreters. The reason for engaging experts is that the sign language interpreters are not proficient enough to interpret specialist scientific terminology. In this way, we intend to create a bi-directional collaboration network in which the experts will provide specialist knowledge about the terminology and the sign language interpreters will find an optimal way to deliver it to the users of the Macedonian Sign Language. The experts will have to compile lists of one hundred economic and legal terms each that the users of the Macedonian Sign Language community encounter in everyday life but fail to fully comprehend and need additional clarification.

This phase will last two months and will include the following activities:

• Conducting research. The experts and the sign language interpreters will collaborate with each other to find out the best ways to reach out to the Macedonian Sign Language community members in order to identify their needs.
• Compilation of lists. Based on the results from the conducted research, the experts will prepare the lists of economic and legal terms.

2) Implementation. The implementation phase will consist of the process of producing the videos documenting explanations of the economic and legal terms on the article lists in the Macedonian Sign Language. In this phase, the sign language interpretations will have to prepare an interpretation for each term with assistance provided by the experts, a professional video production company will be hired to produce high-quality videos, and the recorded videos will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and shared with the members of the Macedonian Sign Language community.

This phase will last three months and will include the following activities:

• Preparing interpretations. Considering that the sign language interpreters are not experts in the fields of economics and law, they will get assistance from the economic and legal experts in order to prepare most easily comprehensible interpretations.
• Recording videos. This activity will involve collaboration between the sign language interpreters and the video production company on scheduling the recording sessions and producing the videos.
• Post-production. The recorded videos will undergo post-production by the video production company so that the desired quality is reached.
• Uploading videos. The final videos will be uploaded on Wikimedia Commons under free licence so that they are freely available to everyone who may need them.
• Promoting videos. A public event will be held for the Macedonian Sign Language community at which the produced videos will be promoted.

3) Evaluation. The evaluation phase aims to measure the project outcomes, identify the strengths and weaknesses from its implementation, as well as to communicate the results and tell the story with like-minded communities in the movement. This phase will have to indicate how much value was added for the Macedonian Sign Language community with the produced videos, and what are the positive practices which can be replicated in implementing similar projects. Concerning the reporting and storytelling as integral processes in this phase, we find it particularly important to use different forms and channels in order to reach to wider audiences in a more effective way.

This phase will last one month, and it will include the following activities:

• Project evaluation. The project will be evaluated based on the activities implemented in the preceding phases in order to better plan similar projects and programmes in the future.
• Reporting. The main findings from the evaluation along with a summary of the project's implementation will be reflected in the general project report which will be publicly available.
• Storytelling. We intend to engage with storytelling by writing specific reports in which we will share our learning and positive practices from the project's implementation with the other communities in the Wikimedia movement.

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

• On-wiki report. The implementation of the project will be summarised in a general report which will be published on Meta. (Kiril Simeonovski, Toni Ristovski)
• Blog posts. Specific activities and events will be documented in blog posts and reports published on Diff and on the websites of the partnering organisations. (Nino Bogdanovski, Kiril Simeonovski, members of the partnering organisations)
• Public presentations. Presentations about the project activities will be delivered at in-person and online events. (Kiril Simeonovski, Toni Ristovski, members of the partnering organisations)
• Guest appearances. Guest appearances in television and radio shows will be used to introduce the general public with the project and its activities. (Nino Bogdanovski, Kiril Simeonovski, Toni Ristovski, members of the partnering organisations)
• Social media. Announcements about specific events will be published in groups on the social media in order to enable direct communication with interested people. (Nino Bogdanovski, Dean Lazarevski, members of the partnering organisations)

Who will be responsible for delivering on this project and what are their roles and responsibilities?

We plan to hire two part-time employees who will work on implementing the project, and we will also engage one staff member of Shared Knowledge to support some activities:

• Nino Bogdanovski as Project Coordinator will be responsible for planning the activities in the project, communicating with all parties involved, monitoring the development of the project and evaluating the project outcomes.
• Viktorija Volak as Language Interpreter from and into Macedonian Sign Language will feature in the videos documenting the scientific terminology.
• Jelena Milosavljeviḱ as Language Interpreter from and into Macedonian Sign Language will feature in the videos documenting scientific terminology.
• Zlatko Pavleski as Legal Expert will be responsible for communication with the Macedonian Sign Language community regarding the identification of high-impact topics in the field of law and preparing definitions in written form.
• Dean Lazarevski as Economic Expert will be responsible for communication with the Macedonian Sign Language community regarding the identification of high-impact topics in the field of economics and preparing definitions in written form.
• Ivan Żivkoviḱ as Administration and Logistics Community Coordinator of Shared Knowledge will be responsible for the administrative tasks related to the project.

The following community volunteers will support the implementation of the project:

• Kiril Simeonovski
• Toni Ristovski

Additional information

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 Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct in the public event that will be held at the end of the project, as well as in the communication between the economic and legal experts with the members of the Macedonian Sign Language community via the sign language interpreters.

If your activities include the use of paid online tools, please describe what tools these are and how you intend to use them.

We do not plan to use paid online tools.

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.

If we do not count the interpreted explanations of the terms from Macedonian into the Macedonian Sign Language, we do not plan to translate materials into other languages.

Are there any other details you would like to share? Consider providing rationale, research or community discussion outputs, and any other similar information, that will give more context on your proposed project.

This project is a continuation of Capacity development for underrepresented communities, which was conducted from 1 June 2022 to 31 January 2023, with a reduced scope by focussing only on the Macedonian Sign Language community. Its primary goal is to record 200 videos documenting explanations of economic and legal terms that the users of the Macedonian Sign Language encounter in everyday life without having full understanding of their exact meaning. The research of the Macedonian Sign Language community conducted as part of the last year's project revealed that the users of the Macedonian Sign Language community are oftentimes subject to manipulations by other parties, which mostly accounts for their disadvantage by not comprehending the exact meaning of the words. That being said, the implementation of this project aims to break the barrier for this people and increase their understanding by innovating new forms of knowledge

Outcomes

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:

• Overview of logic models on Meta-wiki
• Example logic models for reference for other movement activities (such as partnerships and edit-a-thons)
• Blank logic model template on Google Drive

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

• Yes.

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

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!

Item	Description	Research phase		Implementation phase		Evaluation phase		Total
		Amount in €	Amount in $	Amount in €	Amount in $	Amount in €	Amount in $	Amount in €	Amount in $
Project Coordinator	15 hours weekly per €18/hour for 27 weeks	2,430	2,658	3,645	3,987	1,215	1,329	7,290	7,974
Economic expert	10 hours weekly per €24/hour for 9 weeks	864	945	1,296	1,418	0	0	2,160	2,362
Legal expert	15 hours weekly per €10/hour for 18 weeks	864	945	1,296	1,418	0	0	2,160	2,362
Interpretation	interpretation into the Macedonian Sign Language during the whole project	1,111	1,215	1,111	1,215	0	0	2,222	2,430
Printed materials	purchase of specialised printed materials in economics and law	400	438	0	0	0	0	400	438
Meetings	meetings during the whole project	300	328	150	164	150	164	600	656
Public event	public event to promote the recorded videos	0	0	0	0	500	547	500	547
Transport and logistics	expenses on transport and logistics during the whole project	100	109	250	273	50	55	400	438
Video production	200 videos per €8.88/video	0	0	1,776	1,943	0	0	1,776	1,943
Video post-production	200 videos per €8.88/video	0	0	1,776	1,943	0	0	1,776	1,943
Contingency fee	incidentals, rise in prices, minor items	600	656	2,000	2,188	400	438	3,000	3,282
Total		6,669	7,296	13,300	14,549	2,315	2,533	22,284	24,377

Note: All amounts include VAT and PIT.

Original conversion from € to $ was done using the exchange rate at Oanda on 14 May 2023, but it was corrected at 22 November 2023 and contingency fee was increased (plus 1,500 EUR) due long period for starting the project and ongoing inflation in our country.

Remark: We received approved budget in total of 21.000 EUR, so we will deduct the contingency fee of 3.000 EUR to the level of 1.716 EUR.

TOTAL AMOUNT REQUESTED USD: 22,547 (initial), 24,377 (correct)

Completing your application

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 strategy2030wikimedia.org to confirm your submission, as well as to request any support around your application.

Endorsements

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!