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Grants:Project/Rapid/Kaqchikel Wikiwuj, editathon and leadership/capacity building

< Grants:Project | Rapid
statusFunded
Jotzun/Kaqchikel Wikiwuj, editathon and leadership/capacity building
We seek to organize an editathon to continue the process of creating and sharing knowledge in the Kaqchikel language, which started in 2011 and currently remains in the incubator phase. As a part of these activities, there will be a series of two workshops to train Kaqchikel speakers to build upon earlier workshops and to become the mentors at the editathon. There will also be a workshop post-editatphon to determine next steps towards the ultimate goal of making Wikipedia in Kaqchikel an official project.
targetKaqchikel incubator project
start dateJune 18
end dateAugust 31
budget (local currency)14,948 Quetzales
budget (USD)1,943 USD
grant typeGroup
non-profit statusNA
grantee• Jotzun
contact(s)• jorgelopezbachiller(_AT_)gmail.com• saragtti(_AT_)gmail.com• march(_AT_)ceppas.org.gt
organization (if applicable)• Kaqchikel Wikiwuj


Review your report

Please see the sample Editathon/Training application before drafting your application.

Project Goal

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Choose one or more of the following goals. You can add or delete goals as needed.

  1. Recruit new Kaqchikel speaking editors
  2. Increase skills and leadership opportunities for existing editors
  3. Add or improve content in Kaqchikel
  4. Raise awareness of the project to make progress towards making Kaqchikel an official project

Project Plan

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Activities

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Tell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:

1. Are you doing one editathon or training or a series of editathons or trainings?

We are planning an editathon for Wikiwuj (Wikipedia Kaqchikel) with the objective of adding more content in this language, as well as to continue to make progress on the translation of the interface as one of the steps needed to move the project out of the incubator. Together, with experienced Guatemalan Wikipedians, there will also be a series of pre-trainings to build capacity of native speakers of kaqchikel so that they can assume leadership roles at the editaton.

This event will take place within the umbrella of the National Meeting of Indigenous Language Digital Activists to take place on July 21-22, 2018 in Guatemala City, Guatemala.. The 8-hour editathon will take place on Sunday, July 22. There will be a room for people that wants to work on editing or translating Kaqchikel articles in Wikipedia. In addition, there will be ongoing sessions for beginners that would like to learn how to edit in Wikipedia.

For the editathon we expect to have 20 people editing throughout the whole day. Before the editathon we will coordinate with kaqchikel speakers to prepare all documents and articles they want to upload and also talk to Guatemalan wikipedians to assist that day to the editathon. The same day we will have mentors, who are both native speakers and experienced Wikipedians, that will be reviewing articles so the Kaqchikel is appropriate and also helping others to edit in Wikipedia.

2. How will you let your community know about the event? Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions.

We are going to reactivate the Facebook group to promote the Editathon and meeting. The role of social media will be crucial to achieve our goals, promoting the participation and dissemination of the Kakchiquel Wikipedia around the country. We also have a database of kaqchikel speakers that have expressed interest in these types of projects that we will send a special invitation to. This will help to make visible the role of ICT in the Mayan languages preservation.

We already have the Kakchiquel Wikipedia in the incubator: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/cak Facebook Group- https://www.facebook.com/groups/1682569858705705/?ref=br_rs

The organizer institutions as Kaqchikel Linguistic Community, Academy of Mayan Languages from Guatemala, Spanish Cultural Center in Guatemala, Creative Commons Guatemala and Rising Voices-Global Voices also will use their social media and mailing lists to promote the event. Also we will use personal mailing lists, social media tools and also we will ask our sponsors and partners named before to promote the Meeting through their social media tools.

3. Do you have experienced Wikimedia editors to lead the event?

Yes, we have contacted experienced editors from the “WikifemHack”, an initiative that aims to enforce and acknowledge the presence of Guatemalan women in Wikipedia that had been working to contribute to society in many ways throughout history. This editing group was born in Costa Rica and Ceppas Guatemala, Ocacgt and CiberFeministas began the Guatemalan chapter a year ago and has experience with editathon projects and members of the group have agreed to assist the mentors. Wikifemhack direct link- https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Encuentros/Wikifemhack_Guatemala

Also we will contact to all the 85 wikipedians that appears on the Wikipedia https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor%C3%ADa:Wikipedia:Wikipedistas_de_Guatemala and will ask them to promote the editathon and also to be part of the team for that day.

SaraFratti https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuaria:SaraFratti Jorge López-Bachiller https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Jotzun Uskam Camey https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Uskam Hugo Chocoj https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Chocoj Juan Sian, Cristina Chavarría

4. Do participants have the equipment or skills needed to participate and contribute high quality content? If not, how will you support them?

The Edit-a-thon is going to be held at the Spanish Cultural Center in Guatemala, in which we will have a computer center with 10 computers and Internet access, as a consequence people will not have to bring their own laptops, but they are free to bring their own.

We are going to develop workshops for beginners on Wikipedia, at least 2 prior the edit-a-thon, in order to create capacity for mentor editors, who are going to help in the workshops for that day. Those workshops will be held by mentors that read and speak Kaqchikel and also knows how to edit in Wikipedia.

The Edit-a-thon will have a schedule of 8 hours, so that all people can edit. We will have content in Kakchiquel available, such as books, magazines, articles, to be used as references and to upload on the different categories. And a team of editors conformed from the “Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala “(the national institution that regulates and protects mayan languages), “Kaqchikel Linguistic Community” (institution which represents all the Kaqchikel Speakers in Guatemala) and other Kaqchikel linguists experts.

We will encourage a mix of original articles and translation of articles already available in Spanish to reach our goal.

5. How will you engage participants after the event(s)?

Mentors are going to have an important role to promote the editors participation during and after the event, we will create a Facebook group and mailing list to create a community in Guatemala. This will help to engage the new editors, developed the capacities to edit Wikipedia in their mother language, will inspire to edit digital content in new contexts, like their community, school, University, work, etc.

Because we will invite speakers and representatives from other community languages from Guatemala, we will continue the conversation with them in order to have more wikipedians and to try to upload other languages into Wikipedia.

We are sure that partners and sponsors will be very interested on these event so we will keep in touch with the participants to prepare the next National Meeting on 2019.

6. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?

The Kaqchikel Language is one of the 21 languages of Guatemala, spoken by almost 600,000 people in around 60 municipalities of 7 provinces of the country. On the other hand, technology is increasingly available to citizens and offers opportunities to increase the access to different applications and tools that are easy to use and free of charge that can help Kaqchikel community to remain alive during future generations. For example, there have been different projects related to preserve, promote and share the Kaqchikel language through the technologies, such as a Kaqchikel University https://www.facebook.com/universidadmayakaqchikel/ Firefox in Kaqchikel https://www.mozilla.org/cak/firefox/new/ apps to learn the language, among others.

In 2011, a group of Kaqchikel speakers and digital activists, Wikipedians, and with the support of Wikimedia Mexico started the project called "Kaqchikel Wikiwuj", which currently is in the incubator (https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/cak). Its main objective is to create knowledge in the Kaqchikel language so it can become one of the available languages in Wikipedia. The project seeks to create and share knowledge in this Mayan language and to make the Kaqchikel Wikiwuj an official project.

In 2017, we participated in the “Indigenous Language Digital Activism Meeting” organized by Pueblo Click and Rising Voices that took place in San Lucas Tolimán, Sololá, Guatemala https://rising.globalvoices.org/lenguas/encuentros/kaqchikel-2017/ It was attended by 20 kaqchikel speakers participants, as well as others supporting the community. One of those speakers talked about Kaqchikel Wikiwuj (Wikipedia in Kaqchikel). Due to the outpouring of interest by workshop attendees to relaunch the incubator project with a more structured outreach and plans to build community.

At the end of the meeting the attendees were very excited to support this project so we defined a route map with several steps:

  1. Receive tutorial from Rising Voices to learn how to edit in Wikipedia;
  2. Organize an editathon with kaqchikel speakers on the Linguistic Kaqchikel Community in the main office of this organization (august the 28th);
  3. Organize a national editathon in Guatemala City with the support of several organizations, national and international in July 2018.

From there, this project gained strength through the support of people committed to language and information and communication technologies such as Jorge López-Bachiller, Degree in Sociology, DW Akademie Project Manager, advisor on Open Government Abierto and coordinator of this project; Uskam Camey, Professional Publisher and active member of the Kaqchikel Linguistic Community; Hugo Chocoj, Degree in Communication and active member of the Kaqchikel Linguistic Community; Cristina Chavarría, Degree in Communication from the Spanish Cultural Center, Pakal Rodríguez, active member of the Kaqchikel Linguistic Community; and Sara Fratti, Lawyer and member/lead of Creative Commons Guatemala as well as the institutional support of the Cultural Center of Spanish Cooperation in Guatemala, the Creative Commons chapter of Guatemala, and Rising Voices, which has been supporting communities interested in sharing knowledge in their own native languages.

Also the project has been proposed to the Kaqchikel Lingüistic Community, that is part of the Mayan Languages Academy of Guatemala, a government institution that seeks for the promotion of the mayan languages in the country. On this point, we sent an invitation to the President of the Kaqchikel Lingüistic Community, she shared the idea to the Board of Directors and they invited us to talk about this project last May 5th, where we talked more deeply about the role will have the Community on the celebration of this Meeting. They are currently deciding whether to participate as an institution or as individual members.

As Guatemala has 22 different ethnic communities, we have also been in contact with the Mayan Languages Academy of Guatemala (ALMG) [1] to invite them to the Meeting and to explore if we can promote the use of those other languages in Wikipedia too.

During those weeks that we have been promoting the event, we had the compromise to colaborate from: National Mayan Languages Academy of Guatemala (this includes 22 community languages; UNESCO United Nations for Education Programe; Onbudsman office, Procurador de los Derechos Humanos de Guatemala; University of Maryland Field Station; Institute of Latin American Studies, Vanderbilt University; Universidad del Valle de Guatemala; Universidad Rafael Landívar de Guatemamla; Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala; Internet Society ISOC Guatemala Chapter; and many more.

The meeting and the Wikiwuj Edit-a-thon are going to be held in Guatemala City, which means that the editors (Kaqchikel speakers) that live in other towns that want to become part of the Edit-a-thon are welcome to apply to the open a call for scholarships that will give opportunity to native speakers to come to the city to learn about the role of ICTs in the language preservation and edit in Wikipedia together.

We will make significant efforts to reach 50-50% male/female participation even though we recognize that in Guatemala women are especially underrepresented in this field.

The editathon is aimed to the following persons:

  1. Kaqchikel and other maya speakers, activists, teachers
  2. Interested in new technologies and innovation
  3. Students and teachers of the universities in Guatemala
  4. Wikipedians
  5. Institutions associated with national and international indigenous languages

The meeting will be held at the headquarters of the Cultural Center of Spain in Guatemala - CCE-, 6th Avenue in zone 1. CCE has different rooms with access to projector, screen and sound.

  1. Auditorium: capacity 152 people
  2. Cinema room: capacity 50 persons
  3. Workshops room: capacity 30 people
  4. 4th level: 40 seats

Impact

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How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets:

  1. 20 people participating actively as mentors or new editors
  2. 60 articles in Kaqchikel uploaded to the Kaqchikel Wikiwuj incubator
  3. 25% progress in translating the Wikipedia interface into Kaqchikel
  4. 10 partnerships established with institutions, civil society groups and organizations of the Kaqchikel Community in Guatemala interested in colaborating in the development of Kaqchikel Wikiwuj

Resources

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What resources do you have? Include information on who is organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding).

For the support of the editathon and the event we are requesting support from the Wikimedia Foundation Rapid Grants Program to support the editathon component of the event. The Spanish Cultural Center has already agreed to provide in-kind contribution in the use of their space, internet access, and other logistical arrangements. We have also reached out to Creative Commons, DW Akademie from Germany for additional support, so we can provide full and partial scholarships to participants from the Guatemalan highlands that have less opportunities to participate in events that take place in Guatemala City.

From there, this project gained strength through the support of people committed to language and information and communication technologies such as Jorge López-Bachiller, Degree in Sociology, DW Akademie Project Manager, advisor on Open Government Abierto and coordinator of this project; Uskam Camey, Professional Publisher and active member of the Kaqchikel Linguistic Community; Hugo Chocoj, Degree in Communication and active member of the Kaqchikel Linguistic Community; Cristina Chavarría, Degree in Communication from the Spanish Cultural Center, Pakal Rodríguez, active member of the Kaqchikel Linguistic Community; and Sara Fratti, Lawyer and member/lead of Creative Commons Guatemala as well as the institutional support of the Cultural Center of Spanish Cooperation in Guatemala, the Creative Commons chapter of Guatemala, and Rising Voices, which has been supporting communities interested in sharing knowledge in their own native languages.

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount.

  1. Transportation scholarships 20 people at 300 quetzales on average
  2. Room and board scholarships, 20 people at 185 quetzales
  3. 3 Workshops for mentor training after and before the editathon, 10 people at 100 quetzales pp for each workshop, this includes transport and meals
  4. 1 Banner at 300 quetzales
  5. 30 T-shirts for participants and mentors at 50 quetzales each

Total amount requested 1,943 USD (14,500 quetzales)

Endorsements

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Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!

  •   Strong support The Editathon could work like an umbrella activity. The Kapchikel Wikipedia could jump into a new stage and even leave the Incubator with the new editors, and also the participants could create an User Group (or a Chapter later, why not?) in Guatemala. With one grant we can achieve several goals in Guatemala where our movement has a lack of members. --Sahaquiel9102 (talk) 01:05, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support This is an activity that could jump-start a project to develop a whole new Wikipedia. There is a great potential for impact beside the immediate results of the new articles created during the event. The project seems to be very well organized. It has my complete support. Amqui (talk) 18:04, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support The project is a big opportunity to promote and preserve this indigenous language on the Internet. The idea to fund native speakers and build editing capacities is a good approach to include the Mayan community in this process. Also, this will help to create a community (or chapter) in Guatemala.Zeroth (talk) 21:08, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support: This project will help strengthen ties among the Kaqchikel speaking+writing community, and help newcomers engage with the creation of contents that will represent the Guatemala Kaqchikel culture. As several organizations and volunteers come together and collaborate, this will empower the Mayan languages speakers. VMasrour (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
  • This is a much needed effort. Chico Venancio (talk) 22:40, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support This project is important for the development of the Wikipedia community in Guatemala. At the same time, provides the necessary support to generate content in a Mayan language that has thousands of speakers, but still doesn't have an own version of Wikipedia. Señoritaleona (talk) 22:58, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support It is an excellent approach to generate capacities and promote Wikipedia in the Kaqchikel language. It is strongly aligned with the goal of expanding the diversity of the wikimedia community.--Pepe piton (talk) 00:24, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support I’ve been following this project with great interest during the past year. The structure of the project doesn’t just call for a one-time edit-a-thon. However, there will be a series of workshops prior to the edit-a-thon to facilitate the creation of a core group of native Kaqchikel speakers to take leadership and mentor roles to move the project forward. It is also an excellent example of partnerships between local organizations and groups, such as Creative Commons Guatemala, the Spanish Cultural Center, and a local group of Wikipedians to provide important support and accompaniment. It's also important to recognize that members of the Kaqchikel community want a Wikipedia in their language, and it’s not an idea pushed from the outside. Creating and sustaining a Wikipedia in indigenous languages is not easy, but in this case there are the conditions and the support to make it happen. Barrioflores (talk) 00:47, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support:I hope this initiative helps strengthening the Kaqchikel language at Wikimedia projects, as well as developing the Wikipedian community in Guatemala. Increasing diversity and inclusion in the Wikimedia projects, as is the case with this initiative, is directly inline with the current strategy direction and expectatives of the Movement.- Darwin Ahoy! 00:48, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support It is great to see the development of these kind of activities with such an interesting goal. I would like to learn the outcomes of this project in order to do the same in my country. Plus, it is also nice to know that there is a developing group in Guatemala, which is something that some of Latin America chapters and user groups have been looking forward to (as in expecting for Central America to be more involved within the wide movement), as it brings more new voices, especially from historically marginalized groups as indigenous people. --Edjoerv (talk) 09:44, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support A great project that will enrich the diversity in the Wikimedia community and, at the same time, it will serve as a kickoff for Wikipedia en the Kaqchikel language. Pablísima (talk) 18:00, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support I support this project. I have been supporting this group of users for six months and have seen their commitment and interest to create a Wikipedia in their language. I consider that there are all the necessary elements so that with this small support they can successfully achieve the strengthening of the Wikipedia version in Kaqchiquel.--Zapoteco diiste (talk) 15:42, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Support It is very important to achieve our goal of working of diversity to develop more programs and activities in native languages and in countries where very few wikipedians are working. Millars (talk) 21:15, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Oppose Thanks for the proposal, it's very valuable the work behind more languages in the movement. I will give my endorsement after some questions in the Discussion to this proposal, because I see some high the amount for a first time grantee. Best, ProtoplasmaKid (WM-MX) (talk) 17:07, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
  •   Strong support I support this project because I think it is important to have articles in kaqchikel in Wikipedia since it is one of the most spoken and written Mayan languages in the country. Also, as part of the Editatonas that we made in Guatemala since the call of WikifemHack we know that it is very difficult to have the support of organizations, individuals or institutions to this type of projects due to the ignorance about how Wikipedia works and its ways of contributing to the content. I also believe that if we do not start giving opportunities to new projects things are always the same and do not change. It is necessary to support new initiatives so that they can help streghten Wikipedia, and especially WikiWuj.(Marchcibergt)
  •   Oppose I am really happy to see initiatives to support the development of projects in indigenous languages. However, I do not think there is a balance between the amount requested and the goals expected. If the costs are slimmed down and the goals adjusted to reality, I would give my support then. Maor X (talk) 06:29, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
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