Grants:Project/Yorg/Wiki Loves Africa 2017
This project is funded by a Project Grant
| proposal | people | timeline & progress | finances | midpoint report | final report |
Project idea edit
What is the problem you're trying to solve? edit
What problem are you trying to solve by doing this project? This problem should be small enough that you expect it to be completely or mostly resolved by the end of this project. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
- low amount of visual, contemporary coverage of Africa on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects
- low visibility and understanding of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in Africa
- low figures of participation to Wikimedia projects from Africa
What is your solution? edit
For the problem you identified in the previous section, briefly describe your how you would like to address this problem. We recognize that there are many ways to solve a problem. We’d like to understand why you chose this particular solution, and why you think it is worth pursuing. Remember to review [Grants:Project/Tutorial|the tutorial]] for tips on how to answer this question.
m:Wiki Loves Africa (WLAf) is an annual, two month contest that takes place in fall/winter and is run across the continent. Wiki Loves Africa encourages the ‘crowd’ contribution of local knowledge of heritage, and community cultural profiles for the participating countries through entering media (photographs, video and audio) about their environment onto Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikimedia projects. Wiki Loves Africa particularly encourages participants to contribute media that illustrate a specific theme for that year.
Each year the theme changes and could include any such universal, visually rich and culturally specific topics (for example, markets, rites of passage, festivals, public art, cuisine, natural history, urbanity, daily life, notable persons, etc). In 2014 the theme was Cuisine. In 2015 the theme was Cultural Fashion and Adornment. The theme for 2016 was Dance and Music.
Although the project is run at the continental level, some specific actions (training, communications, events, local juries and prize giving, etc.) are held by chosen countries with national organisers.
Wiki Loves Africa's goals and intentions are to:
- Draw attention to, and increase the coverage of, content relating to Africa on the Wikimedia projects.
- Introduce the benefits of, and ability to, contribute to Wikimedia Common to new communities.
- Support new volunteer communities as they work together around an important local project.
- Reward people for contributing the right kind of material to Wikimedia projects.
- Engender pride in local heritages, traditions, cultures and communities across Africa.
The aim of the Wiki Loves Africa project is to provide support for national organisers, and organise the continental layer of WLA. This is done by the continental project team. The goals of the continental team are to:
- Assure the practicability and the legality of the contest.
- Liaise with Wikimedia community to ensure smooth running of the project.
- Support the local teams as they work with local communities and photographers to submit their entries.
- Provide the right frame work and structure to ensure that there is a high level of accountability from the volunteer groups.
- Assure a minimum number of pictures and media that are of high quality.
- Highlight the contest, the events and teams, its result and enhance the communication around all aspects of the contest.
The Wiki Loves Africa project support the key organisational objectives of the Wikimedia Foundation by:
- driving awareness in African countries of Wikipedia as a resource,
- creating galvanising events around which active Wikipedians can work together in each country,
- lowering barriers for contribution by ordinary people across Africa,
- providing guidelines to ensure quality submissions,
- reaching out to professional photographers to ensure quality photos are submitted,
- encouraging local people to contribute, it engenders more trust in our projects by people in developing countries suspicious of "Western" influence,
- creating sustainable processes from the beginning to ensure longevity of this project
- providing a large amount of previously unavailable high-quality culturally specific material on a universal practice
- by ensuring that all material relating to each theme encompasses all aspects of the theme, the material from places across the continent will display and illustrate very specific and subtle differences across Africa
Project goals edit
What are your goals for this project? Your goals should describe the top two or three benefits that will come out of your project. These should be benefits to the Wikimedia projects or Wikimedia communities. They should not be benefits to you individually. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
Wiki Loves Africa is an annual contest, and yet every year we make sure that new elements, that has been raised by the teams, jurors, participants, or from the experience of managing the project, is added and attempted. Some of the elements we want to work on this year are listed below. However, this year, we propose that additional work is done in three specific ways that require the direct involvement of the continental team.
1. Pre-selected theme and extension of the contest's effectiveness edit
The pre-selected theme Over the past 2 years, the theme has been selected by the community. This year, as the Wiki Loves Women project is not being funded by the WMF, we are going to be bold ... and suggest the following theme: People at Work.
Competition scope: The theme calls for photographs, videos and audio files that document all manner of occupations undertaken across the continent. This would cover the full gamut of occupations – formal or informal, contemporary or ancient, business-oriented or creative. There will be a special prize that will be concentrated on visually capturing women working, and another that illustrates rare, fading or threatened traditional craft, styles or ways of working.
More context may be found here in a few pages:
- A really cool tool made by Envel after a conference Anthere gave about Africa and women, based on her suspicion that we mostly had biographies about movie artist and sport women : http://tools.dicare.org/gaps/gender.php
- Explanation about the tool : https://www.lehir.net/a-tool-to-estimate-gender-gap-on-wikidata-and-wikipedia/
- And category tree ... : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_at_work_by_occupation
Of course, we would not limit the contest just to women. Images of men at work, women at work, transgendered at work, children at work (unfortunately) etc. would be welcome.
Ensuring the on-wiki impact of the theme Part of the frustration of the WLA project is that it takes a while for the images that are contributed to the Wiki Loves Africa competitions to be integrated into Wikimedia projects. We propose to extend the theme by holding an online event (a writing contest, image placement drive, and perhaps a translation drive) related to the content collected. Each year the teams are asked to motivate for their inclusion as a country team. This year, we will expect them to come up with a list of more than 30 key occupations that should be covered that are specific to their culture or region.
2. A formal process to collaborate closer with professional photographer clubs edit
The past three years, Georges (in Cameroon) has successfully worked with professional photographers. But the extent of their collaboration is hampered by the fact they do not easily see the benefits of their participation. We propose to work with Georges to make it clear the benefits and to document the type of relationships a UserGroup might have with professional photographers. The outcome is likely to be a leaflet, a pilot process in Cameroon and a summarized set of guidelines for other groups.
===3. Seeding beyond the existing UserGroups===
The African community base is still too small – we need new blood. We propose to work with the current known teams to use Wiki Loves Africa to actively expand their communities, and to grow new seeds from which we hope a new community would emerge. Although we have seen Wiki Loves Africa grow and strengthen communities before – one example is Tanzania – this is an uncharted territory. Given the very small African community, we think it is worth trying to expand other countries. To do so, we will rely on contacts we have made over time through other WikiAfrica projects. We wish this to be a more structured process that will be documented.
Project impact edit
How will you know if you have met your goals? edit
For each of your goals, we’d like you to answer the following questions:
- During your project, what will you do to achieve this goal? (These are your outputs.) Here are some example answers to this question.
- After your project is over, how will it continue to affect the Wikimedia projects or community? (These are your outcomes.) Here are some example answers to this question.
For each of your answers, think about how you will capture this information. Will you capture it with a survey? With a story? Will you measure it with a number? Remember, if you plan to measure a number, you will need to set a numeric target in your proposal (e.g. 45 people, 10 articles, 100 scanned documents). Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
- Uploaded media figures, retention of new users, reuse of pictures... will be made available through the usual tools used by the Wikimedia community
- Tracking of events will be done on a google document post contest, with a call for contributions from all participating countries
- Tracking of satisfaction is done through a survey sent to participating countries at the end of the contest
- Additional information (such as list of improvements etc.) will be made available in a post-mortem document
You can find reports for the previous two years here:
- Grants:PEG/Africa Centre/Wiki Loves Africa 2015/Report and c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2014/Results and best practices
- Grants:PEG/Africa Centre/Wiki Loves Africa 2014/Report and c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2015/Results and best practices
- still draft, but nearly final: Grants:PEG/Yorg/Wiki Loves Africa 2016/Report and Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2016/Results and best practices
Do you have any goals around participation or content? edit
Preliminary notes
The contest welcomes media that is related to the theme from all African countries (‘’and’’ relevant media submitted from outside of the geographical boundaries of Africa). The term media includes photographs, videos and audio representations that are theme relevant and from all over Africa. The media can be entered into the contest as long as they own the copyright for this media. Experienced Wikimedia groups are encouraged to apply separately to take part in WLA through the WMF rapid grants process. Their results are not included in the measures for success below; although the meta goals do include them. The WLA-funded groups are identified as NTs for the purpose of this grant application.
Goals and measures of success indicated below are preliminary. Evaluation planning prior to contest will be done and additional measures for success might emerge.
Goals for success of the meta Competition”
Note: this is dependent on the effort and enthusiasm of those groups applying for Rapid Grants, and therefore are not measure of success.
- A growth of 10% in the number of media entries in 2018 compared to 2017
- An increase of 10% in the number of uploaders in 2018 compared to 2017
- At least 5 experienced Wikimedia communities successfully apply for Rapid Grants to be part of the contest
- Reuse on Wikimedia projects of at least 10% after a year
Measures of success for the Continental project team
- A grant request is accepted successfully, a results and best practices document compiled, and a report is submitted.
- Evaluation planning prior to contest done, in collaboration with the WMF
- Minimum of 4 countries to join the contest as NTs
- Develop documentation of best practices to support volunteer involvement where it seems useful to support, based on realities of context, driven by needs of participants
- The prizes are handed out before end of May 2018, with a possible exception for travel-related prizes.
- A sound local expenses reporting system has been set up, allowing timely tracking of budgeted versus documented for each NT and public reporting at the end of the project.
- At least one online post event meant to extend the theme
- A survey is conducted among NTs, showing high levels of satisfaction with the continental project team (average of ~4 on a five-point Lickert scale).
Project plan edit
Activities edit
Tell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing? What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project?
The project is organised by a continental project team who:
- Conduct meta-level context organization of the competition Wiki Loves Africa
- Assists and supports the national teams (with a specific focus on less established teams) and invite volunteers to participate in whatever ways are feasible and realistic in context
- Runs the continent-wide communications campaign,
- Organises the continental selection, the jury and the delivery of the prizes,
- Does evaluation planning, in consultation with and supported by WMF, to improve documentation and reporting of impact,
- Prints the winners poster and organises a continental exhibition at Wikimania and/or other Wikimedia conferences, and
- Runs at least one online post-contest event to extend the effectiveness of the theme
Project management and administration edit
- Build/maintain the Commons central infrastructure(s) for the contest
- Setting out a clear timeline for the Wiki Loves Africa competition
- Develop documentation of best practices to support volunteer involvement where it seems useful to support, based on realities of context, driven by needs of participants
- Create communication systems for reports and evaluation metrics
- Working with the WMF on evaluation planning for storytelling around impact
- Monitor statistics and competition entries
- Track analytics of social media campaign
- Evaluate the meta project and competition (using information we have gathered from less experienced groups, and what is available via reports from any countries taking part via rapid grants mechanisms)
- Provide feedback to the community
- Apply for funding to support the competition
- Build and operate financial structure and control
- Financial reporting and governance
Support to National Organisers edit
For those supported within the continental project (known for purposes of this grant application as NT)
- Support NT organisers as needed
- Share coordinated communications campaign and materials
- Support and disseminate local social media and crowdfunding campaigns
- Track and support financial accountability and submission of receipts and project cost reports
- Track the application of initiative to local context, reviewing the lists of more than 30 key occupations
For those transitioning and applying to take part of it via rapid grants (known for purposes of this grant application as RG countries)
- Available to answer questions from applicants to the Rapid Grants
- Suggest what activities to include in rapid grant to make their project a success
- Participate in check-ins with WMF staff to make sure the transition is supporting appropriate growth and learning opportunities
- Inclusion in meta communications, including calls, requests, key milestone information, etc.
- All communications materials created/updated and shared
Communication edit
- Create a strong and simple social media driven campaign to reach people internationally and locally
- Prepare material such as leaflets, posters and press releases that can be used and/or built on by national organisations
- Specifically this year, creation of a generic leaflet for teams to facilitate the outreach work of the team and enable a short introduction of the Competition to local partners, funders, etc.
- Connect with continental press as needed
- Identify major influencers (blogs, thought leaders, Facebook / twitter leaders)
- Maintain communication with international partners including relevant staff at Wikimedia Foundation
- Improve database of press contacts
- Communicate post-contest during Wikimedia events
Competition and prizes edit
- Setup and rollout the international contest
- Implement communications campaign to continental press and stakeholders
- Create a bot to send a welcome and thank you all participants with suggestions on what else they can do to get other people to see their photos
- Create process and guidelines on how to best involve professional photographers group, based on a pilot in Cameroon
- Improvement of the site notice system with the help of the WMF’s advancement team
- Create a bot to assist with category clean-up of the images submitted
- Set up jury processes to select best images
- Find suitable jury members for the continental jury
- Support the jury in their process, maintain timeline
- Dissemination of results
- Provide and distribute prizes and awards to winners
- Inclusion of a country-based reward or “Country Cup” for the highest percentage of reused images submitted by a country (the 2017 competition will announce the 2016 images used)
- Conduct an image placement drive post contest to encourage integration of images into Wikimedia projects
National teams in focus countries edit
For the 2017 contest, a new model with regards to the National Teams is being tried. The more established Wikimedia groups that have taken part in Wiki Loves Africa will, if they wish to take part in the contest, apply for support to the Wikimedia Foundation's Rapid Grants programme. There are less established groups that the continental team will continue to support.
All teams that take part in the competition (whether WLA supported teams or Rapid grant teams) are responsible for driving communications and social media around their involvement in the competition. They will act as the spokespeople in their country, and will host training, upload and wiki-takes events during the competition period. They will be asked to suggest judges for the continental team. The WLA supported teams will be expected to organize post-contest event to incorporate the photos into relevant Wikipedia articles and Wikimedia projects - it is strongly suggested that Rapid grant teams do the same.
The contest will operate in all African countries. However, special attention and support will be offered by those countries that are keen to create events. Previous host countries have included Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia, Tanzania, and Uganda. There were 10 national teams for Wiki Loves Africa 2016; these are Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
Learning from former WLAs edit
The team will naturally take into account lessons learned from Wiki Loves Africa 2014, Wiki Loves Africa 2015 and Wiki Loves Africa 2016.
(See c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2014/Results and best practices and c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2015/Results and best practices).
The list below summarises the areas that we are going to focus on or consider this year. This will be informed by consultative session conducted with the community at Wiki Indaba in Jan 2017:
- Create a bot to send a welcome and thank you all participants with suggestions on what else they can do to get other people to see their photos.
- Create a bot to assist with category clean-up of the images submitted.
- Set the theme earlier and inform possible teams so they can engage with their communities to catch local theme-relevant events, displays, or festivals that are not within the competition period.
- Creation of a generic leaflet for teams to facilitate the outreach work of the team and enable a short introduction of the Competition to local partners, funders, etc.
- Improvement of the site notice system with the help of the WMF’s advancement team
- Increasing the scale of the communication around the voting on the Community prize
- Inclusion of a country-based reward or “Country Cup” for the highest percentage of reused images submitted by a country (the 2017 competition will announce the 2016 images used)
Budget edit
How you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. (You can create a table later if needed.) Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!
- Project budget table
| # | Category | Item description | Unit | # of units | Unit price in US dollars | Currency | Budget 2017 | Comment |
| 1 | Project Staffing | Co-project manager - FR | months | 7 | 1,600.00 | USD | 11,200.00 | at EURO 1500 |
| 1 | Project Staffing | Co-project manager - ENG | months | 7 | 1,000.00 | USD | 7,000.00 | |
| 1 | Project Staffing | Administration | general cost | 1 | USD | Elisabeth Coye (finances) & Christine (documentation/translation). Providing accountability and transparency and skills transfer. Ensuring that more people understand the project. | ||
| 2 | Communication | Design, identity and communication | per item | 1 | 1,000.00 | USD | 1,000.00 | 2017 colour palette and new theme applied to: website, emailer, leaflet, stickers, posters + a generic leaflet for the teams + the final winners poster |
| 3 | In-country actions | Covers all events and printing of required communications materials | per country | 1,000.00 | USD | This covers all the expenses tied up with the the in-country actions. It includes, but is not limited to, all events, "advertising" travel costs and printing of communications materials. | ||
| 4 | Prizes | Continental prizes x 4 (photo-related vouchers, photo safari, devices, etc.) | general cost | 1 | USD | 1st = 600 US, 2nd = 400 US; 3rd + organisers prize = 300 US each + US200 smaller prices / final event + US200 power packs to cup winners | ||
| 4 | Prizes | Prize winners printed and posted | general cost | 1 | 200.00 | USD | 200.00 | |
| 5 | Judges / Sponsors | Thank you goodies and postage | general cost | 1 | 200.00 | USD | 200.00 | |
| 6 | Financial costs | Money transfers | per transfer | 50.00 | USD | |||
| 7 | Additional elements | Contingency | general cost | USD | ||||
| 7 | Additional elements | Hosting cost | general cost | 5% of the budget | USD | |||
| totals |
Notes: These are pure financial costs and do not include in-kind support that is provided to the National Teams by local organisations, networks, non-profits and cultural missions (specifically the Goethe-Institut) that - where possible - provide event spaces and connectivity.
- Total cost of project
- USD 38 146 30,673.00
- Total amount requested from the Project and Event Grants program
- USD
38 14630,673.00
Non-financial requirements from WMF edit
- Requests for non-financial assistance, if any
- We might need support in getting trademark agreements in place for local organisers where appropriate (but never needed that in the past 3 years)
- There will be a need to use the CentralNotice in all African countries - this will be discussed through the regular channels
- Support was provided about the banner in 2016 and was appreciated. Further support in 2017 welcome
- Some assistance with statistics for reporting would be brilliant
- Visibility on WMF communication channels (eg, WMF blog etc.)
- Transfer of ownership of the Wiki Loves Africa (http://www.wikilovesafrica.org) website
Community engagement edit
Community input and participation helps make projects successful. How will you let others in your community know about your project? Why are you targeting a specific audience? How will you engage the community you’re aiming to serve during your project?
Target readership
- Primarily Wikimedia Commons. As a side effect, Wikipedia, WikiVoyage and Wikibooks are the most likely to be impacted.
- Languages impacted are primarily English, French and Arabic. We also hope that an indirect benefit would come to African languages as well.
Means for engagement
Get involved edit
Participants edit
Please use this section to tell us more about who is working on this project. For each member of the team, please describe any project-related skills, experience, or other background you have that might help contribute to making this idea a success.
Project leads edit
- user:anthere Florence Devouard - fdevouard
anthere · net - User:Islahaddow Isla Haddow-Flood - Isla wikiloveswomen · org
- User:Thanough Athanasios Priftis thanasis.priftis ynternet · org
National Teams edit
- tbd once call has gone out
Grant Requestor: Ynternet.org edit
Ynternet.org Foundation was created in 1998 on the invitation of Swiss Confederation to facilitate, identify and promote new learning culture within digital environments. In 2006 it changed its status from association to foundation, as an independent body within civil society. Based in the university campus of Battelle (Geneva, Switzerland), it is serving public interest in multilateral projects and private-public partnership. 60-80 contributors each year, including experts, social entrepreneurs and volunteers, are contributing to Ynternet.org mission of promoting responsible behaviours in digital environment. Yorg has been successfully audited for its activities (2013 - 2015), at European level, both as coordinator and partner on two separate EU projects.
Note: Ynternet.org was the Wiki Loves Africa Host Organization in 2016.
Additional resources edit
Various people have been of tremendous help in 2016 and will be involved again (we hope !), such as
- Ji-Elle, content category master
- User:Romaine, tech support for the site notice
- Elisabeth, secretary and financial administration
- Cwelthagen, translation support and administrative category clean-up
- user:African Hope and User:CivBot for bot actions
- Wikimedia UK and Wikimedia FR for communication and networking purposes
- Wikipedian regular jury members such as User:Dyolf77 and new jury volunteers
- User:Seddon for optimal design and testing of site notices
- The guys at Montage for the set up and facilitation during the use of their jury tool
The project has already been run before, in 2014, 2015 and 2016 (we build up on already existing foundations, improving the system each year)
Community notification edit
Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. You are responsible for notifying relevant communities of your proposal, so that they can help you! Depending on your project, notification may be most appropriate on a Village Pump, talk page, mailing list, etc. Need notification tips?
- Email will be sent out to the African Wikimedians list
- Information will be twitted and facebooked
Endorsements edit
Do you think this project should be selected for a Project Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project below! (Other constructive feedback is welcome on the discussion page).
- Wiki Loves Africa has proven to open up African culture and tradition. It has also being a source of local content in Africa and the project has helped build the Wikimedia community in Africa Kayusyussuf (talk) 20:17, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
Support Touzrimounir (talk) 20:05, 22 March 2017 (UTC)- Endorse Excellent proposal. Both Anthere and Isla are competent organizers with a great track record with African content who no doubt will do their best to ensure that this is as successful as possible. Note that if my own grant for Contest toolkits and prizes is approved I will be able to do a lot to reinforce this one with more contest designs to target different areas and topics for Africa, particularly contests which give prizes for distributing photographs taken into Wikipedia articles. I would be happy to help them, time permitting. I'm not sure when things are planned, but potentially what I have in mind could further reinforce the Wiki Loves Africa effort when it is run, providing this would be welcome from Anthere and Isla. Dr. Blofeld (talk) 09:45, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
- Support After 3 success edition, WLA had became like an institutional contest of African Commonist Papischou (talk) 10:11, 06 April 2017 (UTC)
- Support This contest together with WikiIndaba is a good channel to bring people from the continent together working for an African knowledge base. And obviously something that motivates people to learn about and join the open knowledge movement. I am in favour of a choice of topics with regard towards usability on wikipedia articles.Kipala (talk) 13:22, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
- Support Owula kpakpo (talk) 16:08, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
- Support AminouT Another opportunity not only to show case Africa's rich culture and heritage, but also get more people involved in Wikimedia projects and encouraging new editors.AminouT (talk) 11:05, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
- Support Artista Poetica (talk) This project has over the years made available various forms of documentation on Africa's rich cultural heritage, and this goes a long way to compliment various Wikimedia projects. 12:45, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
- Support After 3 years, this project has more than proven itself to be a success story. I'm in total support for another one!!Jamie Tubers (talk) 11:36, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
- Support As always, a great opportunity to make Africa live on Wikipedia Geugeor (talk) 10:19, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
- Support i participated to this contest three time, and I want to participate next time, and I am waiting for the topic of the next year Ovva olfa (talk) 20:06, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
- Support Africa, lacking enough documentation on various aspects of its existence on Wikipedia, this is an amazing project to fill the gap by participants all over Africa documenting about their continent (culture, nature, notable women, cities, countries etc...) on Wikipedia in various languages. I deeply endorse this idea whole heartedly. Alangi derick (talk) 20:43, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
