Grants talk:IdeaLab/Nattes à chat/Let's fill the gender gap through community building

Latest comment: 7 years ago by Joalpe in topic Questions by Joalpe

October 11 Proposal Deadline: Reminder to change status to 'proposed' edit

The deadline for Project Grant submissions this round is October 11th, 2016. To submit your proposal, you must (1) complete the proposal entirely, filling in all empty fields, and (2) change the status from "draft" to "proposed." As soon as you’re ready, you should begin to invite any communities affected by your project to provide feedback on your proposal talkpage. If you have any questions about finishing up or would like to brainstorm with us about your proposal, there are still two proposal help sessions before the deadlne in Google Hangouts:

Warm regards,
Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:16, 6 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

Not yet eligible, round 2 2016 edit

 

Hi Nattes à chat. Please note your proposal is not yet eligible for funding because you have an overdue grant report for Let's fill the gender gap workshops. This report must be complete and submitted (with documentation of expenses) by the 28th of October in order to be eligible for committee review. Committee scoring starts 2 November 2016. Please let us know when you will be able to submit the report.

Questions? Contact us.

Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 14 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

Eligibility reminder edit

Hi Nattes_à_chat. This is just a reminder that we will need your final grant report for Let's fill the gender gap by October 28th in order for you to be eligible for this round of Project Grants. I understand the team may be having some issues calculating the metrics. If that is the case, you can submit the report and expense documentation and we can fix the metrics later. Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 27 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

Grant final report edit

Hi Alex, I have done my best and hope this will do, although I did have a hard time on the metrics and ended up on Gabrielle's kind advice pasting WMCH's report. I will fix the spelling mistakes tomorrow, I thought the most urgent was the financial report. I sent you the copies of the invoices by mail. Kind regards, --Nattes à chat (talk) 02:16, 28 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2016 edit

 

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2016 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2016 begins on 2 November 2016, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 28 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

first project feedback edit

Please note that we allready have started the project although we did not have your response. I personnally cannot do it without having part of the work being paid because I am a lone mother. For the room we have found a solution for the time being; gathering at the cafeteria seems to be ok for the moment for everybody. We have wifi access and access to food, coffee ect. For the moment we are paying ourselves for the catering, but is not sustainable.

We have had our first meeting with EPFL and HES_SO to possibly have another set of workshops in september 2017.

All our activities are documented here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Les_sans_pagEs, we try to put photos each time.

And before I forget, we have started being active on the English wiki as well, as there are quite a lot of expats here in Switzerland. This is what one of our new contributors wrote on her user page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lllavalll

twitter https://twitter.com/lessanspagEs --Nattes à chat (talk) 17:11, 2 November 2016 (UTC)Reply

Questions by Joalpe edit

Hello. Thank you for submitting this proposal, that tackles the strategic goal within our community of improving female participation and filling the gender gap in our projects. I have some questions.

  1. Considering your report from last year activity, I was negatively surprised by the lack of involvement/support from the 63 participants that you were able to have in the previous set of activities. Were they reached out? Are they aware this new proposal is being considered? How would you explain this lack of involvement/support? What would you do differently so that there is a stronger continuity between what you have achieved last year and what you expect to achieve this year?

The 63 participants are waiting for a concrete proposal and some have expressed interest in continuing. The goal is to keep some of them editing, and also to attract other senior contibutors to the project. This is already ongoing and 23 participants are producing more than 50 articles per month (you can have a look at the project page). I would not say there is lack of involvement: I have been told that a retention rate of 5% is considered normal and we have achieved more than that online. Creating a community is different : it involves re-mobilizing people who participated in a workshop and never considered continuing in the long run to participate to some sort of project. However, 3 participants of the workshop in HES_SO are having us back again in the Valais Canton to run two other workshops over two week-ends. This will happen in March. HP has had us in for a one afternoon workshop on the english wikipedia.

  1. Previous questions are important, since I have the sense that what you are expecting to accomplish this year is not really different from what you expected to achieve last year, even though the sum that is being requested is way more substantial. I understand that this higher funding is being justified by the lack of support for accommodation. Why wasn't it possible to guarantee this support this time?

We do not want to achieve the same thing: last year, we were asking newbies to learn and produce one article. This year we want to create a community meeting regularly and producing articles related to women to fill the gender gap, establishing stronger contacts with the wikipedian contributors. We have started allready without funding, but this will not work without funding in the long run, as last year, I underestimated the costs in terms of time and personnal involvement. We were paid a 10% fee or salary throughout the year, but put much more in the project otherwise it would not have worked (my extensive report in french states an volunteering engagement for each person equivalent to a 30% job in terms of hours). Furthermore, I have used my personal finance to pay the transport to other wikipedian / wikimedian events, and this was essential to get support in order to obtain sustainability. Likewise, the press coverage included travels to Paris that were not reimbursed or covered and that contributed to make the project a success.I cannot do that every year, last year it was covered by a temporary engagement of the University of Geneva which increases me financial possibilities. Now I am looking for other institutions (have allready found two) but this takes a tremendous amount of time, and I am a monoparental family with 3 children. This is part of the gender gap problem: women have less time to devote as volunteers,and they statistically earn less in average.

  1. What are potential risks of this project? Could you please expand your understanding of sustainability? You are clearly expecting to scale up, so you should think through a bit more about your strategic compass point, which involves assessing risks and working on how to make these initiatives more sustainable and eventually independent on WMF funding. Community building per se might be a good occasion for exchange and interactions, but it is not a project on its own, IMHO.
 This is the way we would like to attain sustainability in the long run: continue to propose workshops and have them paid to an association that is now being created which will cover as much future costs as possible. We have met EPFL one month ago with Otarie69 and are speaking of running workshops with HES_SO and EPFL in Lausanne (last year was Geneva). other modalities of integration with the University of Geneva are being discussed. Last year we collaborated with the service of equal opportunity: they do not have funding for operations that do not strictly concern quality of chances within the university in the long run. I am negociating with two departments to find another anchorage.  All these projects are time consuming, and in order to run them properly, we need funding in the first phase.

The risk of the project is that so much volunteer work is needed to start the process, that if we do not address the costs that were underestimated last year, it might not function in the long run. There is tremendous resistance to women and filling the gender gap in the movement, and last year's success also meant that we lost LaMèreVeille, who decided it was too much volunteer work for a woman with a family and responsibilities. To be able to organize ourselves with our children during the launching phase (it requires a lot of administratives chores, responding to questions, finding new institutions, looking for funding, engaging with senior contributors).

  1. You have submitted two different grant requests, focusing on the same general agenda, that s, filling the gender gap. Why was this your option, since you could have worked on one larger proposal?

The two grants are not functioning at the same level. One is about community building in a very localized way, the second one is more about providing online resources in French for non sexist language, which will contribute to develop an atmosphere of inclusivity towards gender gap issues.

  1. Let me congratulate you on media outreach from last year's report! Are you considering a strategy to keep up with this previous success? Could you please precise your communications strategy, since I believe there might be a learning potential here for our community?

Such media outreach was achieved through travelling and networking, as well as using own resources and network (I have had a digital strategy diploma), and the network of the institutions in which the workshops were happening. WMCH and UNIGE also helped a lot on this aspect. I keep being contacted now by journalists on the subject of the gender gap (there was an article last week here:https://usbeketrica.com/article/wikipedia-ou-le-monde-sans-femmes. If we continue having the les sans pagEs project running with nine presence and promotion, the press coverage will continue. The press coverage is due to the fact that I participate to other projects like the French Wikimooc. Wikimedians and wikipedias have got to know me after one year and do send me the journalist when they have questions related to the gender gap. This would never have happened had I not participated to Wikimania, Wikiconventtion, the Wikimooc, Art & Feminism and workshops in Paris. I would never have had the necessary support from the community, had I not reached to meet them in person. This cannot be done only in the swiss region: there is for the moment not enough local events, and our project is the only one offering such an opportunity in Geneva close to the French frontier, with a possibility to bridge gaps in the francophone community. This is why I insist on having the travel costs included this year in the project: this year I went once 8 times to Paris (cost 200 euros each time), once to Lyon, to Digne and to Tours. each time I gather knowledge and tools to bring back to the local communities, as well as precious advices. I look forward to hearing from you. --Joalpe (talk) 15:16, 6 November 2016 (UTC)Reply

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Let's fill the gender gap through community building edit

Scoring rubric Score
(A) Impact potential
  • Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both?
  • Does it have the potential for online impact?
  • Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?
5.5
(B) Community engagement
  • Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often?
  • Does it have community support?
5.4
(C) Ability to execute
  • Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe?
  • Is the budget realistic/efficient ?
  • Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?
5.0
(D) Measures of success
  • Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success?
  • Are they realistic?
  • Can they be measured?
5.5
Additional comments from the Committee:
  • Well aligned with the priorities and ideals from Wikimedia movement. There are a great opportunities to be replicated or adapted in other countries.
  • Fits with priorities to increase participation and improve coverage. It's nice to see a focus on retention/support of new editors but I have concerns that the project cannot be sustained with WMF funding. Little attention has been given to the question of sustainability by the applicant, which is all the more worrying because this is their second grant request.
  • The idea of continuous engagement with previously trained participants is a great way to avoid volunteer burnout.
  • There is no sustainability with such targets of attraction and retention
  • This proposal is in tune with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. Online impact appears to be low compared with costs and risks. Sustainability is not central to the project, since even the connection with previous initiative by the same proponent and group was not sufficiently successful.
  • The metrics to be measured need to be improved; there are few ways to fail the project.
  • Measures of success could be more specific on what hoping to achieve. The proposal includes quite a bit of travel - it mentions the importance of linking local communities to other projects and describes this a "key to fostering engagement" but I am unaware of other initiatives that have demonstrated the impact of this.
  • The outcome is easily measurable however most of the goals are more qualitative than quantitative.
  • Terribly low targets: 5% retention and 10 users aren't justifying 18k USD
  • This is an iterative activity. Based on previous report, capacity of developing a communications strategy is impressive. This proposal lacks clarity, and there is no risk assessment. Given the fact that the previous initiative appears to have failed in establishing a community of users, I think risk assessment was key here.
  • It seems reasonable to be accomplished.
  • Budget is quite high and includes a few unnecessary items. For one, I don't really see the value of including travel activities. I would also like to see more details on how the staffing costs have been calculated; they seem quite high for running a regular monthly meetup.
  • Considering their past activities in related area, I think the team will do a good job on this. However I am not convinced on the need to travel and meet other communities as explained in the budget, whereas similar impact could be created with locals in switzerland.
  • Budget is excessive: I don't see any change in value for money compared to prior year but budget increased seriously. I also don't see significant difference between duties of project manager and community organizer: There is no information about workload that could help to understand why 2 paid employees are needed
  • Feasible project. Budget appears to be too high compared to what is expected to be achieved. Much higher than previous year.
  • There is a good level of community support and volunteering.
  • Nice to see support from WMCH but not really any endorsements from people who participated in the last project.
  • The project has been extensively discussed and has some players in gender related issues supporting it.
  • Target community exists but I see no serious support: low retention rates do confirm it
  • Given the project’s engagement with two of the most well-resourced chapters, is it possible for this project to be resourced through those chapters, rather than via the Foundation?
  • Low community support, considering that this is the second event by the same person and group.
  • It's not completely clear to me whether the first project (Let's fill the gender gap Workshops) was a success or not; it seems some gains were made in adding content and there was a lot of good press coverage. The biggest issue seemed to be with retaining new participants and so I think it's good then that this project recognizes that shortcoming. However, the budget is quite high and I fail to see the connection between retention and things like t-shirts, travel to nearby wiki communities, and a new venue for meetups. Before supporting this, I would also want to see the grantee give much more thought to the long-term sustainability of the community.
  • Inclined not to fund. In my opinion, the results are too low compared with the investment.
  • I will support this project only if the cost of travel out of Switzerland is reconsidered. A meeting with local Wikimedians in swiss seems better.
  • I would have agreed with prior year funding but with seriously increased targets: they need to work on their approach to increase retention
  • Budget is too high: admin role is not paid position; The line in the budget named "Communication" ends with Tshirts which is confusing; Travel costs are too high, too much traveling around.
  • This proposal is not robustly grounded on strategizing community building. It has great potential, but should be worked on. Inclined not to support this proposal-in-progress.
 

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.


Next steps:

  1. Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page.
  2. Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on Thursday, May 27, 2021.
Questions? Contact us at projectgrants   wikimedia  · org.


Responding to the aggregate comments of the Projetc Grants Committee edit

Well aligned with the priorities and ideals from Wikimedia movement. There are a great opportunities to be replicated or adapted in other countries.

  • 1) Fits with priorities to increase participation and improve coverage. It's nice to see a focus on retention/support of new editors but I have concerns that the project cannot be sustained with WMF funding. Little attention has been given to the question of sustainability by the applicant, which is all the more worrying because this is their second grant request.

We are currently creating an association with last year's participants. The adhesion fee will be low. The idea is that we will provide workshops to firms ans institution using the model we used (and that was successful) for the University of Geneva and HES_SO last year. A discussion with departments of continued education of two major institutions (HES_SO, EPFL and UNIGE) is ongoing. You can have a look at what |||Lazarus||| posted today as community organizer. The first workshops are planned for Septembler. We are also intervening in firms and public entities: we had a session in HP through the WIN conference.

  • 2)The idea of continuous engagement with previously trained participants is a great way to avoid volunteer burnout.

Burnout is a question that needs to be addressed: women have in average less time to participate in volunteering projects, so there should be an active policy compensating for this. I f we want to attract more women we need to counter balance this by positive incentives for women who do launch projects until they find their way to sustainability.

  • 3)There is no sustainability with such targets of attraction and retention

We have already achieved the 5 % retention rate at this point (just look at the endorsement coming from last year's workshops: Mapomge, 89.82.91.11, Chelseagirl79, RosaSchnabeltier, ***Makita Angela***, |||Lazarus|||, Otarie69 all come from last year's project.The IP is the director go UNIGE equal opportunity office (but she does not know how to contribute on wikipedia, so she could not "sign"). Lazarus ordered one set of workshops last year (at the HES SO), and is currently negotiating another sery for september 2017 but on a much larger scale in joint cooperation with EPFL, one of the biggest and renowned engineering school in Switzerland..

  • 4)This proposal is in tune with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. Online impact appears to be low compared with costs and risks. Sustainability is not central to the project, since even the connection with previous initiative by the same proponent and group was not sufficiently successful.

This I think "connection with previous initiative by the same proponent and group was not sufficiently successful" is not quite true as I have explained above. Remember last years participant are still newbies. Some of them dont speak English, dont master interwiki interaction because they learned on the French Wiki. We cannot oblige them to endorse a grant on a wiki they do not master, and those who could do it have done it. Some of them are still in contact by e-mail, and continue interacting with us.3 Participants from the 3rd workshop sessions in HES_SO have asked us to come back in March in the Canton du Valais to organize a workshop over two week ends . We plan to reach out to all participants again if we obtain funding, because we cannot put that much volunteering work without financial compensation without risking too much in our personnal and professional lives.

  • 5)The metrics to be measured need to be improved; there are few ways to fail the project.

I would appreciate help on this subject: last year the metrics were mostly done by WMCH. We were told that the average retention rate on an event was 5 %, which is why we chose this figure.

  • 6)Measures of success could be more specific on what hoping to achieve. The proposal includes quite a bit of travel - it mentions the importance of linking local communities to other projects and describes this a "key to fostering engagement" but I am unaware of other initiatives that have demonstrated the impact of this.

Remember that Geneva is a town of 400 000 people: this means we cannot achieve the same numbers of active wikipedians in the region as a town like Paris. To be in contact with other wikipedians (and this aspect is very important is was key to our success: face to face meetings are important even in a virtual community) we need to travel. The swiss community is divided in 3 languages: it makes no sense to travel to Bern if you do not speak German or if you want to contribute only in French. It makes more sense to travel to Lyon or Grenoble, which are less than 250 km away.

  • 7)The outcome is easily measurable however most of the goals are more qualitative than quantitative.

I do not know how to measure concretely "community building". We have held an activity during the "mois du funeraire" which the participants found engaging and was supported by WMCH which funded the catering at the University Cafeteria. Results are reported here: Mois du Funéraire Geneva. We intend to continue participating to external events in other places but focusing on women's bio and won^men subject, thus bringing attention on the gender gap issues. This is why we need travel expenses to be funded.

  • 8)Terribly low targets: 5% retention and 10 users aren't justifying 18k USD

True, and this target is already met (look at the sans pages where we post most of the things we are doing) , so I think we could upgrade the targets.

  1. 10 % retention rate
  2. 20 active new users
  3. an average of 20 articles published by month
  4. engaging 20 senior wikipedians on the project by the end of the year (we have already achieved to have Yann to join us every monday and this is really useful. He was sent to us by WMCH (thank you Gabrielle) and has talked also about his own Wikisource project to scan university library books.
  5. 100 translated articles
  6. definig priorities for the French gender gap for next year
  • 9)This is an iterative activity. Based on previous report, capacity of developing a communications strategy is impressive. This proposal lacks clarity, and there is no risk assessment. Given the fact that the previous initiative appears to have failed in establishing a community of users, I think risk assessment was key here.

It seems reasonable to be accomplished. Budget is quite high and includes a few unnecessary items. For one, I don't really see the value of including travel activities. I would also like to see more details on how the staffing costs have been calculated; they seem quite high for running a regular monthly meetup. Considering their past activities in related area, I think the team will do a good job on this. However I am not convinced on the need to travel and meet other communities as explained in the budget, whereas similar impact could be created with locals in switzerland. As I have explained above, Switzerland is divided in 3 language community and Geneva is a "small town" of 400 000 people. There is at the moment not a lot of regular wikipedian meetings, ours is the only regular one opened to anybody running on a weekly basis 8we have already started even though we are not receiving funding). To interact and participate to events, we have to travel, and it makes more sense to travel to Lyon (there is an event this week end at the National Library that is of interest to the https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Les_sans_pagEs#Samedi_3_d.C3.A9cembre_:_.22Cherchez_la_femme.22_.C3.A0_Lyon_avec_la_cabale_lyonnaise_et_la_BNL.

  • 10)Budget is excessive: I don't see any change in value for money compared to prior year but budget increased seriously. I also don't see significant difference between duties of project manager and community organizer: There is no information about workload that could help to understand why 2 paid employees are needed

The swiss hourly rate is exensive. Last year Gabrielle from WMCH told us that an hourly rate of 80 chf per hour was what was asked for a community coordinator and that this figure was endorsed by WMF. Our hourly rate is lower (50chf). Last year it was relay hard work to finish the project (I have worked at a rate of 35 % throughout the year on this project and only 10 % was paid. I paid all my travels to France and Bern, and this strained my personal finances. As a consequence I was very tired, and one of the volunteer quit saying it was time consuming). This is why this year I put all this down, because it was not assessed last year, coming from the fact that it was my first project and I had no any other experience. These figures are realistic, but do not need to be all funded by WMF: I have put down all that will be needed to conduct the project in the most ideal context.

  • 11)Feasible project. Budget appears to be too high compared to what is expected to be achieved. Much higher than previous year.

Please look at the answer above, which responds to this comment concerning budget. There is a good level of community support and volunteering.

  • 12)Nice to see support from WMCH but not really any endorsements from people who participated in the last project.

All the people that endorsed exempt two come from last year's project.

  • 13)The project has been extensively discussed and has some players in gender related issues supporting it.

Exactly: last year we angaged with Unige equal opportunity office, which triggered the equal opportunity office of the HES_SO to order a third "trial" workshop in their institution which was not initially planned. For next september HES_SO is no discussing with us a much more ambitious project with EPFL in the loop. If this is not success, then I do not know what success is.

  • 14)Target community exists but I see no serious support: low retention rates do confirm it

I need explanation: we were told we had a very good retention rate, so I don't really understand. A retention rate of 5% is the average from what I was told, and we are speaking here of people who had never contributed, not at all acquainted with editing before.

  • 15)Given the project’s engagement with two of the most well-resourced chapters, is it possible for this project to be resourced through those chapters, rather than via the Foundation?

We have asked WMCH to support the ART+Feminisn event (which is not on this grant). I was at last year's WMCH assembly general, when a budget of 3000 of was allotted to gender gap issues. How could I ask for more funding from them? They do not have the ressources. WMCH has supported us this month by paying the centering when we participated in Le Mois du Funeraire

  • 16)Low community support, considering that this is the second event by the same person and group.

Maybe all my previous answers will change this advice, I think we have quite a lot of support but please bear in mind that some people (newbies) do not speak english, are not used to editing outside the French encyclopedia, and that they subscribed in the first place to a workshop last year not to a regular engagement on a wikipedian project.

  • 17)It's not completely clear to me whether the first project (Let's fill the gender gap Workshops) was a success or not; it seems some gains were made in adding content and there was a lot of good press coverage. The biggest issue seemed to be with retaining new participants and so I think it's good then that this project recognizes that shortcoming. However, the budget is quite high and I fail to see the connection between retention and things like t-shirts, travel to nearby wiki communities, and a new venue for meetups. Before supporting this, I would also want to see the grantee give much more thought to the long-term sustainability of the community.

Our retention rate was good from what the feedback from WMCH told us, so I do not really understand on what assumption your are writing it was not a good retention rate. Our project was cited among the coolest projects of the year at Esino Lario, and we were told our retention rate was impressive given the fact that the participants were new to the Wikipedia editing world... So I feel a little bit puzzled by the diversity of appreciations.

  • 18)Inclined not to fund. In my opinion, the results are too low compared with the investment.
  • 19)I will support this project only if the cost of travel out of Switzerland is reconsidered. A meeting with local Wikimedians in swiss seems better.

I understand, but the fact is that there is not much happening with local Wikipedians because the community still needs to be strengthened and Switzerland is a 3 language community. The possibilities offered by exchanging with nearby wikipedians from France are more numerous (Geneva is located at the frontier with France). We actually also plan to exchange with the swiss community (even in german) but wikipedians are not really bounded by frontiers but by languages. I would have agreed with prior year funding but with seriously increased targets: they need to work on their approach to increase retention

  • 20)Budget is too high: admin role is not paid position; The line in the budget named "Communication" ends with Tshirts which is confusing; Travel costs are too high, too much traveling around.
  • 21)This proposal is not robustly grounded on strategizing community building. It has great potential, but should be worked on. Inclined not to support this proposal-in-progress.

I would really appreciate to know then what a "strategizing community building" (with concrete examples) to do better the next time. I have based this project on local experience, it is difficult to explain the complexity of community building in a small country, in a small town located near the French frontier). I hope you have visited d the page of les sans pages to see what the concrete result of last year's project is: an international francophone project now engaging senior wikipedians and new participants from last year's project. If this is not satisfying, I would like to know what type of results is expected to call it a successful project.

Summary of responses edit

  • Sustainability:
We are working towards financial sustainability by negotiating with academic institutions to host other series of workshop.
One serie of workshop is planned for deptambler 2017 with EPFL and HES_SO
Two week end of workshop are already confirmed in MArtigny, Valais

Negociations for another serie of workshops at Unige will start soon but with an different anchorage

We are setting up an association which will receive future fundings and organize the workshops.
  • Community engagement
Much of the support is not shown on wikipedia but offline: by word of mouth we were invited to hold a workshop in HP by WIN. This was actually a workshop to learn the premises of editing on the english wikipedia.

One of our participants, Thérèse Moreau gave us the necessary contacts to organize the conference on non sexist language during the French Wikiconvention. On the les sans pagEs project, which stems from last year's project, we have now have 24 participants, of which 6 were active in last year's project, and 10 are well known senior wikipedians. One of them is now coming every monday to our wiki sessions. We are achieving more than 60 published articles per month and participating to external events like the Mois du funeraire in November. We have regular events every monday at the University of Geneva and are engaging with people doing workshops in Nantes, Bruxelles and Paris. Please bear in mind that the last year's participant are still new to wikipedia, some of them dont speak English and dont really understand how to show support on meta-wiki. I am certainly not going to pester them around to force them into endorsing a grant. You can see for yourself that most participant names are red links. This is why before gaining yet another set of participants, we need to pull out of the lot those who are willing to engage more seriously and train them to there aspect of the other wiki projects (wikidata, Commons ext..)

  • Travel expenses and administration costs:
Last year these two parts were largely underestimated. We had to travel to achieve online support by the wikipedian community, and to get such media coverage. Switzerland is a small country, and is divided in 3 language communities. To have access to wikipedian know how and find supporters of the gender gap issues, one needs to meet the community during events, and there are many more events on the French side, especially with regards to the gender gap issues. Within the next 3 months there are 2 identified events in Lyon , Cherchez La femme and Ateliers des savoirs minoritaires in february.
Concerning administration costs, these have been also underestimated last year. Trying to develop a project and make it sustainable does reacquire a lot of time and engagement, it is some kind of entrepreneurial activity. I am not asking WMF to support the project in the long run with administrative cost, I am asking for support now. Last years project led us to Esino Lario and the french wikiconvention, meaning we've had very little time to recover and start thinking of the future, especially since I am still being interviewed by journalists on the subject.

rganizing, communicating with the community id time consuming, and women have in average less free time than men (and earn less).

  • Targets

It is harder to set up qualitative targets and I must admit the given targets are low. We can upgrade them to what I propose in the above section.

  • Budget

Please understand that this budget is a picture of all we would need to be able to conduct it in the best possible conditions. It is a basis to ask for more funding elsewhere, but having the official support of the WMF is key to us (it generated support in the last project) because it gives us credibility.

Round 2 2016 decision edit

 

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project Grant.

WMF has approved partial funding for this project, in accordance with the committee's recommendation. This project is funded with $10,000 USD

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to support partial funding for your efforts in addressing the gender gap through training and engaging new contributors through ongoing editing workshops and events. We recognize that the success of this program is not just in the resulting content contributions, but also in the face-to-face relationships among Wikimedians in their local communities. That said, the committee had some concerns about the size of the request, and would like you to work with the Project Grant Program Officers to reduce the budget to $10,000 and tie it to a scope of work with clear, SMART goals.

Next steps:

  1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
  2. Review the information for grantees.
  3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
  4. Start work on your project!

Upcoming changes to Wikimedia Foundation Grants

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.


Return to "IdeaLab/Nattes à chat/Let's fill the gender gap through community building" page.