Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Alliances Fund/Promoting Open Knowledge practices in African Libraries through WikiData

Feedback from the Middle East and Africa Regional Funding Committee on your proposal

Hello AfricanLibrarian , AfLIALibrarian, DoreenAppiah and SBAbigstan

Thank you for taking the time to submit your proposal. We are pleased to have reviewed it and have the following comments and questions;

• We are delighted to have reviewed your proposal which we found had clear objectives and strategies.
• We recognize the intended impact of working with contributors from diverse backgrounds in Africa
• Would you kindly let us know the names of the countries that are part of the indicated 20 target countries where the participants would come from and how the recruitment will be organised?
• We note the absence of a Wikimedian-in-Residence in the proposal: how will they go about implementing it especially knowing the core essence of the project needs expertise in Wikimedia projects? Or is the plan to gain this resource internal of AFLIA?
• Who are the people who will provide the training to the participants and in which languages?
• We would like to point out that you might need to have the translation costs in each language? Please confirm if this has already been factored into other costs and what languages you are planning to include.
• While we recognize the need for the costs related to staffing, is there a possibility of reducing the costs?
• In answer to question 9, it is said that the proposal will be implemented in Ghana. We would like to know how the other countries involved will be engaged in the project beyond participation in the training program?
• Would you share more on your recruitment strategy for participants.
• How will you ensure that the curricula developed takes into account the local context of the target participants?
• Could we know a little more about the activities that will be online and those that will be face-to-face? What will be the basis for having them online or offline?
• You have indicated that your work will focus on including the participation of people living with disabilities. Could you let us know the target metrics related to this demographic, your recruitment strategy and measures of ensuring inclusivity?
• As the proposal states, we are interested in knowing how you plan to integrate participants into existing user communities to allow for ongoing mentoring and application of skills?
• We are keen on understanding what learnings you bring to this project from the recently concluded project: Wikipedia in African Libraries
• Lastly, what are the plans to ensure continued use of skills beyond the project engagement?

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you. On behalf of the MEA Regional Committee --VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback.

Allow me to answer to all the issues raised one after the other.

1. AfLIA seeks to be inclusive in her programmes and always considers the 5 regions in the continent - Central, East, North, Southern and West Africa in all her activities . Thus, the 20 countries or more that are being considered will include, but not limited to: Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda (Central Africa); Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Seychelles, Tanzania (East Africa); Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan (North Africa); Botswana, Eswatini, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe (Southern Africa); Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone (West Africa).

2. The proposal has provisions for a Course manager (English) who will also facilitate the Wikidata course for English speaking countries as well as a dedicated French facilitator to support the work of the Course manager in dealing with French participants. Therefore it is not the plan of AfLIA to gain this resource internally. These two, especially the course manager, will be expected to have wide expertise in Wikimedia projects especially on Wikidata which is the main focus of this capacity building project.

3. The course manager will serve as the facilitator for English speaking countries while the French facilitator will handle the participants from French speaking countries. One of the lessons we learned from the Wikipedia in African countries (WikiAfLibs) course is that one person (the Wikimedian-in-Residence) cannot effectively handle multi-language training projects of such nature. We also discovered that getting volunteers to step in as facilitators may work but at a low level as the participants needed someone they could engage with continuously and not 'walk-ins' who may not be available for constant follow-ups. Apart from the Course Manager and French Facilitator who will be recruited to manage the course, AfLIA will leverage on the cordial relationship with existing African Wikimedia User communities to bring on board a pool of expert volunteer trainers who will handle specific topics as defined by the project's Course Manager. As already indicated in the main proposal, AfLIA has reached out and will continue to reach and collaborate with the User Communities when needed.

4. The current proposal primarily focuses on conducting trainings in English and French languages. The budget makes provision for translations cost with a specific budget line under Services. The description to that budget line explains it clearly.

5. Staffing costs for the current proposal was derived based on a number of factors i.e the conceptualization of the project's scope, objectives and intended impact, AfLIA therefore apportioned staff time based on a percentage of total time allowed per staff per month, that is expected to be utilized to ensure project's success. In our view, reducing this cost may significantly affect the ability of the listed project staff to effectively deliver on project outcomes, given the opportunity cost. If needed, AfLIA can provide further documentation on the time sheet for the listed project staff, along with other relevant implementation and financial reports.

6. The project will be implemented from Ghana and that is where the funds will be domiciled as the headquarters of AfLIA. Indeed participation in the online training will be open to all interested library and information professionals across Africa. As part of the course, involvement of other countries in the project will not be limited to participation in the training. There are other areas of project implementation that AfLIA will bring on board persons from other African countries. For instance the recruitment of the Course Manager and French Facilitator, Curriculum Development consultant, Research consultant for Course Evaluation and Learnings as well as a pool of expert trainers. Selection for all these positions and volunteers will consciously be done in the spirit of fairness and inclusiveness.

7. AfLIA's formal communication channels (mails to heads of libraries and information institutions as well as individual members) will be used for the recruitment of participants. Our mailing list is effective in disseminating news about AfLIA while garnering the required interest for participation in our events and programs. A lot of publicity will also be done through AfLIA's website. In addition, AfLIA has a strong presence on the social media and this medium will be used to create a lot of awareness and generate interest in order to recruit librarians and other information workers.

Besides the oficial Facebook page, AfLIA's (sub-groups) Facebook pages for its different Sections have a good number of followers eg, AfLIA (African) Public Libraries Network page has 3.2k members, AfLIA Academic and Special Libraries Section - 1.3k members, National Library Associations of AfLIA (502 members), Library Consortia of AfLIA (1.2k members), Library Education and Training Institutions Section (873 members), AfLIA Leadership Academy (374 members), National Libraries of AfLIA (1.3members) and Parliamentary Libraries of AfLIA (390 members). The call for participation will be shared on these pages as well as on Twitter - @AfLIACon This will ensure that we can recruit participants from libraries and information centres within and outside the already existing AfLIA network.

Furthermore, WhatsApp and Telegram groups formed for participants during the Wikipedia in African Libraries project are very active. AfLIA will actively promote the project on these platforms as well as recruit those who are ready to dive into into Wikimedia projects. The African Wikimedians mailing list remains one of the most effective channels to reaching out to experienced and new Wikimedians. Sharing news about the call for participants via the mailing list will equally be useful for Wikimedians who would also like to benefit from a more structured and comprehensive training on Wikidata. These will be the strategies for recruitment that AfLIA will employ.

8. The findings of the pre-training research carried out by AfLIA for the Wikipedia in African Libraries course are still relevant and will be integrated into the course. The participants in the research were from librarians form different communities and countries.

To start with, the course will be situated within the African context. The curriculum development process will involve a number of people including the Curriculum Development consultant, the Course facilitators (English and French), the project implementation team, project advisors and if possible a subcommittee of African librarians and Wikimedians. These persons may invariably come from target countries hence will bring on board their experiences and knowledge of of their respective local backgrounds to play their various roles of ensuring that the course content adequately reflects the local content.

Most importantly, AfLIA has been working closely with librarians from all library types across more than 34 countries in Africa and can easily access information about their communities, challenges and successes that can be used as baseline information for the curricula.

9. Characteristically, the project will include a training phase, learners projects as part of completion requirements and then a pre-conference workshop. The training will be mainly online so as to reach all the participants in the different regions of Africa. Valuable lessons we learned from the Wikipedia in African Libraries course will be applied to ensure that the attention of participants is engaged within a time framework that they can cope with.

The curriculum will be structured such that participants undertake group projects as part of the course completion requirements. This will involve the organization of hybrid Wikidata edit-athons on the premises of libraries or location of choice by the groups. In this case, these edit-athons will involve meeting at physical locations. These activities are meant to give the participants a chance at practically collaborating to organize a Wikimedia outreach event. AfLIA believes that nurturing these skillsets of the participants is a sustainable approach to participation in Wikimedia events as it assures of a higher rate of retention after the project. The final physical activity that will be conducted to understand the project will be pre-conference of AfLIA's 2023 biennial conference inn Accra, Ghana. This will expose many more librarians and information workers to the training as they come for the conference. Thus, course delivery and assessments will be done online.

10. Except for membership-based interventions, AfLIA always tries to ensure fair opportunity for all to participate in our events and programs, and this project, similar to the Wikipedia in African Libraries project, will be no exception. Participation in the training program will neither discriminate against people living with disabilities nor the other underrepresented communities. In many cases, acknowledging the presence of such minority, goes a long way in encouraging participation from them. Project communication and visibility materials (publications, announcements etc) will explicitly encourage persons with disabilities (PwDs) to enroll in the course. Further, AfLIA will use its network of heads of library and information institutions to encourage their PwD staff to enroll in the course. Presently, no specific metric can be estimated for this demographic, however, all reasonable efforts will be made to get those interested to be part of the course or project.

11. It is important to note that, this project has been carefully structured to further the collaboration between AfLIA and Wikimedia, specifically its User Communities. AfLIA already has a list of existing and active user communities on the continent and made contacts with a few as already mentioned in the main proposal. Also, AfLIA will have a record of each participant, including country they are coming from. Thus, it will be quite easy to do some match-making. The project activities, timelines and milestones document make reference to a specific activity “Organize a series of induction ceremonies with selected Wikimedia user communities in Africa”. This activity is expected to take place at the end of training each cohort and it is meant to introduce participants to their respective user communities for integration and to expose them to vehicle that can ensure ongoing mentoring and application of skills. That notwithstanding, the strategy of having guest speakers from various Wikimedia User groups is intended to also advertise the user groups so that participants can further initiate contacts with members of user communities within their respective countries.

12. Some of the key learnings from the previous project that will significantly feature in this project is summarized as follows:

- Recruitment of an additional language facilitator in the case of implementing multi-language training programs. A French facilitator will be recruited and dedicated to help train and manage participants from Francophone Africa

- Streamlining to focus on the main languages that can assure participation and value for money. The Wikipedia in African Libraries set out initially target participants from Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone countries in Africa. By the end of the two cohorts, total participation was made up of learners from the English speaking and French speaking Africa, despite widespread publicity. For the meantime, AfLIA wants to keep these languages.

- Use of existing project communication structures for participants. The WhatsApp and Telegram platforms set up during the previous project continue to be active and has become a ready channel for participants to share updates on Wikimedia related events. The platform groups proved very useful in managing participants of the previous project, and it will make it easier for AfLIA to reach and enroll the former beneficiaries of the WikiAfLibs project while seamlessly re-purposing the platforms for this new project.

- Detailed orientation on LMS to be used for the training. AfLIA noticed initial hindrances to course participation due to the inability of course participants to properly navigate the Moodle platform which hosted the WikiAfLibs course. This new project will see to eliminate the hindrance by providing enough time for orientation and training for participants on the learning platform.

13. This question has been variously answered from the responses above but for emphasis, AfLIA will collaborate with existing active Wikimedia User communities on the African continent to achieve the continual use of skills, even after the project ends. AfLIA will actively connect project participants to their respective country-level and special interest Wikimedia user groups. The training program will be project-based, involving edit-athons, initiated by the learners themselves but with support from the Course instructors and project team. It will offer participants a nurturing opportunity to build their capacity to organize Wikimedia events. AfLIA believes that this is a sustainable approach to participation in Wikimedia projects and will contribute to a higher rate of retention after the project. AfLIA’s annual flagship Wikimedia Outreach Event – The African Libraries Week remains as one of the chief events that will continually permit on project participants to use the skills and contribute to Wikimedia projects beyond the life of this project. AfricanLibrarian (talk) 12:39, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Wikimedia Alliances Fund approved in the amount of $60,000USD

Hello AfricanLibrarian , AfLIALibrarian, DoreenAppiah and SBAbigstan

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of $60,000USD, with a grant term starting 1 July 2022 and ending 30th June 2023.

We are pleased and excited at another fantastic project by AfLIA collaborating with Wikimedia communities, this time working on Wiki Data ; training 200 librarians in 20 African countries on how to open up and link knowledge on Wikidata using their library collections, create more visibility for the library collections as well as promote the usability by all of more information resources stored up in libraries and build other capacities of participants.

We are glad that the learnings from the precious project grant will be informing the implementation of this project, including addressing language barriers / limitations, working more collaboratively with Wikimedia communities as key partners of the project. We are keen on learning the details of the kind of engagement you will have with Wikimedia communities indicated during the implementation of the project.

We found it challenging to understand and approve costs related to office spaces recognizing that a lot of the staff working on the project seem to be remote or in other locations and would be coming in to Ghana for the pre-conference engagement. We also recommend increasing metrics related to Wiki Data , we find the indicated number to be low for such a project.

Overall, we look forward to the implementation of the project and learning about the impact you achieve.

Best regards from the MEA Regional Committee and Staff --Aristidek5maya (talk) 23:46, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for this feedback!

We are glad that this new grant will afford AfLIA the opportunity to continue equipping African library and information professionals with the requisite knowledge and skill-sets needed to effectively contribute to Wikimedia projects. We have accordingly submitted a revised budget consistent with the awarded grant size of USD60,000.

Permit me to clarify two things...

1. A study of both the original and revised budgets will show that it does not include the cost of running office space/premise as a budget line for WMF funding but rather as in kind services and goods, together with other budget lines such as equipment and materials, PPEs for the physical events etc.

2. Some of the project staff, though working remotely, will be operating from offices maintained by AfLIA.

Finally, AfLIA is earnestly looking forward to exceeding the proposed targets and metrics, similar to what was done in the previous project (Wikipedia in African Libraries project). Thank you! AfricanLibrarian (talk) 15:10, 23 May 2022 (UTC)