Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Tyap Wikimedians Community Grant 2024-2025

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

Dear Tyap Wikimedians Organisation:

Thank you very much for your proposal, describing your activities and projects in support of the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement. The Regional Funds Committee has initially reviewed the proposal, and wishes to offer some initial feedback and questions for your review.

The committee appreciates that this program focuses on increasing the Tyap language communities on Wikimedia projects. They particularly applaud the de-focusing of Wikipedia and focusing on visual and audio documentation, as well as on documenting the language in Wiktionary and Wikidata (Lexeme).

It would be supportive of the Committee’s understanding of your plans if you’d be so kind as to  elaborate on our following specific few questions:

• Wiki Audio Walk and Wiki Bootcamp program. The committee is curious to understand what are the expected outcomes from Wiki Audio Walk and Wiki Bootcamp programs.
• Budget-related questions: After reviewing the budget, the committee had a couple of questions with regards to your budget for your elaboration:
  • Accommodation. The committee is curious to understand why there is frequent accomodation for six different activities?
  • According to the budget, the board members are paid staff as well. Are receive a salary as well as reimbursements?
  • Merchandise. The committee recommends that you reduce the amount of merchandise instead of it being prepared for each activity.
• Clarification on roles. The committee would appreciate understanding the difference between the (Executive Director) role and the (Project manager) role. We reviewed your response last year, but it did not provide a clear and realistic answer, because these positions do not fit the volume of activities of a group applying for an annual grant for the first time.
• Permanent office. May you elaborate on why there is a need for a permanent office this year, given so many of the activities involve travel and renting other venues, paying for access, etc.? The committee suggests that it may be more economical to pay ad hoc for space, printing, etc., rather than to rent, furnish, and equip a permanent office.
• Community engagement and feedback. May you elaborate on how you included your community of volunteers in the planning of your proposal? And how do you plan on incorporating the community in the implementation and governance throughout the year?
• Community health and inclusivity. The committee would like to learn more about what measures you are taking to maintain or improve community health, safety, and inclusivity?
• The committee recommends to reduce the funding amount given that it is a 400% growth from the previous year.
• Tyap Language Development Board. What has been the experience of working with the Tyap Language Development Board to support the past activities that you have completed?
• Tyap Wikipedia. May you clarify if you are working on Tyap Wikipedia, and if so, what the readership has been like? This may inform the need for more or reduced investment.

Regarding the schedule for our review process, please complete your review and responses to committee feedback by the 1st of May 2024. After this time, the Regional Committee will begin a final review of the proposal to make a formal decision.

Thanks again for your work on the proposal and for supporting our review.

On behalf of the Regional Committee, User: FElgueretly-WMF (talk) 10:53, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Greetings, @FElgueretly-WMF. Thanks for the initial feedback and questions. I would be glad to elaborate on each one of the specific questions asked to make the grey areas clearer.

- .Wiki Audio Walk and Wiki Bootcamp program

..Bootcamp -- The initial thought for the Bootcamp was and still is, to incubate a group of individuals with a degree of knowledge in the spoken Tyap language to help them get immersed in learning to read and speak the language without code-switching (i.e., by acquiring more knowledge in the spoken language enough to speak it alone), and putting the learning into practice by editing the Tyap Wikipedia and Wiktionary. This idea was born after HIGA 2023 when I met a group of young minoritized language speakers who shared their experiences. The most striking was that of the Welsh experience in which the bootcamp helped young fellows get immersed in the Welsh language. Please click here to see an example of what I mean. As a leader of the Tyap Wikimedia community, I see it as a responsibility to make innovations that can help the Tyap language to gain speakers and contributing editors on Tyap Wikimedia projects, and that method, bootcamping, makes a lot of sense. This is where the Tyap Language Development Board (TLDB), a body that supports our Wikimedia community with available literary materials and word translations so that the terminologies we use on Wikimedia get synchronized with what they have, gets to partner with us. Tyap is an underdeveloped language, and I will plead that consideration should be given to understand that we still have a long way to go in terms of language development and every available channel would be used to ensure that the language is not only safe but developing. Hence, the aim for the bootcamp is to build capacity in participants first to get immersed in the Tyap language, and then, to put their learning into active practice by learning the most necessary skills on editing the Tyap Wikipedia and Wiktionary in-person from my team for a whole week, while the TLDB provides the language support. This is like putting the horse before the cart and not the other way around which does not work well.

..Wiki Audio Walk -- The aim is to visit communities in the Tyap speaking areas to capture their speech in the form of audio recordings and upload the results to Wikimedia Commons. The aim is to create something like a catalogue for the Tyap speech on Wikimedia Commons, with a sizable number of recorded words, phrases, and general expressions of at least 3,000 in all. We can achieve more than that. We'll go on each walk during the weekends. The data that would be gathered would be useful in the Tyap Wikimedia projects and other projects related to the Tyap language. As an individual, whatever I would recommend to be done for the Tyap language is to aid its preservation, development, and promotion. If we can succeed with endangered language developmental experiments with Tyap, it becomes easier for us to apply similar or modified tactics in other languages we hope to work on in the future.

.Budget-related questions

..Accommodation -- Yes. Thanks for asking for clarification on this. Both Wiki Audio Walk and Wiki Bootcamp programs are expected to be done thrice a year——within the confines of three different months. While the bootcamp would involve several people staying for a week in a common accommodation, the Wiki Audio Walk would require the participants to travel to the field and stay over during the weekends. Each of these events is slated to happen thrice within the fiscal year. That is why there is a frequent mention of accommodation for six different events (i.e., 2x3).

..Paid BoT Members -- No. Not really. The board members are not to be paid. Only the administrative staff i.e., the ED and the Project Manager were proposed for payment. Including two contract staff to be hired at one point or the other to audit our accounts and evaluate our performances during the fiscal year.

..Merchandise. Thanks for the suggestion. I have implemented the requested adjustments in the Fluxx proposal and the budget.

.Clarification on roles. Thanks for reviewing last year's response. Here, again, is a clarification of the roles of the Executive Director and the Project Manager.

.Executive Director: Will spearhead the overall management of project implementation, initiate and set goals for programs based on the organization's vision and strategic plan, oversee outreach activities and campaigns, lead partnership projects implementation and support project progress, monitor processes, reporting, and evaluation, provide general and technical support to the community and contractors.

.Project Manager: Will be responsible for financial management as well as accounting operations of the organization and provide personnel support, manage the micro-grant program and provide data support to volunteers, monitor the accounting data, and prepare internal audit financial information and reporting. Also, assist in rolling down the strategic plans of the organization.

- These tasks would be quite great for one paid staff to handle. Remember, we may be applying for the annual grant for the first time but we are already performing those roles as volunteers. This has informed the need to apply for these two paid positions to be able to obtain better results in the near future with added responsibilities.

.Permanent office. The expression, 'permanent office', sounds rather a bit more expensive compared to the one we are asking for. If we are to get an actual permanent office space, like 'our own building', we'll have to pay a larger amount than the one provided in the budget, for rent. A working space provides a common ground to host editors coming in to stay over and edit with electricity available to charge their devices and browsing network to connect to and have their work done with ease.

I understand what the committee means by the word 'economical', here, and if I had the means, I would personally offer a space for this purpose for free on my own because of its importance to us. This is not about finding an avenue to spend money unnecessarily. However, being an active volunteering Wikimedian, myself, for over four years, I have had situations with people asking to come to my house so I can put them through on editing. As an individual, I value my private space. I believe the Wikimedia Foundation also values that. It wouldn't be nice, also, for me to keep going to another's home often for the same purpose.

Last year, after our photowalk, an issue came up resulting in a family misunderstanding. A female editor who needed to get her images uploaded visited the home of one of the organizers of the walk, a married male editor more than usual. She had no personal computer to make her uploads. The male editor had a computer which although not so great, could at least manage to read the card reader to display the images she took. She also visited often because electricity was not stable where she lived and she could at least get to charge her phone when the electricity generator got powered in the male editor's home. That bred a marital misunderstanding with the wife of the male editor who thought there was something else going on between her husband and the female editor.

Even if we decide to do as the committee requested, we still would have several events that would require us as a team to come together to edit the contents we were able to gather in the field.

When requesting a common working space, it's not only for equipment to be kept or for us to say 'we have an office', but it also has to do with human relations, too. Technology is very good. It has aided us with the opportunity to learn virtually through virtual meetings and social media. But this cannot replace human contact.

The office space will also serve as a meeting point between staff members, partners, and community volunteers to come together for strategic purposes as well as providing technical support to the young editors.

It will serve as an avenue to have the older/senior citizens volunteering (usually representatives of the TLDB) coming together to assist in teaching/incorporating Tyap language basic writing skills to the younger volunteers and to be a part of the documentation of words in the Tyap Wikimedia projects.

Having a neutral working space would help us focus on our tasks and be more productive, especially when the environment is conducive. Those items listed would be necessary if greater productivity should be expected of us. Please give us the benefit of the doubt.

.Community engagement and feedback. Before making this proposal, there had been discussions on the projects we aim to achieve in our community Telegram and WhatsApp private groups. The Telegram group consists of the Board of Trustees of the community. The WhatsApp group consists of the BoT members and the new leaders inaugurated in December 2023 after our event in the university town of Zaria in October last year. We have also held virtual meetings to that effect. These leaders who are also volunteers are aware of the proposal and are in support of it and only hope it is approved so that everyone can get to play their roles in helping our plans come alive. The community was also notified on our Community Meta-Wiki page. Please click here to view.

.Incorporating the community: I have a capable Project Manager who has actively supported in organizing knowledgeable people in different aspects involving training events and organizational-related activities. Together we are working on organizing the people who would be helpful to us in implementing our goals. We are quite selective about whom we entrust responsibilities to. The past year plus had dealt with us well enough to be careful about whom we entrust responsibilities to. Within our community from previous events, we have identified a few people we can work with to ensure the proper utilization of funds and results at the end. We only hope to be given a chance to prove ourselves in practice not just in words.

.Community health and inclusivity. Right from our User Group rules on social media, intimidation of members and aspiring members has been made clear to have serious consequences. People of varying religious beliefs, gender, skin colour, social status, and any other factor that differs from that of the majority, who wish to contribute to our progress are encouraged to join our user group. We shall not hesitate to evict anyone who dares to make others feel irrelevant or unwanted in our user group whether during events or in our social media setting. Thus far, we have not witnessed any of such behaviours in our midst. But we are ready to take action against anyone who does that. On physical health, we have a team of health professionals (volunteers) in almost all of our in-person campaigns kitted with a first aid box, ready to meet this need.

.Budget increase by 400%. Growth is inevitable. If meaningful growth should take place, resources would have to go in. However, only when the means are available for that. We are having a 400% growth as mentioned, because we are applying for the purchase of equipment and salaries for the first time. We had never done any of these. We had been running on Rapid grants which do not allow for equipment purchases, but we are having to do that now which would be more economical for the Foundation in the long run. Also, we are having new programs introduced to keep our community engaged because the current level of engagement is not encouraging, even to me as the leader. About the recommendation to reduce the budget, I have worked on it to ensure that we have a lesser budget to work with.

.Tyap Language Development Board. Working with the Tyap Language Development Board (TLDB) was initially quite challenging. There were misunderstandings about the Wikimedia Foundation. But with continuous contact with the leaders of the TLDB, we were able to gain their hearts and support. In December 2023, the paramount ruler of the Atyap Chiefdom commended our community for its work on the Tyap language and we are gaining more relevance in the Tyap-speaking community as Wikimedians. During our Zaria event in October 2023, the TLDB sent its Assistant Chairman and a few other members of the TLDB were present to give us their morale support and even got Wikimedia accounts created.

The Tyap language is one language among the tens of languages in Central Nigerian Plateau. For Tyap to be the only language to have a Wikimedia today only shows that it is either many people don't know about Wikimedia projects or the languages are very underdeveloped and developing such languages requires a great deal of effort. The TLDB initially didn't want a group that would soil its efforts in developing the Tyap language. But after a level of understanding was reached, the TLDB decided to support us with some resources even its dictionary being developed, to use it in the Tyap Wiktionary development. The word we use as a translation for Wikipedia in Tyap, i.e., "Wukipedia" was suggested by the TLDB based on how the typical Tyap-speaking person would render it. The TLDB may not support us financially as it currently doesn't seem to have the financial capacity to do so, but it has supported our Wikimedia community in other ways, like the literacy resources needed to aid translation.

.Tyap Wikipedia. Surely, we are working on the Tyap Wikipedia. The Tyap Wikipedia is as important as the Tyap Wiktionary us. If you take a look at the Tyap Wikipedia's level of growth in terms of the number of articles between September 2023 when we had about 769 articles as of 30 September 2023 and as of 30 April 2024, we had 993 articles. That is a significant growth in the site. However, in terms of readership, between 1 January 2024 and 1 March 2024, we experienced some level of decrease in the readership of the Tyap Wikipedia. In January 2024, we had 43,693 total views and in March 2024, we had 32,871 total views (please see the Monthly Statistics). The reason could include a low level of reaching out to prospective readers. This is why we intend to have a communication expert to engage the audience on our various social media platforms. This person shall serve as a volunteer with stipends. The readership should improve as we step into the new fiscal year.

On behalf of the Tyap Wikimedian Organisation, I appreciate the time the committee puts in to ensure everything gets done well.

Thanks and warm regards, Kambai Akau (talk) 17:49, 1 May 2024 (UTC)