Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Yoruba Wikimedians User Group 2024-2025 annual activities

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

Dear Yoruba Wikimedians User Group team,

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

• The committee appreciated the tabular presentation of your Theory of Change for 2024 and the main approaches/strategies to achieve these changes, as it gives a visual and interconnected understanding of your challenges and solutions.
• The committee also welcomed new programs in your proposal, such as the work proposed to celebrate International Mother Language Day.
• Furthermore, we identified strong values, such as your focus on acquiring unique local content, your partnerships with relevant bodies for the Yoruba language and culture, the ability to set-up a national level Yoruba Orthography Committee, while also building partnerships with other Nigerian WM groups.

While elaborating on your proposed plans, the committee members recommended for you to:

• Elaborate further the breakdown budget items 1-5 and 13 (WPWP, WLAfrica, WLEarth, WLM, editathons, capacity building) to improve our understanding of the share of different sub-costs in the total amounts.
• Improve consistency of your planned staffing information: in the main text of the proposal, you mentioned 4 paid staff (program director, bookkeeper, L&E, WIR) at 2.5 FTE, while in the budget file, a program director, account personnel (Book Keeping), Social media+Leaning and Evaluation Strategist, and a Graphics design and communication personnel, for a total of 1.8 FTE. Please clarify the job descriptions, the titles of the positions, and the time each personnel will dedicate to the work per week (in hours) or per month (time per week, full-time, part-time, etc).

It would further help our understanding of your plans if you’d kindly clarify for us:

• The situation of the WiR at the International Centre for Yoruba Arts and Culture: Last year, you included about the third of your budget (cca. 21,000 USD) to support this Residency, but in this year’s proposal you mentioned that you were only able to hire the Wikipedian in Residence for 4 months, and though you plan to sustain this effort, we do not see the costs of the WiR reflected in the current budget. Did you receive external support for this residency or in-kind contribution by the ICYAC? Have you compiled learnings from the WiR’s previous work?
• Without this significant cost of the residency in your budget, what necessitates further growth in your overall budget?
• How did you involve the community in evaluating the impact of your work last year and in the planning of this proposal?
• Can you please explain the high employment cost of the bookkeeping personnel?
• Considering the public policy advocacy efforts: Can you please explain how the 5,000 USD costs are planned to be spent on this specific work, in terms of what cost items are included in this amount for the work of the 32-member Yoruba Orthography Committee?
• How did you assess the value of the audio-visual project against the cost: what is the impact you are seeing with the current material that informs further production? How do you disseminate the recorded materials on Wikimedia Commons and other open platforms next to the institutions you share them with?

In terms of the schedule for our review process, please complete your review and responses to committee feedback by 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 supporting our review.

On behalf of the Regional Committee, Reda benkhadra (talk) 20:20, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Response to Regional Grant Committee

We wanted to extend our sincerest gratitude to each member of the grant team for dedicating their time and expertise to review our grant application. Your commitment to evaluating our proposal thoroughly is truly appreciated. Please find below our responses to your questions. We trust they sufficiently address your inquiries.

• A breakdown of the budget items 1–5 and 13 (WPWP, WLAfrica, WLEarth, WLM, editathons, capacity building) had been provided as recommended. A new sheet, “additional budget breakdown,” had been created for the breakdown.

The staffing plan errors have now been fixed, and the job descriptions, the titles of the positions, and the time each personnel will dedicate to the work per week (in hours) or per month (time per week, full-time, part-time, etc.) have been provided. See the “additional information” section.

• About the WiR, last year, we requested USD 141,427.62. This included USD 27,671.82 budgeted for the WiR but only USD 60,500 was funded. Thus, the WiR was not funded (see the revised budget as approved by the WMF last year). We hired the WiR for four months (as a pilot) and our partner, the International Centre for Yoruba Arts and Culture (ICYAC) provided financial support for the program. We did not include a budget for it in the current budget because we had been told by the Program Officer, Veronica, that we should not increase our budget beyond 15% due to budget constraints at the WMF this year. We planned to sustain the effort through continued support from the ICYAC and any other in-kind support from other partners
• The cost of the residency was never in our budget in the first place (see the revised budget as approved by the WMF last year). That is, it was not part of the USD 60,500 budget funded last year. And there is no significant growth in our budget this year beyond the 15% increase cap suggested by Veronica. The 15% budget increase was allocated for advocacy (USD 5,000) and the annual Yoruba storytelling events + International mother language Day Celebration (USD 3,000).
• On how we involved the community in planning this proposal, we collected feedback from community members through surveys and meetings to understand their perceptions of the impact of our work and gather suggestions for improvement. These feedbacks and input were used to plan our proposal to ensure that they reflect the needs and priorities of the community.
• On the bookkeeper, we apologize for the mix-up. The role is accountant/bookkeeping. A USD 650 monthly salary is not a high cost for an experienced accountant/bookkeeper in Nigeria.
• To provide clarity on how the 5,000 USD costs are planned to be spent on the 32-member Yoruba Orthography Committee work, in terms of what cost items are included in this amount for the work, the 32-member committee meets monthly virtually on Zoom and in person once a quarter. The total budget for the committee's work was estimated at $21,500. The budgeted $5,000 in this current grant is to cover the cost of travel (transportation, accommodation, and food) for our representative to the committee meeting, cost of tea break for committee during in-person meeting and the cost of zoom and internet for the committee. The ICYAC and other partners will cover the remaining $16,500, which will cover transport, accommodation, food, refreshments during committee quarterly in-person meetings, etc.
• On our oral knowledge audiovisual project, the preservation of oral traditions through audiovisuals is a priority for our community. This is primarily due to the fact that knowledge pertaining to the Yoruba culture is predominantly transmitted orally rather than through written means. The audiovisual of oral tradition project is a very valuable initiative to our community. To assess the value of the project against the cost, we conducted a thorough analysis comparing the project's objectives and outcomes with the associated expenses. The objective and outcomes of the project is to create audiovisuals of oral knowledge that are realistically useful for educational purposes, collecting and documenting knowledge in a new format other than text format and to ensure that these materials are not only contributed to Wikimedia Commons, used on Wikipedia articles but also serve as teaching instructional materials in academic institutions. These objectives are being achieved. We evaluated the impact of the current materials by measuring metrics such as the total number of academic institutions that are currently using the material as teaching instructional material and the number of students impacted by the materials. So far, the materials are being used as teaching instructional materials in at least four (4) major academic institutions in Nigeria and have impacted thousands of students who have used these materials in and outside of the classroom. These are based on the feedback from academic staff members of universities where these materials have been donated. More academic institutions have reached out to express interest in receiving donations of these materials. In addition, we're pleased to announce that on May 17, 2024, we will be donating these materials to Ondo State University. The impact of this initiative to academia cannot be overemphasized.

These materials have also been used in relevant Wikipedia articles where they are used by the article’s unique visitors. While we cannot measure reuse outside of Wikimedia Commons, like every other media file there, we had made concerted efforts to promote accessibility and ensure wider distributions of the materials, through donation, upload on other open platforms such as internet archive and others. We are also currently partnering with social media influencers to promote it on social media. Plans are also underway to create a mobile App for these materials.

Please let us know if you need additional clarification. Thank you once again for your diligence and support throughout this process. On behalf of the Yoruba Wikimedians User Group, Macdanpets (talk) 14:28, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

General Support Fund Approved at Local Currency Equivalent of 60,000 USD

Thank you for submitting your application seeking General Support Funds - Wikimedia Community Fund. The Middle East and Africa Regional Committee and Staff have reviewed your application and recommended funding the user group in the same amount as last year, so in the amount 60,000 USD for the period of July 1, 2024 - June 30, 2025. We appreciate the presentation of your theory of change, and we value that your proposal has a strong focus on acquiring unique local content, building partnerships with relevant bodies for the Yoruba language and culture. We also see that setting up and coordinating a national level Yoruba Orthography Committee is important for standardizing the language. It is also great to see that you are building partnerships with other Nigerian Wikimedia groups and that you have been able to acquire external funds beyond Wikimedia Foundation, which are a testament to your efforts towards sustainability. Your activities and outcomes demonstrate clear improvement since last year. After a thorough review of your proposal, we see that some budget costs remain high, and staffing is about 40% of the budget. So we recommend revising your budget based on the grant approved to reduce staffing costs, particularly the bookkeeper expense. We also recommend that you prepare a leadership development plan, with the aim of including and bringing in new and diverse leaders to the Yoruba user group. This will serve as a testament to the healthy governance and sustainability of your user group. You may also consider engaging your board in activities such as staff appointments.

We wish you the very best in your continued journey and look forward to learning more about the impact you achieve.

Best regards from the MEA Regional Committee and Staff,

Aimeabibis (talk) 19:44, 4 June 2024 (UTC)