Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Hausa Wikimedians User Group Annual Plan 2022 - 2023

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

Dear , User:Ammarpad, User:Em-mustapha and User: Ibkt,

Congratulations on putting together your first annual plan, which speaks to the growth the Hausa Wikimedians User Group has experienced and is keen on achieving with the support of long-term planning. We note that you are keen on working on educational content, expanding the community, developing a strong editorial capacity, and forming partnerships with universities and other organizations. We also recognized that this is an ambitious proposal, especially for your first annual funding, and request your comments, and responses to the following questions and comments;

• Would you share with us the basis and rationale for the indicated staff costs and especially for the program manager and the outreach and campaign coordinator?
• We are keen on learning about your plan organizational structure and team management. Who would the staff be reporting to or getting support from?
• As you continue to grow we are keen to understand your plan for leadership development and nurturing robust structures for healthy governance including financial management systems in your organization. We would like to know what you have put in place so far and where you envision the organization heading and the plan to get there.
• We are curious to know if you have considered adding new contributors to the organizing team to give them a hand and invite them to contribute more. This is especially important for your community knowing that more newcomers are joining the community and it would be important to have their voices included in the organizing team.
• You have indicated that at the end of the activities, there will be at least 400 articles created on Hausa Wikipedia. Are these translations of existing Wikipedia articles into other languages, or are they 400 new article topics that you plan to create? Is it possible to do more?
• You indicated that at least 500 people will be trained by the end of the project. Can we know how many people you plan to train per edit-a-thon? And how will you sustainably support these individuals in their Wikimedian journey?
• What considerations are you including in training the 500 people?
• We are keen on learning on how you will manage the Volunteer Data Support program, knowing that the issue of access is a major issue and will be useful to many community members. How will you ensure transparency and accountability in the program?
• Lastly, we encourage you to review the metrics section to also align with the learning questions you have indicated. What metrics can you use to help you capture what you need to support your learning?

We highly recommend you get in touch with the regional program officer to support you in understanding the questions raised or if you find it useful to meet with the committee as well, please them know and they can organize a conversation meeting.

Thank you and we look forward to receiving your responses to support us in the next steps. On behalf of the MEA Regional Committee and Staff--VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 15:25, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you @VThamaini (WMF) and the team for the feedback. Please find our response below. (The questions have been reproduced for added clarity).

1. Would you share with us the basis and rationale for the indicated staff costs and especially for the program manager and the outreach and campaign coordinator?

The allocated costs are commensurate with the level of responsibility for each role and prorated based on full-time equivalent hours of the role.

The roles and associated costs were informed by the scope of work, assigned responsibilities, level of commitment required, and projected workload hours for accomplishing that per each role. The responsibilities are derived from the Implementation plan of this Annual project application.

For planning and implementation needs, the Annual plan project as a whole is divided into three broad components. These are: 1. Core Editing programs (comprising 14 distinct subprograms); 2. Campaigns/Contests and partnership programs (comprising 6 distinct subprograms plus Volunteer Data Support); and 3. Ancillary services.

The ancillary services comprise three distinct sub-components; these are Accounting, IT management and communications & logistic work. For clear demarcation of responsibility, effective implementation, accountability and increased efficiency, we decided to translate the responsibility components to individual roles.

For the Program Director role, in addition to planning, designing and execution of the Core Editing programs, this role entails being responsible for overall project implementation of the Annual plan as well as progress monitoring and strategic support to subcomponents managers and volunteers alike. It also includes production of project reporting and evaluation as well general assistance in implementation of Volunteer Data support subprogram. The projected FTE is 0.5 for 12 months.

Outreach and Campaigns Coordinator is responsible for planning and execution of campaigns and contests components; including training workshops, contests designing and execution. Additionally also responsible for forming partnership contact and eventual execution of partnership projects and follow-up.. This role also includes management and implementation of the Volunteer Data Support sub-program. The projected FTE is 0.375 for 12 months.

The other three roles each have a projected FTE of 0.15 and will provide services for the three distinct subcomponents that made up the Ancillary services component to support the realization of our overall project objectives.

2. We are keen on learning about your plan, organizational structure and team management. Who would the staff be reporting to or getting support from?

As part of our registration process we have formed a governing council. This currently includes some experienced Wikimedians, our Advisors and some external members with significant experience with educational charity and grant management. This council will provide support to the staff while our organization matures during the project implementation and pending our maiden Annual General Meeting.

By the time of our Annual General Meeting in November/December 2023, we hope to develop strong capacity and may then review the current composition with a view for improvement. We will make the governing council rely less on external people and more on Wikimedians including incorporating new Wikimedians we nurture during the course of the project and inviting experts as needed from other uaergroups. We would also adjust our user group structure based on performance and efficiency of individuals and teams during the course of the project to ensure greater productivity and usergroup credibility. 

3. As you continue to grow we are keen to understand your plan for leadership development and nurturing robust structures for healthy governance including financial management systems in your organization. We would like to know what you have put in place so far and where you envision the organization heading and the plan to get there.

We have already inititated the process of transforming our group structures (with an ongoing Rapid Fund project) and developed a strategic blueprint for leadership development programs for experienced organizers and potential ones as part of that. We also included new users in our team to ensure continuity, greater representation and widen our collective perspective.

Moreover, we have initiated a registration process to incorporate the group as a charity in Nigeria which will make the group structure more robust and our activities more transparent. Incorporation, additionally, will ensure continued operation in perpetuity even if a key member leaves the group.

Incorporation will allow us to operate an organizational bank account which – together with a suitable payroll management system – will enhance our fiscal transparency and discipline. 

By the end of this project, we are hopeful the group will be so strong and organizationally stable such that with little or no participation from current team members the group can continue to exist and successfully undertake a similar Annual plan project successfully. 

4. We are curious to know if you have considered adding new contributors to the organizing team to give them a hand and invite them to contribute more. This is especially important for your community knowing that more newcomers are joining the community and it would be important to have their voices included in the organizing team.

We did take that into consideration and have explored possibilities. For a start, the current team itself has at least two people who are relatively newcomers (all joined the movement less than 2 years ago). The composition was deliberate and aimed towards our goal of incorporating more ne

Additionally, in this application, our Organizers' target is set to 20 and we are committed to reserving at least 50% of that to new contributors. For this purpose, we define new contributors as editors who create accounts from January 2022 onward, meaning they’re currently new Wikimedians or not yet, but would become when we start the project implementation.

5. You have indicated that at the end of the activities, there will be at least 400 articles created on Hausa Wikipedia. Are these translations of existing Wikipedia articles into other languages, or are they 400 new article topics that you plan to create? Is it possible to do more?

These are a combination of new articles and translations. We would mainly focus on new article creation, but we would like to have some few programs dedicated to raising awareness and training about translation especially given the recent improvements made to the Content Translation tools and particularly efforts to make it work better on mobile phones.

On the total number of articles, I believe the number you gave (400) is based on an earlier version of the application; we have increased the number to 1,000 since around September 21. So yes, it’s possible to increase it and we have done that already.

Additionally, apart from completely new article creations, we have added an “Improvement component” for continuous quality improvement of existing articles to tackle quality degeneration and for strengthening existing editors’ skill sets through a variety of activities ranging from basic copyediting to advanced editing activities such as refactoring and expansion of stub articles.

6. You indicated that at least 500 people will be trained by the end of the project. Can we know how many people you plan to train per edit-a-thon? And how will you sustainably support these individuals in their Wikimedian journey?

We plan to train an average of 30 people monthly per edit-a-thon program (12 programs, 360 people in total) and 20 people per special contest training (3 trainings, 60 people in total). Average of 40 will be trained in each of the two special editing workshops with partner universities (80 in total). Summing 360, 60 and 80 will give 500. However, the number is just a baseline and we are hopeful we will surpass that.

For added clarity, we would like to note that some budgetary allocation for trainees such refreshment costs for in-person events will not tally exactly with this average number. The budgetary allocation is generally for a little higher than the anticipated number of trainees to account for organizers/facilitators, provision for people we normally don’t count as participants, e.g camera man, technicians and security personnel as well general contingency. So for instance, for Monthly editing workshops, while the target trainees are 30, provision is made for 40 people. The same applies to all other programs described with similar budgetary allocation in this application.

We believe our team currently is equipped to be able to support people up to 500. We have combined Wikimedia experience of almost 2 decades and have organized almost 30 projects through Wikimedia Rapid Fund and the defunct Projects Grant.

That notwithstanding, we are working actively in developing our capacity and our projection is by the time of our midpoint report where at least 250 would have gotten training, at least 10 (half of our 20 in Metrics) would have gotten considerable experience that we can absorb them in our organizing team to help expand our capacity and train more people in the second phase of the project and beyond.

We will continuously endeavor to invest in capacity building of experienced and not-so experienced editors to keep expanding the pool of our skilled organizers and facilitators and ensure perpetual continuity of successful Wikimedia activities in our community.

7. What considerations are you including in training the 500 people?

We have considered so many factors. One of them is providing them with needed support within a reasonable time as we move in the project implementation. In our organizer metrics, we have a projection of having 20 Wikimedia experts who will all be able to independently provide training and guidance to other users. This projection will give us a 25:1 trainees to trainer ratio. In practice it will be lower due to non-participation by some users and users with Wikimedia-like skills from elsewhere that would be able to navigate themselves around and understand the process well without needing any or much help from us.

We have also factored the diversity and location of the people and made adequate planning in our Implementation plan for increasing representation, access and allocation of resources to wider locations, within our focus region, than we were previously able to through the Rapid Fund program.

8. We are keen on learning on how you will manage the Volunteer Data Support program, knowing that the issue of access is a major issue and will be useful to many community members. How will you ensure transparency and accountability in the program?

In designing the program proposal, we have studied many similar and related programs and particularly the CIS-2K current model. We are planning to operate with a similar mechanism of utilizing on-wiki project pages.

The Outreach and Campaigns coordinator will oversee the program implementation. It will be widely promoted on our communication platforms and during our in-person activities to ensure broad awareness. Apart from announcements on external platforms, we will also consider utilizing on-wiki notice mechanisms to increase awareness. We believe this will alleviate access concerns as any active editor will be able to understand the program is ongoing when we employ on wiki notice.

Objective minimum criteria will be put in place to ensure the limited resources are channeled in a way that brings maximum positive impact.

We will ensure transparency through using an open (on-wiki) nomination process and quarterly impact assessment by the project team and select volunteers. The on-wiki nomination process will allow people to nominate themselves transparently with their Wikimedia accounts and allow keeping public record of decisions. The project pages for the program will also contain detailed guides and a new-user-friendly interface on making requests and expectations for recipients to increase participation within the limited resources of the program.

9. Lastly, we encourage you to review the metrics section to also align with the learning questions you have indicated. What metrics can you use to help you capture what you need to support your learning?

We have reviewed and updated the metrics to align better with the questions.

Thank you, – Ammarpad (talk) 06:40, 7 November 2022 (UTC) (For Hausa Wikimedians UserGroup)

Wikimedia Community Fund approved in the amount of 50,000 USD

Hello Hausa Wikimedians User Group ,

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 50,000 USD, with a grant term starting January 2023-December 2023.

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 in the amount $50,000 for the period of January 2023 - December 2023 .

We are excited to see the user group move to general support funding and believe that this will be beneficial to longterm planning and development of the user group and community. We recognize the proposal was ambitious and filled with a large quantity of activities within programs. We encourage you to take another review of the annual plan and reduce the scope. We encourage you to include spaces for reflection and learning. We are aware that besides the programmatic work, you are also embarking on organizational and operational development, and this takes time and effort. We want to ensure that you are not getting to a place of burnout.

We are keen to learn on how you will implement the volunteer support programs and encourage you to learn from other groups that have similar programs such as Wikimedia Nigeria UG and Igbo Wikimedians User Group. It will be important for you to set up a process that promotes transparency and accountability and overall supports you in achieving the intended goal.

We wish you the very best in your project and look forward to learning about the impact of you achieve.

Best regards from the MEA Regional Committee and Staff --VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 12:05, 1 December 2022 (UTC)