Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Tyap Wikimedians User Group 2023 Annual Events

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

Hello , Tyap Wikimedians User Group,

Thank you for submitting your first annual grant request. It is exciting to see a community and user group focusing on developing a minority language.

To support us in the next phase of the review process, please find our observations, comments and questions for your consideration and response;

• We found that you intend to implement a great deal of activities and are unclear about the intention with this approach ; it is for instance the specific challenge you are working to address. We like to think of it in this way for instance - after 12 months of implementation of an annual grant, what will impact look like? What are the key outcomes we will have achieved that will tell us we made progress in achieving the impact? We suggest that you focus on one strategy or even activity and hopefully, that can support in grounding your group before identifying areas best aligned with your plans for growth.
  • We found the strategies unclear and it was uncertain how those aligned with the activities.

• It is unclear on the motivation to pursue the model of working with TV - what informs that it will work better than other approaches you have worked with before?
• It is unclear what the learning and evaluation campaign entails, please explain.
• It will be interesting to learn how the roles they have indicated have been resourced in the past and what informs the request of resourcing all four roles at the same time. Additionally, are the two staff members planned on a full-time basis?  What are the roles of the ED and the project manager?  What sort of activities would each be performing? Please share a detailed staff plan clearly indicating the roles and responsibilities.
• Please let us know what your current governance structure looks like. It is unclear from our review on the difference between the administrative role and governance roles of those involved especially when it is the same people.
• We know that the core essence of the Wikimedia Movement is volunteerism - a global movement of volunteers contributing to achieve the mission. How are you permeating and enabling this philosophy and attitude in your community? We are also keen to learn how you plan to manage the dynamics between the paid staff and volunteers of the community.
• How have you developed and managed engagement of members of the local community to support the development of the language project.
• Is an office space needed at this point in time?  Maybe get a co-working space with the furniture and equipment? Additionally, would you speak to the requested equipment-- in this case, laptops - we are curious to learn about their necessity at this point and also how they will be shared with the user group members and community.
• Would you say more about your partnership with Tyap Language Development Board (TLDB)
• Lastly, we are keen to learn what were the limitations or challenges with accessing and working with rapid funds or the motivation to move to the general support funds at this stage of your organization?

As always we recommend meeting with the regional program officer to support you in providing any clarity needed with the feedback shared here. The committee is also available to meet and join the call if that would be meaningful for you - just let the program officer know.

Thank you so much and we continue to appreciate your work and role in advancing the mission of the movement.

On behalf of the MEA Regional Committee and Staff , VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 07:10, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Greetings, @VThamaini (WMF) and the MEA Regional Committee and Staff.

Sorry for not clarifying the points mentioned in the grant application. We would do our best to help you understand clearly our vision in the easiest possible way.

• We found that you intend to implement a great deal of activities and are unclear about the intention with this approach; it is for instance the specific challenge you are working to address. We like to think of it in this way for instance - after 12 months of implementation of an annual grant, what will impact look like? What are the key outcomes we will have achieved that will tell us we made progress in achieving the impact? We suggest that you focus on one strategy or even activity and hopefully, that can support in grounding your group before identifying areas best aligned with your plans for growth. We found the strategies unclear and it was uncertain how those aligned with the activities.
  • RE: Yes. We intend to implement a great deal of activities because they are quite feasible from our projections. We have a number of methodologies we want to try out to see what effect we would get in terms of the level of responsiveness of our audience. The specific challenge we are working to address is capturing the minds of our audience to understand what the Wikimedia movement is all about. Many are yet to fully understand what Wikimedia stands for. It would surprise you that even some of the professors from our community do not believe that the content Wikipedia avails to readers are free or knowledge contributed on the WMF projects are freely given. I.e., they suspect WMF gets profit from its platforms and those who volunteer get something paid to them. Our continual engagements with these set of professionals is gradually helping to open up their understanding as to what the movement stands for. We have much to do in terms of laying a solid foundation using all available means at our disposal to reach out to our people to help them understand the importance of documenting their language, their culture, the sounds of their environment online, and not just anywhere but in the platform being provided to us by Wikimedia Foundation. In summary, we want to create mass awareness about the movement not just within our community but around it over a period of 12 months. We shall evaluate the impact of our work using Qualitative (e.g., perform online and offline surveys and phone call surveys) and Quantitative (e.g., conduct random interviews) research methodologies by getting an expert to take us through that road and at quarterly intervals to be able to ascertain if we are making progress or not. We shall discontinue with any of the programmes not yielding the desired results after the first year and focus on what gives results. That is why we are having many programmes outlined. We believe we are capable and would prove ourselves if given the chance to access this funding.
• It is unclear on the motivation to pursue the model of working with TV - what informs that it will work better than other approaches you have worked with before?
  • RE: We live in the days in which people spend more of their time watching something on TV or online than interacting in-person. When you invite a person to come over to your home to do some editing together, the person might not be able to come due to distance or the transportation fare to come. What if the editing lesson is taken to that person instead? What if we inform our community members to tune to Channel XYZ on this or that date to watch how to edit the Tyap Wiktionary or Wikipedia and participate in an edit-a-thon after learning the basics to win a prize? Who wouldn't like that? That is arming someone with the tool and expecting the person to use it. Not all would ever do anything about it, but reaching out to a larger number of people who would in turn inform others seem to be a good idea we could experiment on. This is the basic idea about the TV campaign. This seem to be a better approach to reaching out to more people who would be willing to invest their time in contributing knowledge to the movement than the traditional invitation-of-friends-to-come-to-learn-editing-in-my-house method, or social media (Telegram, WhatsApp) we currently use. The prerecorded videos to be used for the TV would also be made available on YouTube and other social media outlets. It's all about using every available method possible to capture the affections of our prospective audience.

• It is unclear what the learning and evaluation campaign entails, please explain.
  • RE: As earlier stated, we shall carry out Quantitative and Qualitative analytic research to ascertain the impact of our works quarterly to see if we are making progress in our awareness creation quest or not. For the Quantitative research, we shall survey people online and offline by sharing questionnaires and even get phone contacts of people we come across to ask them about our programmes and know what impact we make on the average member of the audience. For the Qualitative research, we shall conduct targeted interviews and interact with specific individuals about where we are getting it right and where we are having lapses to make adjustments. We shall analyze to know which of our events or programmes are more interesting and later narrow down on the one(s) that people like the best, to cut down on wastage of resources in the following year because it would do no good if people are not enjoying one's content and one continues producing it.

• It will be interesting to learn how the roles they have indicated have been resourced in the past and what informs the request of resourcing all four roles at the same time. Additionally, are the two staff members planned on a full-time basis? What are the roles of the ED and the project manager? What sort of activities would each be performing? Please share a detailed staff plan clearly indicating the roles and responsibilities.
  • RE: Concerning the staffing, the person playing the role of the ED at the moment is my very self, and the person who would perform the role of the Project manager is Friday Musa, a Business Administrator by profession. In the past, we used Rapid Grants applied to WMF to get our funding to carry out events which were quite limited in length and resources. We fund ourselves through personal sacrifices to get data packages no matter how little to support anyone who has the willingness to learn about editing. But then, our achievements were limited by funds. This was what informed the need for us applying for a Community Support grant to help us give our full-time to the movement. At the moment, we work as staff of other organizations and are unable to commit much of our time to the work but as full-time staff, much would be achieved.

• • • ROLE: Executive Director
      • RESPONSIBILTIES:
        • - He would coordinate the staff (paid and volunteering) and non-staff members of the community into gaining the best results from them in terms of volunteerism.
        • - He/she would interface between the Governance and Administrative staff.
        • - He/she would source for prospective partners to work with the organization on achieving a common goal e.g., the TLDB
        • - He/she would source for collaborators to perform joint language editing sessions together, e.g., TWU collaborating with WM Romania or Ireland.
        • - He/she would source for additional ways the organization would get external funding.
        • - He/she would envision the pathway for the group to follow for greater progress.
        • - He/she would communicate the progress of the organization to the community and encourage more participation.
        • - Where there are shortcomings, the ED goes in to address them. We have Wikipedia and Wiktionary pages which need to be fixed or worked on, the ED does them where there is shortage of manpower to make sure that those projects remain alive, until when a stable volunteering community gets established.

• • • ROLE: Project Manager
      • RESPONSIBILITIES:
      • - He/she would handle issues related to financing projects for the group.
      • - He/she would organize in-person and/or online events.
      • - He/she would organizes outreaches.
      • - He/she would implement processes which would lead to the group spending less for projects.
      • - He/she would organize telecast sessions by sourcing for partners to get our recordings done.
      • - He/she would basically perform all domestic duties involving planning and execution, needed to keep the organization moving.
      • - He/she would be at liberty to delegate responsibilities to volunteering staff within the community to handle any aspect of his job he needs support. In the past, we had different people stationed to organize events, serve as communications officer and a secretary, all of whom served as volunteers and members of the BoT. These people would continue to work with the Project Manager to make his work lighter.

• • • ROLE: Learning and Evaluation Specialist
      • RESPONSIBILITIES:
      • - He/she would plan and execute quarterly quantitative and qualitative analytic research to ascertain the impact of our projects.
      • - He/she would not be working alone. He/she would need the hands of other people to work with in order to get the desired goal(s) achieved.

• • • ROLE: Audit Consultant
      • RESPONSIBILITIES:
      • - He/she would work with other auditors to inspect our financial expenditures in relations to our operations, necessary in order to ensure that we are spending rightly.
      • - He/she would conduct Internal Control Review (ICR).
      • - He/she would undertake Consulting Project.

• Please let us know what your current governance structure looks like. It is unclear from our review on the difference between the administrative role and governance roles of those involved especially when it is the same people.
  • RE: Our governance structure primarily consists of the elected BoT members of the user group. We have an Executive Director; Assistant Director; Secretary; Financial Secretary; Events, Meetups and Grants Coordinator; and IT, Communications and Outreach Coordinator. That is our present structure. Only but two of those involved in the governance are doubling as administrative staff. This is a collective decision by the BoT, and the execution of our duties would not be an issue at all.

• We know that the core essence of the Wikimedia Movement is volunteerism - a global movement of volunteers contributing to achieve the mission. How are you permeating and enabling this philosophy and attitude in your community? We are also keen to learn how you plan to manage the dynamics between the paid staff and volunteers of the community.
  • RE: 1. About permeating and enabling the philosophy and attitude of volunteerism in our community, we do that in deed, not just in words. We as much as possible inculcate in the minds of our community members that the responsibility of ensuring that our language survives is on us, not just on some group or the other. The attitude towards the language before now had been largely that of a local language meant to be spoken only at home with grandparents rather than outdoors or even online. Our program is gradually adjusting the psyche of our community members with such notions. Over time, we have been able to get young people wanting to join our movement, attend our events where they are made to understand that our movement is about volunteering in preserving and promoting Tyap. 2. About managing the dynamics between paid staff and volunteers of the community, it is rather better to be practical not theoretical. It is good that a workman/woman who labours eats from his/her labour. Therefore, if we have volunteers, even though the core ideology of our movement is volunteerism, these volunteers would need to be encouraged. Speaking as Kambai now: Personally, I have given my time and resources including ideas towards the teaching and learning of Tyap on social media as a volunteer and no one paid or is paying me for it. I do get calls from people -- young and old, laymen and professors appreciating my work and encouraging me never to stop what I do for Tyap language. But only a few ever encouraged me with data packages or airtime. Sometimes, when I run out of data, I remain offline for sometime and when I get some money to get more airtime, I resume. Not many care to know my struggles. Hence, in this case, I would say that if we have volunteering staff, we would let them have stipends for their work. That would at the very least encourage them to do more. Those stipends are going to come from the salaries of the paid staff and the contract staff. That, we would organize at the local level and ensure that everyone goes home happy, in an idea situation.

• How have you developed and managed engagement of members of the local community to support the development of the language project.
  • RE: Social media had really been of immerse benefit to us in the development of our language. We have the Tyap Language Institute of Nigeria (The TYALIN), a language learning platform in which we offer informal Tyap language lessons on WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, with an ever-increasing membership. The TYALIN was started on Facebook about 2014 and people on Facebook having Tyap language names were added; they in turn invited others to join ——— that was how the community began to grow. When we started the Tyap Wiki project, it was easier to gather membership because we already had them in the TYALIN. We now have separate groups for the local Wiki project and the TYALIN. We also engage members of the community one-on-one in discussions about growing the language or those who have questions related to Tyap language through social media and in some occasions meet one-on-one. Currently as we speak, the impact of The TYALIN has brought about the drafting of a curriculum for Tyap Language and the starting of literacy centres in four central Nigerian areas/cities where the Tyap speaking people reside more: Kaduna, Zaria, Abuja and the home areas where Tyap is native to. It should be noted that these are all private efforts with no government encouragement whatsoever. We volunteer to help ourselves with our little resources to see that Tyap lives over the next two generations and encourage parents to speak the language with their children so we don't lose our identity.

• Is an office space needed at this point in time? Maybe get a co-working space with the furniture and equipment? Additionally, would you speak to the requested equipment-- in this case, laptops - we are curious to learn about their necessity at this point and also how they will be shared with the user group members and community.
  • RE: An office space would not be necessary at the moment. We only ask for a co-working space with furniture and equipment for our work to go on smoothly. About the laptops, you might never know how far this would go in helping us attain some level of progress. Not many of us have good smartphones, talk less of functioning laptop or desktop computers. If we have these laptops, when we have to edit images or videos to upload on Wikimedia Commons for example, we could schedule time for each person wanting to edit to do so. About teaching others how to edit, these laptops could also help out in minor editing sessions. Of course, those who have would bring in theirs so resources could be increased to achieve the desire goal.

• Would you say more about your partnership with Tyap Language Development Board (TLDB)
  • RE: Oh, yes. When we started the Tyap Wikimedia movement, we initially encountered friction with the leadership of the TLDB. We had to attend series of in-person meetings with them and today, we are getting along as many of the elderly folks in the TLDB who misunderstood what Wikimedia Foundation stands for are now gradually picking interest in our work. Last year, we met with the paramount ruler of Atyap Chiefdom, who expressed joy over our work and encouraged us to reach out to more younger people to join our movement. He also encouraged us to continue working with the TLDB as partners. In terms of this partnership,
    • - the TLDB in March 2022 invited our group members to participate in a literacy training at the Nigerian Bible Translation Trust (NBTT) to acquire basic translation skills which would enable us translate and spell Tyap more correctly.
    • - the TLDB also has a Tyap dictionary project which members of our user group were incorporated into participating in the editing work so that newer terms could be added and there would be synchronization in terms of the terminologies we use and the ones used in the TLDB dictionary.
    • - the TLDB also wishes that we use the dictionary they (or we) are working on for our Tyap Wiktionary project.

• Lastly, we are keen to learn what were the limitations or challenges with accessing and working with rapid funds or the motivation to move to the general support funds at this stage of your organization?
  • RE: The major challenges in accessing and working with the rapid funds are as follows:
    • - The fact is that we operate as volunteers but as a volunteer, one can only give what is available. As employees of other organizations, whenever we hold events, we the organizers have to plan them only during weekends, except when we are on holidays or something, then we could put in some more time. Speaking as Kambaiː If we have an event in Kaduna, I would have to leave home with my luggage to the place of work on Friday from whence I leave Abuja to Kaduna by road and return after the event is over on Sunday sometimes late at night and awake early again to go to work on Monday. Imagine if we have few paid staff available to organize our programmes and plan the running of our movement locally over a longer period of time... The impact would never be the same as having just volunteers doing the job.
    • - We believe that we could be able to provide a friendly working space for volunteers to come in and learn about contributing to our movement in a cozy environment, if we apply for a higher grant to enable us do so.
    • - Our local terrain would need extra work to be done to capture the minds of prospective volunteers.
    • - We want our language to survive and we want it to be propagated online on Wikipedia, Wiktionary and other sister projects. Our language is a dying language with personal efforts here and there being done to help it survive. A dying patient is not likely to be treated as one with a minor injury that is why we are ready to go all out to see that we reach out to as many volunteers to join and promote this language online while we work with our local partners like the TLDB to promote language literacy locally to increase the number of users of our works. When we are able to start a solid work in Tyap, we could then be able to reach out to other languages in the region to help them in developing local Wiki projects, too.

On behalf of the Tyap Wikimedians User Group (TWU), Kambai Akau (talk) 22:51, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia Community Fund Application Not Approved

Dear Tyap Wikimedians Organization,

Thank you for submitting your application seeking General Support Funds - Wikimedia Community Fund. The Middle East and Africa Regional Committee and Staff have thoroughly discussed and reviewed your application and recommended that the user group continues tapping into the Rapid Funds program for their resourcing needs and therefore not recommended for general support funding.

As shared on email and in the follow up discussion - Please find our rationale here;

• We find your plan to be ambitious while not reconciling with the fact that you are still a young and emerging community.
• We believe the focus for the group at this point needs to be on building your community and putting in place a stable foundation with community structures that will enable its development.
• We therefore urge you to embrace a gradual development path.
• We also had a challenge recognizing the urgency in accessing general support funding at this point in time.
• We believe you can find other helpful elements to building your community and some do not necessarily need financial resources ; we encourage you to explore these non-monetary elements.
• Looking at the members of the group, we believe there is an opportunity to develop skills needed to meaningfully contribute to the language Wikipedia you are building. Therefore putting in place space for skills development in your community is recommended.
• We recommend establishing a volunteer led advisory board to support in ensuring healthy governance. We would hope to see more volunteers taking lead including on matters related to the governance of the community.

We hope this feedback and recommendations are useful in guiding your work now and in the future. Thank you for your contribution to the movement ; we value you as a community and partner in the movement and remain committed to ensuring you are supported in your work.

On behalf of the MEA Regional Committee and staff, Kaizenify (talk) 20:57, 29 May 2023 (UTC)