Grants talk:Project/ISUR/Empowerment of Colombian indigenous peoples with the tools of the Wiki ecosystem

Eligibility provisionally confirmed, Round 2 2021 - Research and Software proposal

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've provisionally confirmed your proposal is eligible for review in Round 2 2021 for Research and Software projects, contingent upon:

• confirmation that the project will not depend on staff from the Wikimedia Foundation for code review, integration or other technical support during or after the project, unless those staff are part of the Project Team.
• compliance with our COVID-19 guidelines.

Schedule delay

Please note that due to unexpected delays in the review process, committee scoring will take place from April 17 through May 2, instead of April 9-24, as originally planned.

• Please watch your talkpage, which will be the primary method of communication about your proposal. We appreciate your timely response to questions and comments posted there.
• Please refrain from making changes to your proposal during the scoring period, so that all committee members score the same version of your proposal.
• After the scoring period ends, you are welcome to make further changes to your proposal in response to committee comments.

COVID-19 planning for travel and/or offline events

Proposals that include travel and/or offline events must ensure that all of the following are true:

• You must review and can comply with the guidelines linked above.
• If necessary because of COVID-19 safety risks, you must be able to complete the core components of your proposed work plan _without_ offline events or travel.
• You must be able to postpone any planned offline events or travel until the Wikimedia Foundation’s guidelines allow for them, without significant harm to the goals of your project.
• You must include a COVID-19 planning section in your activities plan. In this section, you should provide a brief summary of how your project plan will meet COVID-19 guidelines, and how it would impact your project if travel and offline events prove unfeasible throughout the entire life of your project.

Community engagement

We encourage you to make sure that stakeholders, volunteers, and/or communities impacted by your proposed project are aware of your proposal and invite them to give feedback on your talkpage. This is a great way to make sure that you are meeting the needs of the people you plan to work with and it can help you improve your project.

• If you are applying for funds in a region where there is a Wikimedia Affiliate working, we encourage you to let them know about your project, too.
• If you are a Wikimedia Affiliate applying for a Project Grant: A special reminder that our guidelines and criteria require you to announce your Project Grant requests on your official user group page on Meta and a local language forum that is recognized by your group, to allow adequate space for objections and support to be voiced).

We look forward to engaging with you in this Round!

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 05:38, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Empowerment of Colombian indigenous peoples with the tools of the Wiki ecosystem

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	4.8
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	4.3
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	4.8
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	3.5
Additional comments from the Committee: It is unclear whether the project fits with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. Its goals are vague and appear not to be closely related to the Wikimedia communities' needs. somehow fit with the priorities as it is intended to cover some gap by reaching smaller communities. But see no plan of scalability or sustainability The project meets wikimedia strategic priorities. It can be sustainable and replicated in other communities The project doesn't have a clear strategic priority and may not be sustainable. The entire budget will contribute little to the movement. It may not contribute much to the wiki projects outlined. The project is not innovative. It includes a typical combination of editatons, workshops, outdoor events etc. The project should have been classified as offline type - it contains little research if any. Its potential impact is also unclear because the goals and measures of success are vague and the plan is not very specific either. again a workshop, nothing innovative The project seeks to solve the problem of a gap of under-represented group and seeks to do that through training and capacity building. The impact of the project is greater than the risk. Stating the use of a metric to record data collected from various activities organized. This proposal doesn't stand out. I will recommend that the proposer sticks to a clearer objective like engaging indigenous people to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. What special skills will participants learn? I did not see that in this proposal. The scope is broad and though it can be probably accomplished in 12 months. The budget seems a bit excessive especially the allocation for the consulting services. The skills of the participant are difficult to evaluate. Seems that grantees have relevant experience but they are not member of wiki-community (grantee has only 120 edits). And the budget is terrifying in terms of cost per human covered. The scope of the project can be completed in 12 months. It is realistic because it seeks train and grow a focus group in Columbia by editing and growing the number of articles and also correct biases on contribution of the communities. Participant have the necessary skills to undertake the project. I think the proposer can complete this project in 12 months or less, but I feel the budget is too high, and the total number of participants compared to the articles to be created way too low. The budget for Consulting services and project coordination is very high, with no clarity on the role of the consultant. This project is not realistic enough. No evidence of engagement with the Wikimedia community. I see no involvement from the Wikimedia community. The project seeks to target a specific group in the Columbia community. It has community support. It supports diversity. The grantee is the same as the advisor, and I see little or no community participation. Though the project invites more contributors, more experienced community members should be engaged considering the budget and activities outlined. I do not also see diversity in the project. The project is large, has vague goals and measures of success. It is relevance for the Wikimedia communities is unclear. The budget seems to be excessive. The project is also misclassified - it should have been submitted in the previous round as offline/online project. workshops that cover 40-60 people and cost us 77k USD are not acceptable. We have limited funds and we need to concentrate on projects that have the highest impact. Despite having the good goal of the project (that should be achieved, as all people have the right of access to Wikimedia), we just can't do it as it would be an inefficient expense while we have limited resources I support the project fully but I suggest if the budget can be reduced a bit. There should be a change/reduction in the consultation amount I think this project should be refined and resubmitted next time. The impact is too low, and the project should produce more content than the current proposal. Also, I will recommend you include more experienced contributors/volunteers. They should reduce the budget.

Opportunity to respond to committee comments in the next week

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal. Based on their initial review, a majority of committee reviewers have not recommended your proposal for funding. You can read more about their reasons for this decision in their comments above. Before the committee finalizes this decision, they would like to provide you with an opportunity to respond to their comments.

Next steps:

1. Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback carefully and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page by 5pm UTC on Tuesday, May 11, 2021. If you make any revisions to your proposal based on committee feedback, we recommend that you also summarize the changes on your talkpage.
2. The committee will review any additional feedback you post on your talkpage before making a final funding decision. A decision will be announced Thursday, May 27, 2021.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 04:33, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the feedback.

This project is the continuity of processes that we have been developing with indigenous communities in Colombia. In relation to the way we fit and think the activities in the framework of the 2030 strategy, we think along the following lines.

1. Increase the sustainability of the movement. Indigenous populations, as well as their knowledge, are relegated in the encyclopedia. In this project, it is based on their needs, practices and interests that we are thinking about the joint construction of the thematic plan for the workshops.
2. Improve the user experience. In Colombia, 112 indigenous peoples are recognized and more than 68 native languages are spoken. However, their experiences as users of Wikipedia and Wiki ecosystem projects are limited by linguistic, cultural and information access challenges. In this project we are going to build a guide together with the communities, so that other indigenous communities can build on it and implement it. This is one of the scalability points of the project, given that there are indigenous communities and knowledge not only in Colombia, but all over the world, and we are at an important moment to make contributions from other logics and territories to the Wiki ecosystem projects viable. In the same way, the community is thinking, to go out of the Wiki communities and rely on others to fulfill the mission: . So we believe that from this project, we can continue contributing and building a way for voices and knowledge unknown until now, to know, use and appropriate Wiki projects.
3. Regarding the stipulated activities, they are general activities, however, they may change and other ways of editing, documenting and contributing to the supported projects of the communities may be seen. In Colombia, within the framework of the pandemic, the gap of access to information has increased by going virtual, since there are places (such as indigenous territories) where there is no internet signal, but there is a lot of knowledge to share with the world. In fact, one of the points of impact with the communities is that without presence the processes do not work. For this reason, all activities involve face-to-face activities and the management of local support, which is responsible for following up on all community activities that arise within the framework of this project.

This project is framed within the Research, action-participation approach, due to the priority work with communities and the emphasis we will place on participation and action. The objective is to understand the Wiki world trying to change, in collaboration with the community and following the reflection, also building a strategy so that other indigenous peoples can join and participate in the Internet. This will be a collective research and we will rely on the experience and social history of the communities to bring tools that will allow them to access information, contribute to knowledge and include epistemologies outside those that have supported Wikipedia so far.

ISUR-It is the Center for Internet and Society of the Universidad del Rosario. ISUR since 2017 has supported the constitutionally contemplated processes to move towards the autonomy of indigenous territories. The aim is to support the empowerment of communities for the adoption of their own management models in health, education, environmental sanitation and own justices.

The Universidad del Rosario has developed numerous projects and activities related to discussions within the communities about their autonomy in all aspects of their social life and their interrelations with state institutions. In the development of various activities, it has been possible to sensitize and show some communities the benefits and possibilities that the legal recognition of territorial autonomy represents, to the extent that it allows the communities themselves to determine the priorities and the means by which they will meet their needs on the four fronts already referred to in the constitutional framework.

In relation to costs, given that the work is in two distant territories, we have reviewed and following the budget reduction recommendations, we can prioritize the work in a single territory,working with a single community, which would reduce the budget by a high percentage. The values would be as follows.

New Budget

• 5 Workshops (site rental, refreshments, mobilization of participants, lodging)
• Workshop development materials and publications
• Project coordination and consultancy service
• Social media campaign

Regarding budgets and items, we present them below.

#	Name	Amount COP	Amount USD
1	Consulting services and project coordination	80’000.000	26.670
2	Materials and inputs for workshops	5’000.000	1.670
3	Expenses for the development of workshops *Travel (national tickets, meals and mobility) *Events and refreshments *Papers, utensils and office supplies	60’000.000	20.000
4	Computer equipment *Two computers that will be used by the territorial leaders and also in the activities in each community.	8'000.000	2.320
5	Contingencies * Last minute expenses that are not foreseen and may be needed.	10’000.000	2.660
6	Administrative and unexpected expenses	18’000.000	6.000
	TOTAL	181'000.000	59.320

Round 2 2021 decision

This project has not been selected for a Project Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding. This was a very competitive round with many good ideas, not all of which could be funded in spite of many merits. We appreciate your participation, and we hope you'll continue to stay engaged in the Wikimedia context.

Comments regarding this decision:
We will not be funding your project this round. The committee appreciated the applicants’ expertise to collaborate with the Arhuaco indigenous community to explore ways to become active participants in the Wikimedia movement. It recognized the culturally sensitive approach of the project and the potential furtherance of knowledge equity. Despite the interest in mobilizing communities and generating content about underrepresented knowledge in Wikipedia, the committee decided not to fund this proposal in its current state of development.

Below are the issues that were raised during review by the Project Grants committee and by staff reviewers with expertise in research and education:

• There were several concerns about the research emphasis of the project. Based on the information provided by the applicant, it was difficult to clearly understand what the specific research questions were or the methodology and research activities that would be used to answer those questions. Additionally, the proposal lacked references to the abundant research literature on knowledge gaps and decolonialist practices in Wikipedia. Some committee members said they would have been willing to fund this proposal if it had been submitted in the Community Organizing Round, but did not feel that it was a strong enough proposal in the Research category.
• The cost of the project was considered high for a focus on content-creation experiences, capacity building, and documentation in a single community. While content-creation, capacity building and documentation is valuable, when it is focused on a single community, it is usually achieved at a much lower budget within the Wikimedia movement. Larger budget proposals like this one are usually only funded if they create a framework that could scale beyond the single community, and this framework must be robust enough to have substantial potential for replication. Consequently, the interest in funding this particular proposal was primarily based on its potential for larger-scale impact beyond the duration of the project, based on the creation of a roadmap comprehensive enough to allow other groups in Latin American to incorporate the project learnings and participate in Wikimedia projects into their cultural context. Because the applicant was unsure about whether the roadmap would have substantial potential for replication in other communities, the likelihood of impact seemed too uncertain relative to the cost.

In addition, staff was concerned that the budget for the project continued to be in flux throughout the duration of the review period, leaving uncertainty about whether the project plan was stable enough to be ready for funding at this time.

Despite the concerns with the framework of this specific proposal, there is significant support and interest in partnering with ISUR. We appreciate your expertise and your sensitive approach to partnering with indigenous communities in Colombia in a way that empowers them to have agency about their participation and representation online. We believe that with some preparatory conversations to better calibrate the needs of the Wikimedia movement, the needs of ISUR, and the needs of indigenous groups, a successful proposal could be developed for funding in the future.

Next steps: Applicants whose proposals are declined are welcome to consider resubmitting your application again in the future. You are welcome to request a consultation with staff to review any concerns with your proposal that contributed to a decline decision, and help you determine whether resubmission makes sense for your proposal.

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.