Grants talk:Project/ISUR/Wikipedia women and ancestral knowledge from the global south in the Colombian context/2

Eligibility confirmed, Round 1 2020

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for Round 1 2020 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through March 16, 2020.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for Round 1 2020 will occur March 17 - April 8, 2020. We ask that you refrain from making changes to your proposal during the committee review period, so we can be sure that all committee members are seeing the same version of the proposal.

Grantees will be announced Friday, May 15, 2020.

Any changes to the review calendar will be posted on the Round 1 2020 schedule.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

COVID 19 planning

Dear JulioGaitan,

Updated COVID-19 planning guidelines do not allow your proposal to proceed in the current round. I have emailed multiple times with instructions about next steps, but I have not heard a reply from you. Can you please contact me as soon as possible so we can follow up at projectgrants wikimedia  · org?

Thank you, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 05:45, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for ISUR/Wikipedia women and ancestral knowledge from the global south in the Colombian context/2

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?	6.8
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	5.0
(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?	5.0
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	5.0
Additional comments from the Committee: The project fits with Wikimedia's strategic priorities but its sustainability is difficult to evaluate because of limited information provided. Moderate to high impact potential. If done properly, this project will empower a new Wikipedia community out of the Incubator and improve minority content in Spanish Wikipedia. As a community we need to be more inclusive and protective of indigenous languages and knowledge. This project addresses that. Not only would the project increase the number of potential Wikipedia languages, but serve as a template to use in other regions with indigenous languages. The least risky version of the plan is 3.0, which is also the most realistic in the current situation. The measures of success should be improved - they are too vague. A continuation of the first iteration of this project, although in a different context. Risks are however high: connectivity was identified as a major issue in the previous iteration, going full online risks making this issue worse. However, measures of success seem relatively low given the cost and scale of the project. This project does not innovate on anything done in other regions, but it does provide a needed service for knowledge equity and knowledge preservation. It can be directly measured, but measures should not just be in “number of wikis created” - outreach is critical as well. It is not clear from the proposal how the grantee plans to measure impact. The scope can be accomplished in 12 months. The budget of version 3.0 - $35,000 - is in principle ok but workshop organization expenses still look excessive. Participants are skilled and they have a good outreach to indigenous leaders. However, the budget is not clear (not sure why one would need paper for online events, for instance) and figures seem too vague, and there is no timeline at all. With the current pandemic execution of this project may be complicated. With these sorts of workshops, in-person leaves the best result. I am confident that they would be able to execute the project with the support of Wikimedia Colombia. There has been little community engagement so far. There is a good plan of engaging with a very specific target community of indigenous Colombians. The project is very diversity-oriented and, if done well, will help us get a new wiki off the ground. This project supports the needs of knowledge preservation and language diversity. No single endorsements from the targeted community. I am willing to support the project going along the version 3.0 plan provided that the ability of participants to actually execute the project is thoroughly checked. There is a need to make a clearer plan (budget + timeline) on online event. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/ISUR/Wikipedia_women_and_ancestral_knowledge_from_the_global_south_in_the_Colombian_context/Final says connectivity was an issue, it is not clear how this issue will be resolved. Will we pay participants to buy laptops with internet? Will we borrow them equipment? I know COVID context is challenging for everybody, but I would rather prefer to work on the strategy and maybe trainings for community members already connected at the moment, and if the main issue for workshops is infrastructure, then we should perhaps postpone them until someone with laptops / Internet can travel there. As mentioned above, measures of success look too low for the scale of the project. I am having a tough time deciding about this given the current pandemic. Their activities are all in-person except for documentation writing. This means a large portion of their activities likely will not be able to be completed. Given that saturation, I would say to not fund it at this time, but yes, once the pandemic is over. It is not clear from the proposal how the grantee plans to measure or evaluate impact. No good follow up plan after the events and no single endorsements from members of the targeted community including the Wikimedia Colombia listed as an advisor. The budget is not clear. 20,000USD was budgeted for "Consulting services and project coordination" It is not clear what kind of consulting this is. Is this budget for remuneration for project management? This is too expensive. The budget should be broken down. How many hours will the consultant be working per day? What kind of services will this person provide? 8,334 USD was budgeted for "Materials and inputs for workshops". It is not clear from the proposal about what kind of material they are providing. Is this a webinar package or something like that? It is not clear what " input from the workshop" is. Who is providing this input? What kind of input is this? Looking at the scope of this proposal and the old revision, I am not convinced that this project could be successful without an offline event. On this note, I will not be recommending this proposal for funding at this time.

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Next steps:

• 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.
• If you have had an interview with a Program Officer, you may have orally responded to some of the committee comments already. Your interview comments will be relayed to the committee during the deliberations call.
• You are welcome to respond to aggregated comments here on the talkpage to publicly share any feedback, clarifications or questions you have.
• Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on May 29, 2020.

If you have any questions, please contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Round 1 2020 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:
The committee appreciates the strong fit your continued work with Wayuu and other indigineous communities has with movement strategy with respect to representing indigineous knowledge with respect to their needs and interests in Wikimedia projects. However, the most significant concerns expressed by the committee were the following:

• In the previous Project Grant report, connectivity issues were a substantial issue, and this was during a time when you were able to conduct training activities offline. We are concerned that the infrastructure for conducting online activities is not likely to be good, and that this will result in a poor experience for both you and the indigenous communities you plan to work with.

• That the budget included things like utensils and papers, even after a few rounds of revisions related to the pandemic restrictions, without clarity. Items such as these suggest that in-person events may have been planned or tentatively planned with indigineous communities, which we cannot currently support through funding.

We would welcome you to resubmit this project at a time when we are able to fund in-person/offline events again.

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.

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 3 June 2020 (UTC)