Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Kolasekhara/National conference on Wikipedia & Education

Hi Kolasekhara, thank you for submitting this request for funding to host a conference on Wikipedia in Education. It would be helpful to have more information about your plans:

1. Please provide a more detailed budget, including estimated costs for meals, travel, printing and conference kits, and what items or expenses are included in each category. For conferences, we generally approve funding for lunches during the conference days, but not dinners.
2. Please share a list of intended participants - it would be good to indicate which participants have experience with WEP, and which participants do not.
3. Describe what kind of outcomes you hope to see from this event. For example, how many participants do you hope will start using Wikimedia in their classes as a result of the event? How many presenters will act as mentors to educators who are starting new WEP programs?
4. The event is coming up very soon, so we expect that you have a program for the conference. Would you please share the program in the grant request?
5. What is your plan for following up with participants after the event to help them start their own WEP programs?

We look forward to your responses to our questions so that we can learn more about this exciting conference. Please let us know if you have any questions. Cheers, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:21, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi KHarold (WMF), Thanks for your interest and my answers are as follows:

1. Made relevant changes in project page.
2. Participants are academicians, research scholars and students from different Universities & Colleges from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana & other Indian states. Most of them are newly introduced to Wikipedia Education Program, because we intend to spread this idea in remaining educational organizations but some participants does have experience in Wikipedia Education program who can get benefited out of new ideas & best practices going to be shared in this conference.
3. We are expecting 7-10 out of them to take up the baton and will take up Wikipedia editing to their students in different ways. Presenters are mainly Wikimedians & program persons working to improve Telugu Wikipedia & Wikimedia projects at a large. Most of them will be mentors.
4. Yes. Will do it.
5. In a hands on activity conducted in last day of conference, we will ask participants to come up with a plan for upcoming months to work and collaborate to design them better. Later on we will follow up with them based on the plans they share. Also ask them to revert back their activities on monthly basis atleast for first 3 months. --Kolasekhara (talk) 10:12, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi Kolasekhara, thank you for answering our questions and adding more information to the budget. We have two concerns about the request:

1. Community engagement: We looked at the notification posted on the Village Pump, but do not see that anyone has replied to the post. In order to approve this request, we need to see that there is community support for the project and that active Wikimedians are involved. We would like to know who else is involved in the project, and who will be attending. Is there an event page where participants have signed up to either present or attend the event? If these discussions have been happening on a mailing list, it would be good to create an event page with the program and attendee list, where links to important materials, presentations and follow up plans can be posted.
2. Budget: Please clarify what expenses are included in the 15,000 INR for conference proceedings, 30,000 INR for conference packs and explain what TA, DA and Honorariums are for, including who will be recieving those funds, how much each person will be given, and what those payments will be for. In general, we do not approve funding for honorariums for speakers or event organizers, but we can approve funding for travel expenses for some participants.

Thank you for your quick response - I will check back on this page tomorrow to see if you have replied to my questions so that we can make a funding decision soon. Cheers, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi KHarold (WMF) Here are my responses for your queries:

1. Unfortunately one of my edits to page unintentionally deleted endorsements from Telugu community members. You can see it now, apart from that some of the community members are going to be resource persons for this conference too. Thanks for your suggestion on page & we created a page here in Telugu Wikipedia. Will update it eventually.
2. I have reworked budget in accordance with your suggestion and published in proposal page here. I wanted to mention that due to delay, we changed tentative dates to October 1st week.

Thanks for your interest and please let me know if there is anything else. --Kolasekhara (talk) 17:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Funding decision

Hi Kolasekhara, thank you for providing fast and detailed responses to our questions. It has been helpful to learn more about the intended audience for this event and the team you are working with. We are pleased to hear that you are working with a group of experienced Wikimedians who are interested in running education programs in your area. We would like to support you and your fellow Wikimedians who are interested in WEP, however we recommend that you focus on starting an education program locally before hosting a national or regional conference to do outreach to new educators. We recommend that you contact the education team at WMF to discuss starting an education program in partnership with the Wikimedians who you planned this conference with. You can email education﹫wikimedia.org to get started. In the 'Plan' section of the education toolkit you will find advice from experienced WEP program leaders on how to start a program in your area, including finding teachers and schools to work with, developing lessons that are suitable for students with different levels of experience and setting achievable goals for both students and your program. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 22 September 2016 (UTC)