Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Wiki Loves Africa 2020 Burundi

Comments from WMF

Hello Elmh, thank you for submitting a Wiki Loves Africa proposal. We're excited to see the first proposal from Burundi. I see from your global account both you and the other user name I see on this proposal do not have that many edits on any of our Wikimedia projects. Given that I have some follow up questions:

1. Do you have an experienced Wikimedian who is going to help you with the launch events and help you understand how to best participate in this contest?
2. I see that you're planning to use social media and print advertising to recruit individuals to participate in this event? Have you already seen interest from some individuals who want to participate? Even in experienced communities it's hard to recruit 30 people for an event so we want to be careful in setting goals that might not be realistic. I would be interested in learning how you decided on this number.

Looking forward to reading your responses so we can move forward with our review process. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 23:23, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello WJifar (WMF),

For the first question:

1. Do you have an experienced Wikimedian who is going to help you with the launch events and help you understand how to best participate in this contest?

Answer:

We are in contact with Antoni Mtavangu from Tanzania who will work with us hand by hand to make sure we host the contest effectively. One of the Strategy is that Antoni will conduct a series of 2 online training for us (Burundi leaders) on important things to consider before, during and after the contest. You are welcome to kindly advise any other best way if there is.154.117.217.26 15:40, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

1. I see that you're planning to use social media and print advertising to recruit individuals to participate in this event? Have you already seen interest from some individuals who want to participate? Even in experienced communities it's hard to recruit 30 people for an event so we want to be careful in setting goals that might not be realistic. I would be interested in learning how you decided on this number.

Answer:

We did already some awareness programs about Wikimedia projects in some of universities in Burundi, and the response is quite good . So the social media will not start to recruit volunteers afresh, instead to make both the new ones and those who already know about Wikimedia projects to participate in the contest.154.117.217.26 15:40, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Request from Wikimedia community usergroup Burundi

Good morning, I am Elmh , an organizer of the project Wiki Loves Africa Burundi. This is to inform that we didn't get a permission to run the project since we would have to go around and take pictures regarding the term "Transportation" and the reason of that was that our Wikimedia community user group Burundi was not known as a legal non-profit in our country. One of their suggestion is to first to apply for legislation as a nonprofit organization in our country and then we will be able to run other coming projects. As our user group starts on September 2019 ,This project was our first experience and helps us to learn how next time we will figure out. Our request is to help us to make the Wikimedia Community user group Burundi legal and so we can run the next project of course after the pandemic. We have well received the funds for the project "Wiki loves Africa" and was not able to launch the event due to the nom permission. We are requesting to use some of the funds to apply for legislation and the rest of the funds will be used for the edithatons that we will run after the pandemics. After some research, we found that to open an legal nonprofit movement in our country requires:

1. an action plan for the next 3 years approved by the general assembly of the association and after each year you have to give a annual report on how you worked
2. Having minimum 10 persons in your Non-profit association
3. Get approval from the government before running a any new project
4. Non-profit associations must send an annual activity report

The remaining details are found through this link https://presidence.gov.bi/2017/01/27/loi-n1-02-du-27-janvier-2017-portant-cadre-organique-des-associations-sans-but-lucratif/

As we are a new usergroup without a 3 years action plan and not even 10 members, We found ourselves not fitting all the criteria. So we also search information about a simple enterprise . We can named it as Wikimedia user group community Burundi which takes 2 days to get legal papers and we can be running project legally since we will get a status ,Tax identification number ,Trade Register . As we can be only running events , we won't be paying taxes since there won't be any profit.

We would like to hear from you what you can suggest about it. Thank you.

As on our last discussion, we are planning to use the grants funded for Wiki loves Africa Burundi to a 2 days edithaton events. Here is our Budget:

Budget

1 USD = 1,924 BIF as of 13 August 2020

Project budget table

No.	Item	Quantity	Rate (USD)	Total (USD)	’Summary'
Events	Venue	2	$150	$300	This includes first launch event and second event. We will have the introduction of Edithatons project and awareness of Wikimedia. (Both Venue and Snacks)
	Drinks & Snacks	2	$100	$200
Branding & Stationaries	Notebook & Pen	30	$5	$150	T-shirt will be given to all participants as well as the Jury members.
	Certificate	30	$3	$90
Communications & Outreach	Internet at the events	-	$150	$150
	Social Media (Promotion)	5	$15	$75
			$100	Unforeseen expenses
Total: USD 1965

Approval

Hello Elmh, thank you for responding to our questions regarding your grant request. I am approving your proposal. I am also adding some resources below you can use to document your project and activities well for Wiki Loves Africa.

• Please review this page on documenting project expenses before you start your project so you are able to track your expenses and report them at the end of the project.
• You can also use the Programs and Events Dashboard [1] to track your participants during your activities.

Please let us know if you have any additional questions as you plan and implement your first project. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 23:51, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello WJifar (WMF), Thank you for the great news! We will start preparing ourselves for it.

Best regards154.117.217.115 07:01, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Withdrawn

This grant has been withdrawn by the grantee due to the COVID-19 complications in Burundi. The funds have been sent back to WMF. --DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 08:08, 23 November 2020 (UTC)