Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Wikimedia User Group Nigeria/Wiki Loves Earth 2019 in Nigeria

Application received

Hi, Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, Olaniyan Olushola and Agbalagba! Thank you for submitting this rapid grant request. We have received a high volume of requests, which may delay our review. We appreciate your patience and will respond to your request as soon as possible.

Please check this page for additional comments and questions as we review the application and please feel free to reach out to us with questions; we are here to help with a successful grant application! Best regards, LSmith (WMF) (talk) 23:44, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Additional Comments from WMF

Hello Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, Olaniyan Olushola and Agbalagba thank you for your proposal. I have a few follow up questions.

1. On the Wiki Loves Earth participating countries list it shows that the contest period in Nigeria is from May 1st - May 31st. But here you have your project period in June. Can you please clarify why there is a difference?

   The Date has been amended to 1st- 31st of May 2019.

2. Could you tell us in more detail what you plan to do at the PhotoWalk and Workshop?
   • it looks like you're planning to have four photo walks from the first table but in your photowalk breakdown the budget only indicates having one photowalk for a total of 14 people. Could you explain that more?

   Yes, We plan to organize 4 photowalks but for 4 people. We plan to hire a bus that will convey the four participants to all the deignated places. Accommodation: We budgeted Shared Accomoidation @the rate of NGN15,000.00/night for 2persons. Since we have 4persons on the proposed trip, we will spend NGN30,000.00 on two shared accommodation per night. therefore for 4 days, it will be 4byNGN30,000.00=NGN120,000.00

   • I see that you had targeted the same type of areas to photograph in the Wiki Loves Earth 2017 contest. Can you tell us more about where you went in 2017 and how it will be different from the contest this year?

   Yes, because of the budget constraint, we traveled to Ogun State, Osun State, Ekiti State, and Ondo State. and we were able to spend only one night per state. Therefore, we were only able to cover just 20% of natural sites per siate visited. We, therefore, though it will be wise to continue where we stopped in the mentioned states.

3. How many people are you hoping will attend the workshop?

   at least 10 professional photographers.

4. You have mentioned a social media campaign for the contest. Can you specify how you plan to do one-on-one campaign?

   our one-one campaign will be done among members of our Wiki Clubs in the various universities in Nigeria for participation.

   We also plan to partner with Legacy1995, an NGO that is in charge of documentation and preservation of monuments and natural places in Nigeria. The discussion is already in advance stage with this partnership.

5. On your budget for Workshop I see a line item for Refreshment but there is no amount associated with it. Can you clarify if you're not planning to have refreshments?

   Apology for the mixed up, the alternative power supply is not needed in this project because the owner of the venue as promised to supply generator ss part of the cost of the venue. The value of 13USd will be used for refreshment.

6. Can you explain why you need four people to travel to the photowalk location?

   We plan a group of two persons per group. Since the project involves traveling especially to strange and new places/community. Per experience, we ensure at least our groups are made up of 2 people for guiding and security reasons. This approach has been working for us since inception and it has helped to rescued our team esopecially in a hostile community.

Please let us know the answers to these questions and we can proceed with further review. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you @WJifar (WMF): for your review and observation Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 15:06, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Additional Comments from WMF

Hello Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, Olaniyan Olushola and Agbalagba, thank you for providing responses to my questions. However, I’m still not clear on why you have the competition set up the way you have it here. Let me see if I understand what you have proposed correctly:

1. It seems only four people are going on a photowalk but then the judging will happen for students participating from different universities in Nigeria and also 10 professional photographers who would potentially participate in the workshop. We think that the photo walk should be taken out from the proposal because of judging, budget and community reasons. The photo walk will create an unfair advantage for the four people who will go on it, discouraging participation from others. It also is the biggest expense of this proposal, and it would benefit only four people while incurring unnecessary transport decisions. We favor projects where it is entire communities, not just a few representatives, coming together to add notable content to Wikimedia projects, and the photo walk is inconsistent with this spirit. Please remove it from your proposal.

   Hi WJifar (WMF), thank you for your observations and we appreciate the amazing work that you are doing at the foundation. See below our explanation and clarification of the project plan. As you will probably be aware, Wiki Loves Earth is an international contest that focuses on photo-upload by the general public. Over the years, the majority of the participants of this contest are non-professional photographers who participates with phone-camera, hence, the quality of photos collated for this contest from Nigeria has been a major challenge. Therefore, in 2017, Alex Wang during the hosting of Wiki Photo Tours in Nigeria admonished our team about the need to focus on quality photos. The only way to achieve a more quality photos contribution is by involving professional photographer on the photo tour. Usually, the photos from this set of people will not form part of the contest. At the moment, we have engaged a couple of experts in photography documentary industry in Nigeria who will help our team not just collating photos but photos that focus on the theme of the contest. This aspect, will not substitute the general concept of allowing the member of the public to take photographs.

2. We think the workshop portion of this grant proposal is better aligned with Wiki Loves Earth goals and we want to support this part of the initiative. We see that T Cells and Jamie Tubers are providing online support to participants. Will this just be during the workshop or also during the whole month for different university club participants? What kind of support are they providing during these consultations?

   The support by the mentioned Wikipedians will be throughout the life span of the event because many of the participants are non-Wikipedians which will need help from time to time. The support will focus on the issue around the landing page, training during the workshop, any other technical or policy-related issues that might occur during the course of the contest.

3. We are excited to see that you’re partnering with Legacy1995, what kind of support are you asking them to provide? Are they providing access to sites? Are they helping advertise Wiki Loves Earth? Can you tell us more about the partnership?

   The Legacy1995, will be helping our team with the marketing of the contest to Nigerian conservation agencies in the. They also help in the area of packaging the event.

Thank you again for all your work and looking forward to hearing back from you on this. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you while we await your positive reply Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 12:07, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Additional Comments from WMF

Hello, Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, Olaniyan Olushola, and Agbalagba; thank you for your responses to our questions.

We have been thinking about the use of resources you propose to address the photo quality issues in Wiki Loves Earth in Nigeria, and we have taken a look at the way photowalks are organized for different contests around the world. We want to share some examples with you:

1. One example is Wiki Loves Monuments Algeria 2018, which arguably achieved high quality photographs without needing to allocate a high amount of resources to photowalks. Through a mixture of social media outreach, which the Wikimedia User Group in Nigeria is already good at; prizes, as well as low-cost activities, they managed to upload quality images and use resources in a way that would reach all of their projected 50 participants (126 actual participants).
2. Another example is Wiki Loves Earth Nepal 2018 Wiki Loves Earth Nepal 2018. They also achieved high quality photographs through a mixture of low-cost outreach events and contest incentives. They had 103 participants, which means that the resources were distributed among that amount of people.

Both examples show that it is possible to achieve high quality images through community-based efforts. The proposal you present will lead to high quality images, but not by using Wikimedia Foundation funds to build community capacity. We consider the workshop portion of your grant proposal is aligned with the mission of contests like Wiki Loves Earth, but we are not going to allocate $1200 USD for four photowalks for four individuals each. We encourage you to reconsider this part of your grant to build community capacity or to take it out altogether if you are still interested in receiving funds for the workshop.

Regards, MMontes (WMF)

Hello MMontes (WMF) thanks for your comments above. We reviewed the two examples provided above and we agreed that the Nepal approach will really work well for us. We have fixed our budget accordingly. Thank you. Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 08:49, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Additional Comments from WMF

Hello, Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, Olaniyan Olushola, and Agbalagba; thank you for addressing our last comments and adjusting your proposal to a format that benefits more people. We have a few follow-up questions:

1. Can you give us more details about the planned prizes?

   We budgeted NGN150,000 (491.80USD) for prizes for the winner, 1st runner up and second runner up. The winning prize is a gift worth NGN 70,000 (229.5 USD), the 1st runner up prize is NGN 50,000 (163.93) and the prize runner up prize is NGN 30,000 (98.36 USD). Please note that we will not award a cash prize but gifts worth of the amounts budgeted for these prizes. Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 21:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

2. The award ceremony lists 30 guests. Who will these guests be? Do you have any media outreach plans for this ceremony and for the rest of the contest?

   These 30 guests will includes the three winners, participants with the highest number of uploaders, our partners, jury members, notable professional photographers, some government officials in art & culture and our community members. And of course their would be some media outreach about the contest. There would be publication on newspaper, blog, our website and all our social media account.Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 21:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

3. We see that there is a communications expenses element in the grant. Can you please provide more details about what this entails?

   We budget that for phone calls, costbof promoting our social media account for Wiki Loves Earth, so that we can reach more people and for in-person meeting with our volunteers, partners and jury team prior to the contest. Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 21:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

4. Finally, we see that you are planning two outreach events involving photowalks and that the 150 USD proposed for each would cover travel costs. Can you please give us more information?

   In this year edition, we are working with some partners and one of them is legacy199 and Widelife Conservative Society who has expressed interest in providing some logistical support for us at some of their sites. The 150 USD is for transportation and share accommodation for our support team who will be facilitating the outreach. If there is any incidental cost, we shall inform the WMF. Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 21:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Regards, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 13:51, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

MMontes (WMF), please let us know if you have additional questions. Thank you. Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 21:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Aditional Comments from WMF

Hello, Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, Olaniyan Olushola, and Agbalagba; thank you for your responses. We are getting ready to approve this grant. I have a final request to make: WMF is no longer supporting the purchase of more than 10 T-shirts per event. The idea is to give them only to volunteers who are going to use the shirt for future Wikimedia events, rather than to individuals who will only receive them as a token of thank you but will never wear it again. Please make the adjustment in the grant request so that we can approve it. Regards, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 12:32, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

MMontes (WMF), we have made the adjustment in the grant request as requested. Thank you. Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 06:58, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Grant request approved

Hello, Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, Olaniyan Olushola, and Agbalagba; we are accepting your grant request. We do need to change one more detail -- the figure in NGN wasn't in the summary table at the top was not updated after the adjustments since the original proposal; please update that figure. Wishing you a successful edition of Wiki Loves Earth 2019, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Following up asking Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, Olaniyan Olushola, and Agbalagba to update me here when the adjustment is made so that we can move on with the approval process. Thank you, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

@MMontes (WMF): The adjustment has been made. Thank you Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 05:45, 15 May 2019 (UTC)