Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Open Foundation West Africa/2018/H2

Questions from the SAPG Committee

From Chinmayi S K

Hi, Open Foundation West Africa! Thank you for this application, and I am soo happy to see this work happen. I personally think you are doing very essential work for the movement and would like to support this work in anyway we can. Having said that, I have a few questions regarding your application. Please feel free to add your replies inline with my questions.

1. From your application it seems like a lot of groups are coming together to make this possible, is that the case or is it one organisation and many individuals? My exact concerns are of structures for accountability. Could you elaborate on this ?
2. I see that almost all your programs have a metric of recruiting 50% of attendees of the programmes. I was wondering if this is based on previous events or you expect this for your events this year ?

--Chinmayisk (talk) 21:58, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Hello Chinmayisk thanks for your questions and

1. Sorry if our application wasn't that clear on your concern. OFWA has staff that work for the vision of the organisation these many people you talk about all work for OFWA and are hence accountable to the leadership of the organisation. To specifically answer your question, the team oversees and runs every activity of the organisation. The AWMD project for instance, is completely managed by OFWA (from funds disbursements, reporting and measuring impact) with our director as the project manager of the program steering the activities of the project. Even though we make use of remote team members for this project, its basically because of their unique skills sets and ability to deliver on the respective roles required for the project.
2. These figures are based on past experiences and our ability in the past to meet such goals set. I think its only realistic that we hope to achieve similar impact or even though better, hence our moderate expectations for this year's events.

I hope my response addresses your questions--Flixtey (talk) 00:44, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Hello Flixtey, thank you for your response. Could you please share links to your past metrics please ? I think it will strengthen your application --Chinmayisk (talk) 20:46, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Questions from Siarus1074 / Kai

I agree with Chimayisk, I think your work is wonderful and I want to help you as well. Also supplying us with past metrics would surely strengthen your application. I want to take a minute to say that I really like that you have a end of year meet up to bring all the stakeholders together and a team retreat . This is a great way to build bonds and share ideas while working together on your strategic plan. Regarding your other programs, can you help me understand a few things?

Education Program

• I see you mention the Ashesi University Education program. This is impressive. Under Ashesi WikiClub you mention a social theory course. Can you expand upon this course and the details of the Education Program a bit more? I don't see anymore detail about in class work with students aside from the Ashesi WikiClub.
  • Did this start as a in class program then evolve to the WikiClub?
  • Or do they both exist independently?
  • Can you provide metrics for the in class course work?

SOS This is another great program.

• Can you clarify what you mean by under metrics "Get participants to at least extend one content on another Open Project to a Wikimedia project"?
• When you say under Objectives "Extend the course of Wikimedia to all" can you clarify what you mean here?
• Can you expand upon which projects you are referring to when you say under Objectives "Improve contents on Wikimedia projects"?

Wiki Loves Africa Ghana

• For this contest you are aiming for a "minimum of 700 photos" to be uploaded. Does this seem a bit high? Do you have previous year's metrics that support success around this number?

I look forward to hearing from you. Siarus1074 (talk) 22:00, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Hello Siarus1074, we are honoured by your kind words and happy to explain where you don't understand.

Education Program

• Actually we didn't speak a lot about the education program because it will not be running in second half of the year. The Ashesi Education Program is an in-class program that works with the Social Theory Course at the Ashesi University. The course is organized every other semester (once in a year) of which we have already run for this year (view the dashboard for stats), because the course only runs one semester in a year, we set up the WikiClub to continue Wikimedia work on campus and provide a going concern for those who were trained through the social theory course while recruiting all students on campus who may not have taken the social theory course yet interested in Wikimedia Projects. This grant request is however targeted at the club as stipulated in the budget request.
• So there is an in-class program that exists through the Education program and the WikiClub that seeks to go beyond the work in the classroom by keeping students engaged in Wikimedia activities.
• They both are autonomous however the WikiClub complements the activities of the education program and even does more by recruiting people out of the social theory course all year round. The lecturer involved in the education program is the patron for the club with a student as president of the club.
• I have shared recent metrics on the in-class coursework in point one above.

SOS

• What we mean here is to get participants to involve knowledge from one open project on Wikipedia. For example, adding one geolocation from OSM to an article about a place on Wikipedia. Training a group of photographers about creative commons licensing relevant for Wikimedia Commons to enlight uploaders about the license policies.
• By that phrase we meant extending Wikimedia to all who will be present and through the future works of the participants. Also through a new target audience, we haven't been exploring for ages. We believe that it is easier to convert a contributor of the open movement to trying to convert somebody who doesn't know anything about it.
• What we mean by this is specifically Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Wiki Loves Africa Ghana

• Here is a link to previous years metrics, if you look at the stats for Wiki Loves Africa we have done on average 709 photos per competition. To delve deeper, in 2015 we didn't participate in the competition because of unforeseen circumstances however because people knew about the competition in previous years we still got 203 uploads. In 2016 we uploaded over 800 photos but had some deleted because of a harassment incident on one of our uploaders, amidst all these up and downs our average is still not less than 700 and its definite that if all conditions play out well that figure can be exceeded.

Thanks --Flixtey (talk) 00:59, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you!

• Thank you Flixtey! These explanations and details definitely help me understand even more about the wonderful programming you are doing. Thank you for taking the time to respond. Siarus1074 (talk) 16:41, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Questions about your organization

Hello OFWA team! Thank you for this application. It is not easy to put an APG together for the first time, and I see you have given a lot of attention to setting clear goals for your programs and showing the links between activities and results. We also appreciated the supporting documentation you linked to about some of your past work.

In general, the APG program is designed to support Wikimedia Affiliates, with a few exceptions (such as The Centre for Internet & Society in India or the Wiki Education Foundation that works in the US&Canada). That means there isn't normally a lot of additional background requested in the application form. Your organization is a bit different, so I did want to follow up here with a few questions.

Note that even though SAPG offers restricted grants, because these funds go toward your organization's operating costs, we require details about your entire organization and your plan, not only the programs that you are planning to fund through your WMF grant. This may be quite a bit different from past WMF grants that you have applied for.

Can you tell us more about your organization, please?

• What is your mission? How does Wikimedia work fit into that mission?
• How long has your organization been active?
• What is the size of your annual budget? Please link to a copy of your annual budget. Please list your other revenue sources.
• Do you have an annual plan, or description of all the activities your organization will do throughout the year? If so, please provide a link.
• Where do you see this WMF grant fitting into your revenue model?
• How many paid staff do you have, and how many FTE. How are these positions funded?
• Who is on the board of your organization, and how is the board structured?
• What is your legal status in the countries where you are operating?
• Do you plan for any of the answers to these questions to change in the short term or the long term?
• What do you think are the benefits of including this Wikimedia work within the OFWA organization? If you can articulate some of those benefits, that will help your application :)

Finally, since Felix is also part-time staff of the WMF, we will need another person or team of people acting as leads on this grant request. Do you have a team available for that?

Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 19:14, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your questions and we are glad to provide more clarifications to make this grant process a seemless one.

• Creating the awareness of all the available open resources, enticing its use by many and sharing the benefits of contributing towards the future of education and open learning” & “Getting more people to understand and use open resources as a basis for improving the quality and accessibility of education resource” are our mission and vision respectively.

As evident in our mission and vision above, our quest is to improve education, through training, using, sharing and encouraging others to share knowledge for the benefit of all. This makes open resources our preferred resource, which strongly aligns us with the Wikimedia Foundation’s goals of making the sum of all human knowledge accessible to all. Our projects are about 90% Wikimedia-based and other projects that we pick are directly aimed at championing the cause of Wikimedia. For example in the first quarter of 2016 we led a campaign by the World Wide Web Foundation on FASTAfrica, a campaign set to promote Fast, Affordable, Secure and Transparent internet which directly compliments our efforts with Wikimedia activism and projects especially in situations where offline solutions don’t work.

The two main open projects we were running in the past were Creative Commons and Wikimedia Projects, however the focus has now drifted to 90% Wikimedia and 10% for all other Open Movement activities (including Creative Commons, Mozilla, Open Web Campaigns, OSM, etc.). Even though OFWA is a member of the Global Network of Creative Commons, our organisation has decided to setup a CC Chapter to specifically handle the core activities of CC in Ghana while OFWA focuses on being on the board and taking an advisory role for that. The extent of our activities with CC and all other open activities will only be limited to training participants when it is required in a Wikimedia training such as understanding the licenses that run the respective Wikimedia projects, what is expected on specific projects such as Wikimedia Commons, geolocation on Wikipedia articles of places, internet affordability campaigns to provide accessibility for users, etc.. We will from time to time run other open projects that directly align with our mission and complement our Wikimedia efforts.

• Our Organization has been active and in existence since October 2015, it was however officially incorporated on 1st May 2016 and was officially recognised by AFFCOM as an affiliate (a User Group) of the Wikimedia Movement in October 2017.
• The size of our annual budget is what we have completely sent to you and it is strictly based on the Wikimedia projects we intend undertaking for this fiscal year.
• Our annual plan was shared during the intent stage, however you can find a link You may find a copy of our annual plan via this link
• The grant will enable us to execute most of our activities which are mostly Wikimedia based as aforementioned.
• We currently have 10 staff who actively contribute to the activities of our organisation in different capacities. 7 staff have been listed on our website whereas the other 3 want retain their identity as private.

Only one of our staff is full time at the moment, the person occupies the program manager role. Even though she is unemployed she has been volunteering for the past year and a half because she believes in the mission of our organisation with hopes that someday we will be able to pay her a salary on the job. At the moment we only compensate her transportation on the job, her phone calls and internet through our rapid grant applications. We have 2 other part time staff who are not paid.

• Our board members include Estelle Akofio Sowah, country manager of Google Ghana and tech advocate for women in the country, Dr. Kajsa Hallberg-Adu a lecturer at Ashesi University, founder of Blogging Ghana and an Open Education Activist (Wikimedia Education Program partner), Mr. Isaac Aggrey, former National Coordinator for the National Information Technology Agency of Ghana, an Open Data Professional and a Task Force member of the B20 and G20 and the 2 directors of OFWA (Raphael Berchie and Felix Nartey).

Our board is made up of industry players and aligned members of the open world that have influence and can provide strategic direction to the initiatives we undertake. It is made up of 3 industry players and the 2 directors of the organisation. Our directors are representatives of the organisation and they present an annual report and annual plan each year for approval before finally implementing.

• We are fully incorporated by the Laws of Ghana as a non profit organization and we often partner with Wikimedia affiliates and other NGOs in the respective countries we operate in.
• Not at this time.
• Below are the benefits we derive from working with Wikimedia:

• Our core aim is to promote the activities of open movements with a great emphasis on open education. Wikipedia becomes an indispensable medium in achieving our aim. Wikimedia gives us a double pronged solution being that people use the Wikimedia and its sister projecta for educational purposes and also add to its content which help benefits the world at large and improve the contents of the underrepresented.
• Again Wikimedia provides us with offline solutions which is also open and makes education affordable and accessible in every location. We use this to provide resources to areas that lack internet and need an alternative for education resources.
• Wikimedia work within OFWA gives us access to a diverse and rich community which benefits our organization in multifarious ways from technical support and mentorship which are vital for a pro-technical organization like OFWA.

• Collins Nartey, the Funds Administrator and myself, the director of Communications are directly involved and (or) lead the grant process at our organisation. At this moment we will relegate Felix to the background and ensure all responses are made by us.

Thanks--Rberchie (talk) 18:15, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Simple APG committee recommendation

Committee recommendations

Funding recommendations: Open Foundation West Africa is a new applicant to Simple APG, and they have requested 19,000 USD for 12 months. We recommend funding Open Foundation West Africa in the amount of 19,000 USD for 12 months, including an additional 10% contingency to respond to unforeseen risks and opportunities, or a total of 20,900 USD. OFWA is working in an under-resourced region, and is projecting impact that will cross borders and benefit several communities. OFWA has presented a very clear and detailed budget to accompany their plan, and resources seem well-allocated to achieve impact. We appreciate that they set objectives and metrics for each of their activities, and also link to pages that include more detailed information about their programs and their past work. It was easy to follow the links between the funds they are requesting, the activities they will do, and the results they plan to achieve. OFWA has presented an interesting portfolio of activities that goes beyond what smaller organizations and user groups in our movement typically do. OFWA’s work with developers in West Africa is particularly unique and may have good potential to achieve impact in this region in the long term. The design of this work shows how OFWA is looking at opportunities to develop volunteers within their larger social context, including supporting volunteers to build skills that can benefit them outside of their Wikimedia work and also enable them to contribute more deeply to the Wikimedia projects. OFWA has experience running the Wiki Loves Africa photo competition in Ghana, and has set ambitious targets for the upcoming year, including 700 images uploaded with 10% of images used. Based on their past experience, we believe they can achieve this. We are glad to see how they are thinking about leveraging this event to complement their efforts to increase awareness of Wikimedia projects more broadly. Perhaps future goals, metrics, and other elements of the program’s design can reflect the integration of these broader goals. OFWA is approaching their work in the education sector through a Wikiclub model and through the Summer Open School model, and we look forward to seeing how this education work develops. Their WikiClub work focuses on media as well as article content, but its main goals are around increasing participation on the Wikimedia projects. We are curious to see if OFWA can meet its ambitious goal of recruiting 40 active people, and also note that this target will need to be more specific (as in, they will need to define what active people are) in order to be informative. The Summer Open School model intentionally looks at encouraging participants to contribute to open projects other than Wikimedia, which is an interesting way of considering Wikimedia within the larger open knowledge ecosystem. We support OFWA’s idea to hold a strategic retreat this year. We appreciate that concrete goals were set in this area. It will be important for WMF to partner with communities in the the West Africa region to understand how to best support them, and how to fund work in this region in the long term. Funding a cross-border regional effort is an unusual and somewhat untested model in our movement, and OFWA is one of two organizations in this round of Simple APG applications that is testing this model (along with the Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group), and so we embark upon this with cautious optimism. Continued good working relationships with all groups and partners in this region will be important to OFWA’s ongoing success.

Strengths identified by the committee: See recommendations above.

Concerns identified by the committee: See recommendations above.

Siarus1074 (talk) 21:00, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

WMF decision

Approving this now in the amount of 19,000 USD for 6 months plus an additional 10% contingency to respond to unforeseen risks and opportunities, or a total of 20,900 USD for 6 months; however, you will be asked to keep your budget to 11,000 USD or less for the following 6 months, to keep the total for 12 months under $30K. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 18:47, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) and all the Team we are very grateful to get our activities funded by the WMF with SAPG.We are lloking forward to execute our task and help promote the cause of the foundation. Regards--Rberchie (talk) 22:36, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Reports

Midpoint Report

Dear Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer),

We wish to draw your attention to our midpoint submission to the appropriate section under the request grant page.

Thank you --Flixtey (talk) 17:57, 24 October 2018 (UTC)