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Grants:Conference/Sivakosaran/Tamil Wikipedia 16 Years Celebrations/Report

< Grants:Conference | Sivakosaran/Tamil Wikipedia 16 Years Celebrations
Report accepted
This report for a Conference Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.



Goals

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Did you meet your goals?


Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
Participation of Wikipedians: 40 39 39 Wikipedians and like-minded people from India and Sri Lanka participated in the whole 2 day programme.
Participation of non Wikipedians to the public event: 100 Around 170 Over 170 persons attended the public event organized with the help of Jaffna Tamil Sangam.
Understanding the Sri Lankan Tamils' culture and living ways by the Indian counterparts to help them understand their views in on-Wiki discussions. Achieved Almost all the Indian participants verbally indicated as well as written in their feedback that the event helped a lot to achieve this goal.


Next steps

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Please share a brief update about the status projects, important discussions and/or capacity building that took place at the event.

Activities during the conference 2 months after the conference 6 months after the conference
Strategic Discussions:

Were any significant issues your community discussed at the conference?

1) Review of speed deletion policy.
2) Activities to reduce gender gap. 		1) Policy review is being discussed here

2) Tamil Wikipedians are participating in Wiki Loves Women - South Asia 2020 project.

Capacity Development: Please list capacity building sessions or workshops. Ravishankar presented a session on 'Administrators' tasks and how to do them' for helping newly selected administrators.
Projects or Working Groups:

What are the most important projects that were started or improved during the conference?

1) Activities to attract new users.
2) A working group consisting of Athavan, Neechalkaran was formed. 		1) Two sessions introducing Tamil Wikipedia held in Jaffna in Jan 2020. Proposal to display Talk page on the front page for new users in being discussed here

2) Athavan participated in the 2 events that were mentioned above to introduce Wikipedia thus attracting new users. Most of the community members were focusing on the Project Tiger contest until January, leaving them little space to focus on other items. The team will arrange more activities to focus on this in the near future.


Learning

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Conferences and events do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

  • What worked well at the event?

Nearly everything planned worked well. Around 40 Wikipedians were expected to participate in the event and nearly 40 persons participated in the first day morning sessions. The presentations were appreciated by the participants. The evening event that was organized for the public together with Jaffna Tamil Sangam was a big success. Around 170 persons including academics from the University of Jaffna, teacher students from Teachers' training college and well-wishers participated in the event. The cultural tour during the first half of the second day was well enjoyed by the participants. Important discussions held during the afternoon on the second day and the event ended with cutting a cake to celebrate the 16th anniversary of Tamil Wikipedia.

  • What did not work so well?

The transport arrangements to reach Jaffna from Colombo and the transports within the city were done pretty well. But the bus booked for the return trip from Jaffna to Colombo was found to be not comfortable at the last minute and a replacement bus was arranged. The bus picked up passengers at several locations and was slow and a bit uncomfortable with the Indians. The accommodation was rated as average by some participants but the organizers had little choice with the budget. The organizing team was small with Sivakosaran doing bulk of the work and assisted by Mayooranathan. The organizers were left exhausted at the end of the event.

  • What would you do differently next time?

It was a known fact that the organizing team is small and that it would put some pressure on them, but it was necessary to have this conference arranged here in order to get an understanding between the Indian and Sri Lankan contributors. A number of participants from the Indian community were very helpful in pre-arrangements by co-ordinating online and during the event. It is strongly recommended that grants be approved even with small organizing teams, but with a piece of advice that all possible online activities be taken over by those who can't do event organization at the venue. The air tickets and local travel arrangements that can be booked online could have been taken care of by the participants relieving the organizers to focus on the other arrangements.

Financial documentation

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This section describes the grant's use of funds

Budget table

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions. Review the instructions here. These expenses should be listed in the same format as the budget table in your approved submission so that anyone reading this report may be able to easily compare budgeted vs. actual expenses.

Tamil Wikimedians gathering

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No Item Budgeted Amount (LKR) Actual Amount (LKR) Notes
1 Conference hall 50000 32500 First Day Morning - Rs 25000, Second Day Afternoon - Rs 5000. The hall for first day afternoon was secured free of charge by the Jaffna Tamil Sangam.
2 Sponsorship for Accommodation 180000 171720
3 Sponsorship for Travel 860000 536830 Includes the flight, train, bus and taxi transport costs and meals during travel.
4 Food 48000 77700 Meals for 2 days for the participants. The budget was prepared nearly 2 years ago and the meal costs have increased since then.
5 Felicitation Certificates and Postage 10000 2500 Printed 50 certificates at Rs 50 per certificate.
6 Cultural Tour in and around Jaffna 50000 26000 Cultural tour bus hired for Rs 22000. Charges for transporting the participants from the hotel to the venue and back to the hotel cost Rs 4000.
7 Professional video and photo coverage 50000 19600 Video - Rs 15000. Photos - Rs 4600.
8 Miscellaneous 100000 86160 A momento depicting a Yarl - an instrument behind the name of Jaffna was given to all the participants and to some guests for the public event. Other minor expenses add up to this amount.
Total 1348000 953010
Summary of funding

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission):

LKR 1348000

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission):

LKR 1348000.

Actual amount received: LKR 1327419.20. Interested earned: LKR 29465.13. Total Amount at disposal: LKR 1356884.33

Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above):

LKR 953010

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project:

LKR 953010

Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? List them here.

The auditorium that usually costs around LKR 25000 for the first-day afternoon event was given free of charge with the help of Jaffna Tamil Sangam.
Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?

Answer YES or NO.
YES

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)

LKR 403874.33

Anything else

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Is there anything else you want to share about the conference or event?

Overall, the event was a big success. A local television network called Dan TV invited Wikipedians to participate in a discussion forum that was aired on both days of the event. The programme was recorded on Oct 18. 9 Wikipedians, Sivakosaran, Mayooranathan and Aathavan from Sri Lanka and Ravishankar, Info farmer, Sridhar, Mohammed Ammar, Divya and Arun from India participated in the discussion.

The entire programme on the first day was voice recorded. The recordings are available here:
First Day Morning
First Day Afternoon

The public event on the first day programme was also video recorded. The event videos can be found here.

The event was covered in a local newspaper before and after the conference days.

An organization called 'Thamizharitham' promoting the usage of Tamil in Internet is closely working with Tamil Wikipedians in Sri Lanka and have organized 2 events at schools introducing Wikipedia and are planning more in the coming months.

Please provide 1 month for the community to discuss and come up with a project proposal to use the unspent amount, if accepted by WMF.

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