Grants:Conference/Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda/WikiIndaba Conference 2021/Report

Report under review

This Conference Grant report has been submitted by the grantee, and is currently being reviewed by WMF staff. Please create a discussion page for this grant report by following this redlink to add comments, responses, or questions, or by using the button below.

To read the approved grant submission for this project, please visit Grants:Conference/Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda/WikiIndaba Conference 2021.

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Guidelines on how to fill out this grant report

If you wish to write your report in your native language, you are free to do so. Please indicate (in English) what language are you using.
If you prefer to submit the narrative report in a video format, you can. The video should be in English. Please upload the video to Wikimedia Commons and share the link in your report page. Make sure to answer all the required questions. All Financial documentation will still need to be submitted in a written form.
If you struggle with some of the questions, or wish to have a debrief meeting with your Program Officer before submitting your report, we are very happy to meet and walk you through the report template. This can be especially helpful if you want our help in identifying and reflecting on lessons learned. Please get in touch with your Program Officer.
If you have other ideas, preferred methods on how to submit your Conference Grant Report or concerns - please reach out to us.

Outcomes and Impact

Thanks for bringing value back to the Wikimedia movement by sharing in this report. Everything you learned during your project is useful knowledge to offer future Wikimedians planning similar work.

In this first section you are asked to reflect on your initial goals and the impact the event had on your community. Remember there is no right or wrong answer. Even if your goals have changed over time, or the impact was different than what you expected. Feel free to share your long or short answer - we are happy to hear whatever you have to share.

Did your event have any impact that you did not expect, positive or negative?
- More than 400 participants were able to participate in the conference, this being a number that has never been reached even in physical events.
- The organizing committee was able to increase the number of wikimedians into different wikimedia community user groups through online activations and the main conference itself.
- During these covid times the conference has taught us new platforms to work on to help us keep our engagements and bringing about awareness of what we are doing going, such as Airmeet. Now we can proceed with using these platforms to encourage other wikimedians to join in different wikimedia conferences.
- Despite figuring out the use of Airmeet it has still posed a challenge to Africans on the issue of network and resources to participate with. This has been a great impact to shine a light to the communities to reach out and come up with plans to assist or inquire what can be done.
Please tell us about the top 2-3 innovative (new to you and your community) or things you tried this conference.
- Establishment of Online Activations. The online activations were part of mini conferences to assist in driving traffic to the main conference (Wikiindaba 2021). In the conference we had six online activations on zoom which were simultaneously streamed on Facebook targeting North, West, South, East Africa and the Diaspora which assisted to build traffic towards the main event.
- During the conference we were able to try a platform called Airmeet that was very helpful during the whole conference.
- The event provided a platform and momentum to Wikivibrance, an initiative focused on Youths within the movement.

Were there any significant changes from the initial grant proposal?
- Yes we had two changes from the initial grant proposal, one request for community online activations and post conference partnerships to host wiki vibrance across six African countries.
What do you think will be the long term impact of this conference?
- Community collaboration on the African continent through different user groups around Africa. To begin with, different wikimedians witnessed how the wikimedia communities associate and come together to learn how these communities are impactful to them. This will help to welcome new members and allow the ones in the communities to proceed to make change where necessary.
- The conference has acted as a drive to wikimedians and non wikimedians to believe that African communities / usergroups we are able to accomplish a lot when we come together, we have a lot of knowledge that needs a platform and Wikiindaba is a helpful platform hence more of these conferences are needed.
- Through community activation events ,It has impacted new wikimedians to actually want to participate more, to learn more and share more to the society, to change the mindset of waiting and actually doing, because it actually begins with you.
- The WikiIndaba conference will be a steping stone for members of the Local Organising Committee to provide value to future conferences, and events within the Wikimedia Movement, this has been already exhibited by some of the LOC members joining WISCOM, and the Wikimania Organising Committee.
- The conference has created a basis for future conferences to explore partnerships, and creation of new projects and activities for the movement.
Do your best to estimate the number of attendees in your event that have never attended any Wikimedia event before. How were you able to support and engage this group?

About 250 attendees were attending for the first time and this was through community engagements . We were able to help people get InTouch with their user groups and community team from Wikimedia foundation team.

Do your best to estimate the number of participants who have been involved in Wikimedia activities for more than 5 years. How were you able to support and engage this group?

About 100 people have been involved in Wikimedia activities for more than 5 years .

Learning and next steps

Conferences and events do not always go according to plan! Please use this section considering the perspective of what future event organizers within our movement organizing a similar style conference can learn. Make sure to include lessons around work with external/ internal partners; your communication efforts; your work with the community and volunteers etc.

What would you do differently next time and why? Please share with us if there's anything you wouldn't do or something future organizers should avoid.
- The choice of the platform to be used on the event is very crucial. An act that needs to be worked on quite earlier and to make sure that all the participants have a chance to receive training about the platform to be used. This will help any inconvenience to be addressed earlier and avoid any inconveniences during the conference.
- The use of different partners in the same space, to spearhead the work that is being done with the Wikimedia user group, could be improved, thereby identifying partners early and bringing them on board.
Was there any non-financial support that the Wikimedia Foundation could have provided that would have better supported you in achieving your goals?
- Support from the communication, Partnerships and community teams was very instrumental in our organisation
What would you recommend on a local and/or regional level as the best next step to leverage your success and momentum? (Please consider potential new allies and partners; internal wiki collaborations; future projects etc. We don't expect you to necessarily do those, we are only looking for more ideas from your own perspective.)
- Continuous online community engagements at continent level for new comers and and onboarding to process for new comers to assimilate in respective communities.
- Providing opportunities for Local organising committees to share thier learnings, expertise, and to be involved in future Wikimedia Conferences.
Does your organizing team / affiliate / user group have any plans to follow up with your attendees in the future or support efforts related to the outcomes of this conference within your community?
- After the conference we had a follow up feedback form that was sent out to all participants.
- The main reason for the feedback form was to get educational feedback from the participants that would help in addressing things that can be changed and emphasis on the things that went well.
- The feedback that was received was helpful and it has assisted in addressing many things and bringing into light things that would help the next organizers to have a successful event.
- Community members have been involved in post WikiIndaba activities, and will still play an active role in this project.
- The conference proceedings will always remain available to community members on meta for reference incase of any need for new project or activity ideas.
Please add any 3 operational recommendations for future events organizers.
- For more people to want to participate in online conferences the program for the event needs to be communicated earlier to avoid too much tension at the end.
- The event went well, and there was an open line of communication between the local organising commitee and the volunteers who were supporting the LOC, which facilitated the greatness of the event. This is key for any event.
- During the conference different people were given different departments to work on the project. This was a great strategy because it helped the flow of things to go smoothly without delays. We recommend that this strategy be emphasized with the help of volunteers. However volunteers could be brought in earlier to be conversant with the project beforehand to help the planning much better.

Financial documentation

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.

Item description	Final cost	Currency
Conference Factilities	22,271	USD
Meals & Beverages	268	USD
Transport Refunds	958	USD
Internet and Communication	7,628	USD
Accomodation	2,282	USD
Stipend/Perdiem	16,313	USD
Communication and Advertising	700	USD
Devices & Computer Equipment	163	USD
Swag/Give Aways	298	USD
Telephone	394	USD
Bank Charges	751	USD
Software License	31	USD
Total	52,057	USD

If you have any tips or insights on creating a budget or allocating funds, please feel welcome to share!

Summary of funding

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission):196,458,300

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission):196,458,300

Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above): USD 52,057

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project: USD 52,057

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

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?

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.)

USD 14,352

Evaluation

Optional - Event Evaluation Toolkit - In this page you can find a list of basic questions that the Wikimedia Foundation uses to evaluate large movement events like Wikimania and other regional and thematic events. Feel free to use any part of these questionnaires to evaluate your own event. You will find: Registration Questions; Post-event questions for participants and Follow-up questions for participants.

Updated financial documentation

Summary of funding

Please follow this link to access our final Wiki Indaba 2021 financial documentation

NOTE : All accountability has been done/provided in our local currency - Uganda Shillings (abbreviated as UGX)

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission) : UGX 196,458,300

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission):196,458,300

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

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project:

Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? : NO

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?

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.)

Bank Balance - UGX 11,331,384

Remaining funds are retained by the grantee with WMF's permission until after the report review has been completed and report has been accepted, at which time the WMF program officer will also provide instructions regarding the grantee's reallocation or return of the unspent grant funds.

Anything else

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