Grants:PEG/WM ZA/Wiki-Indaba-2014

Funded

This submission to the Project and Event Grants Program was funded in the fiscal year 2013-14. This is a grant to an organization.

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Wiki Indaba 2014 - "Under the Baobab"

Wikimedia ZA, in consultation with Wikimedia Planning Groups, Wikipedians and aligned organisations across the continent, are coordinating a 3-day continental Wikipedia conference in Johannesburg, South Africa in June 2014 to coincide with the youth month. Historically and against many challenges, Wikipedians across the African continent have worked in isolation and had very little support from local structures. Over the last few years, local Wikipedians have shown a desire for more localised planning and events, and a continental network that enables information sharing, supports initiatives and establish a common goal, strategy and collective voice.

The plan for this conference is to ensure the participation and attendance of a maximum of 35 attendees. Delegates will be drawn from the 8 Wikimedia active countries (including South Africa), organisations that work on the continent to support Wikipedia in Africa, GLAM partners, and the aligned movement practitioners on the continent. In addition, a limited number of floating scholarships will be offered to Wikipedians working in isolation across the continent on Wikipedia and its sister projects. Most of the funding requested in this grant will go towards venue costs and scholarships for Wikipedians to travel to this conference and stay in hostels.

This conference is a gathering for people across Africa that are participating in any Wikimedia community, including any Wikimedia chapters or proto chapters (including planning Wikimedia groups and campus ambassadors), GLAM, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wikiproject Africa, any other Wikipedia community groups. Aligned community groups which seek to advance access to free information across the African continent will also be invited to participate.

Basic information

Grant details

Official project name

Wiki Indaba 2014

Project start date (include month, day, and year)

3rd March 2014

Project completion date (include month, day, and year)

30th July 2014

Please describe the project in 1–2 sentences

Wiki Indaba 2014 is the first annual conference for Wikipedians and Wikimedians from across Africa. The first iteration of the conference will provisionally take place in Johannesburg from the 20-22 June 2014. Over the course of the next several months, a team of organisers from Wikimedia ZA, as well as other Wikimedians throughout Africa, will collaborate to curate keynotes, and refine the programme, that will include strategy sessions, panels, and workshops on advocacy, outreach, educational, and community building.

Financial details

Currency requested

South African Rand

Amount requested in currency requested

ZAR 726,864.00 . R 591,489.00

Equivalent amount in US$ on the date of this submission

$ 67,010.60 . $ 54,530.19

List the exchange rate used to calculate the amount listed in US$

1:10.847

Grantee details

What is the official name of the organization requesting this grant?

Wikimedia ZA (see below)

Are you an organization, an individual, or an individual submitting on behalf of a group?

Organisation

Are you a for-profit entity?

No

Are you able to provide local proof of nonprofit status within your country?

Yes

Does your organisation currently employ any fulltime or part-time staff or contractors?

Yes

If you answered YES, please indicate how many. You may use fractions or percentages for part-time staff if appropriate.

1 administration person

If yes, please provide a list of their job functions, or a link to your organization's staff page, if it lists all employees and contractors employed or engaged by your organization.

Details of the position can be found here.

Contact information

Primary contacts names

Dumisani Ndubane and Isla Haddow-Food

Primary contact username or email

Thuvack and Isla Haddow-Flood

email: thuvackgmail.com and islahfafricacentre.net

Primary contact title (position within the organization)

Chairman of Wikimedia ZA and National Liaison and Community Activation, respectively

Goals and measures of success

Mission

The conference is designed to create a forum for Africa-based Wikipedians to participate in meaningful discussion about, and create a collective strategy to, advocate and expand contributions to Wikimedia, Wikipedia and the open movement across Africa. The conference will assist in strengthening existing and burgeoning Wikimedia communities, will provide tools and skills to encourage the growth of new communities, and will address long-standing online and continental community issues towards consistent participation across the continent.

The Need

Access to mobile devices has seen an unprecedented uptake in Africa, ushering in online access to even the most remotely located person. At ICT hubs Africa, these brave new world innovators are taking advantage of new technology and access to create a new way of looking at their countries, and Africa. However, despite knowledge about and access to Wikipedia, very few Wikipedians in Africa are adding encyclopaedic content. And as a result it is extremely important that Wikipedia and Wikimedia structures must be established and fortified across Africa to develop. For a greater understanding of the context of opportunities and challenges facing Wikipedia in Africa, view the SWOT analysis here. Specific challenges faced by Africa's Wikimedia community as been articulated in a survey conducted to get Community Expectations of Wiki Indaba.

The establishment of Wikimedia regional co-operations in regions such as South Americas and Asia has assisted in the progressive and systematic growth of awareness and coverage of Wikipedia in these regions. This conference is the first step towards the establishment of African co-operation structures and organs made up of Wikimedia Chapters, planning Wikimedias, Campus Ambassadors, Wikimedians, Wikipedians and mission aligned Thermatic Organisations. This conference will facilitate similar co-operation and reinforce a network of African Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic groups through dialogue. This will also assist in increasing Wikipedia coverage and footprint in Africa.

This is the first regional conference to be held in Africa and for Chapters in Africa, the region of the world least covered by Wikipedia.

Community Input and Endorsements

• The Wiki Indaba Conference has been endorsed by the wider African Wikipedia Community, and by Open Aligned advocates. The full list of people who have endorsed this conference, along with their geographic and/or thematic interest is available here.
• A community survey was conducted by WMZA using this Google form. The following were the results of the survey:

22 respondents (20 of which are African based Wikimedians).

12 respondents are active Wikipedians.

All unanimously support the conference.

All have Wikipedia as the main Wikimedia project in which they contribute, and other sister projects.

All are involved in chapter or Working group activity.

All believe that a physical meeting would be more beneficial than other virtual forms of meetings.

Just some of the challenges facing the community, as articulated on the survey, are:

• Getting more persons to learn and contribute to the project websites of the Wikimedia Foundation. Many do not appreciate the importance of the platform, making them reluctant to share information to.
• Support from WMF, Governance of Local Group Challenges, Managing Volunteers and Culture of Volunteerism in Africa/Kenya
• The national Wikimedia communities in East Africa and the Swahili wikipedia community have hardly any overlap. Most editor on sw:wp are expatriates (quite a number of them living outside Africa by now) whereas East Africans seem to be more interested in other projects but not Swahili or other African languages.
• Currently though, in the region, of great concern is the dwindling vibrancy of volunteers who at most time dont contribute to the movement. This has also caused poor capacity building on communities because of lack of motivation.
• Why is the amount of South African - or other SSA country-related - input on Wikipedia NOT on par with the online populations in the country? (i.e. compare the number of online South Africans to activity on Facebook and it looks proportional; compare the same to Wikipedia and it doesn't).

A few of the expectations and hopes for the Wiki Indaba Conference as expressed by those in the community:

• I believe that one of the things we should be looking at is a new model for affiliation that will be suitable for Working groups planning wikimedia chapters in Africa. I believe some of the Affcom requirements are simply impossible to satisfy in some African countries. I would like to know what the experience of other countries has been so far. Also I believe that delegates will have to look at ways of making this conference sustainable into the future.
• I think we should brand this event in a way that it will raise the need for us to edit on Wikipedia and to foster communication and sharing amongst the various chapters.
• Discussions on how we could address these challenges. Mapping our way forward to reach out to regions that have no Wikimedia footprint. Discussing ways to provide on-the-ground assistance/scaling of Wikipedia Zero. Cross-collaboration of projects. Also focus on offline Wikipedia.

Goals

Wiki Indaba 2014 aims to strengthen the Wikimedia movement in Africa by providing a platform that allows for fledgling, and established, Wikipedians and Wikimedian communities across Africa to interact, share experiences, develop bonds and create continental networks for a sustainable future for new and existing chapters. Its focus is to produce direct, Africa-based answers and solutions to the WMF and chapters on implementing the movement’s strategic goals. It is designed to proactively support the Wikimedia movement within the developing world/Third World or often referred to as the ‘Global South’.

Our specific goals for the conference are to:

• Have a maximum of 35 conference delegates
• Fund the attendance of 20 attendees from across Africa (excluding South Africa) through scholarships, with an emphasis on established Usergroups, planning Wikimedias, and 6 scholarships to active Wikipedians
• Encourage the participation (through part-funding) of 10 South Africa-based Wikipedians.
• Encourage the participation (through part-funding) of mission aligned and invested individuals and organisations, researchers, academics and other groups.
• Create a strategy for Africa from Africa that is mission-aligned and can be part of a starting point for a wider Global South strategy.
• Create excitement and local organisation of coordinated continental outreach campaigns, such as Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Monuments, and the work of Afripedia and WikiAfrica.
• Transfer community leadership and building skills, as well as share and adapt toolkits and event templates to encourage and activate community engagement and sustained contribution across Africa.
• Identify areas of discussion for next year's conference.
• Maintain detailed accounts of keynotes, workshops, and panels for remote online viewing, documentation, evaluation and report.

Measures of success

We will consider this project a success if we have been able to:

• Host diverse delegates attending from countries that are evenly spread across Africa
• Dialogue with stakeholders to find common solutions to problems across English, French, Swahili and Afrikaans Wikipedias and Sister projects,
• Establish clear communication links, actions and opportunities among existing African Wikimedia Usergroups, planning groups and chapters.
• Define achievable actions towards a collective strategy for Africa in the Global South
• Create a year-long agreed plan of coordinated continental outreach campaigns, such as Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Monuments, and the work of Afripedia and WikiAfrica
• Ascertain clear intentions to establish formal Wikimedia active group in areas not yet reached by Wikimedia
• Achieve proportional representation of female attendees at the conference (At least 40%).
• Formally resolve to create a regional co-operation organization to facilitate regular interaction among African Chapters and Usergroups
• Obtain early commitment from partners (corporate and government) for Wiki Indaba 2015.

Wikipedians based on the continent have already been approached to provide their expectations around this conference. View the report here. During the event, conference delegates will fill out online surveys in order to compile participant comments as a quantifiable measure of participant engagement. Participant enjoyment of each curated session will also be surveyed and recorded. This information, along with the attendance figures, financial audit, and administrative evaluation, will be included in a formal conference report.

Project scope and activities

This regional conference will be a 4 day conference, where participants from different regions of the African continent will interact to discuss organisational problems and solutions within the broader Wikimedia community and yet within regional context.

The discussions will be aimed at:

• Debating and creating a clear collective strategy for African Wikimedians.
• Overcoming problems in establishing chapters and usergroups in African countries.
• Establishing standards of good chapter governance.
• Activation of volunteers, and volunteer community building in a regional context.
• Collaboration amongst chapters.
• Activating and running sustainable GLAM activities and continental outreach campaigns with African institutions and organisations.

Provisional Conference Programme

Pre-conference

• 19th June: Advocacy and Outreach, two options:

Option 1: Training, toolkit introductions and skills transfer workshops around the Open Movement, Community Building, Best Practices (Project Management, Budget and Finance, Fundraising, and Evaluation and Reporting);

Option 2: Outreach activity at a local high school + GLAM activity incorporating Joburgpedia.

• Evening event: Launch event (proposed venue: Cradle of Humankind)

Conference

• 20-22nd June: Finding concrete solutions to make things happen.

• Day 1: Keynote, Challenges and successes in Africa across English, French, Swahili and Afrikaans Wikipedias and Sister projects, Continental best-practice, Strategy session
• Day 2: Strategy finalised, actions assigned to volunteers; 20 x 20 presentations in afternoon

Evening event: Wiki Loves Africa launch

• Day 3: Panels and Workshops around tracks aimed at clear actions and assigned tasks

Please note: the above programme is proposed, more details on specific tracks are available on the website.

Keynotes: The Conference organisers will invite local luminaries in the Open Movement, technical and thought leadership space to inspire and inform attendees.

Strategy session: The Conference is organised to allow for a collective understanding of the key issues that need to be overcome, and to establish clear actions and solutions that will drive contribution to Wikipedia forward on the continent. It would include, but not be limited to the following: "Aim:" to proactively chart a course for interaction between Global South community and WMF for the next 5 years

• Africa’s position within the WMF Five-Year Plan and strategic goals
• The WMF 2013 Global South Strategy
• Ideas on how things can be done differently – best practices
• Regional integration and cooperation: Global South and developing countries, Organising Africa, participation in Wikimania, etc.

"Expected result:" Creation of clear goals, with working groups, agendas and outputs

20 x20 presentations Attendees will be given opportunities to sign up to give a 20 slide talks on their challenge, project or case study. The 20 x 20 talks will allow for an exciting snap shot of the landscape, challenges and opportunities that currently exist across Africa.

Panels and Workshops: Panels and workshops will be organised around the following topics (this not a final list):

Thematic Workshops and tracks could include, but not be limited to the following:

Chapters Workshop

Aim: to share experiences and build a sustainable framework and networks for Chapter and User Groups across the continent To cover:

• Presentations from current user groups and chapters; what can be done to support existing ones; what is needed to create new ones.
• Funding and administration of an organisation
• Project proposals, evaluations and metrics
• Communication & PR
• Working with the aligned movement
• Toolkits, Training and Translation / Adaptation
• Outreach

Expected result: Chapters, established and new, fully equipped and resourced to grow community; creation of Africa-wide network around aligned movement

Problem solving sessions

Aim: to find lasting and practical solutions to problems faced by community and the movement across Africa

• finding African solutions to African problems
• aligned movement interventions and communities
• Community issues
• Tech, access and interface issues
• Accountability, funding and taking ownership
• Local Language Wikis
• Translation
• 1st person / Verbal histories
• Evaluation and metrics

Expected result: creation of working groups with agendas and outputs

GLAM

Aim: to inspire partners, and provide ways for institutions, to donate digitised media and text about culture, heritage, media and other layers of information

• Examples of working with local heritage
• Licensing and permissions requirements
• Conflicts of interest, declaration of interest
• How to get started
• GLAM workshop for partners
• Step by step, toolkits, value proposition, etc

Expected results: Working on a key national heritage partners to the project as an example

Demystifying Tech and Mobile

Aim: To allow insight into the future possibilities for Wikipedia in Africa

• Bridging the digital divide in Africa
• Mobile growth and development in Africa
• Working with the new visual editor
• Looking at opportunities from Vision Project 2016
• Wikipedia Zero: Mobile in Africa
• Wikipedia dreaming: Africa re-invents wikipedia

Expected results: Give experienced editors an idea of things to come

Community Building

Aim: To allow insight into the future of local languages Wikipedias in Africa

• Problematising Local Language Wikis
• Establishing priorities for your community
• Getting started
• Step by step, toolkits, value proposition, etc

Expected results: Give guidelines and understanding for editors wishing to work on local language editors

Engagement with larger populations

Aim: to provide feedback to Chapters and user groups on low level, easily accessible competitions to break down barriers to entry by new editors

• Wiki Loves Monuments
• Wiki Loves Music
• Kumusha Takes Wiki
• Wiki Loves Africa Launch (possible event)

Expected results: Provide a clear year-long plan for chapters and usergroups to roll out community engagement activities that are continentally supported provide toolkits and templates to assist with these events.

Possible sister project activities Wikinews Workshop – with local journalists and media houses Wiki Voyage Workshop – with travel journalists, or tourist bureaus Wiki Data Workshop – with Stats SA, Census and other data holders.

Planned outreach

Wikimedia ZA has begun to establish a network of partners and allies across South Africa. In the month running up to the conference activities will be used to leverage support from our partners, to activate new communities and transfer skills to existing ones. Communities that we hope to activate prior to Wiki Indaba are:

• Local universities, Science and technology, media studies, and African Studies - the inclusion of the Origin Centre at WIts and the Centre of Humankind are extensions of these partners.
• Local High Schools - ICT and science courses.
• Local museums, cultural heritage institutions, and historical societies - a Joburgpedia tour will be part of the programme, as will a session at Museum Africa as a GLAM break away activity.
• Local open movement, culture, education and access groups.

Travel scholarships

Wikimedia ZA will be awarding travel scholarships to bring in attendees from throughout the African continent. Most Africans work in isolation, often contributing without the benefit of a chapter or regular Wikimedia-oriented events. In order to build a strong network and foster local Wikimedian projects and usergroups it is essential to reach out, acknowledge the work of and facilitate the understanding of Africa's current dispersed group of Wikipedians. Scholarship applicants will be surveyed on their experience and attitudes on Wikimedia projects as part of the application process, during the course of the conference, and six months post conference in order to assess the impact of the conference programmes on community sustainability.

Travel scholarships are expected to be attributed via the following means:

• Wikimedia ZA = 4 (4 national travel)
• South African based wikipedians = 8 (8 national travel)
• Usergroups and other African delegates = 4 (regional travel)
• Africa-based Wikipedians= 16 (regional travel)
• Aligned organisations = 3 (3 regional )
  • TOTAL: 35 Scholarships

• International attendance from WMF and Other chapters outside of African continent not included in the budget

Documentation, evaluation and reports

Media The conference will be extensively documented by the organising team and tasked Wikipedians who will publish photos, updates, and insights on the conference blog. Local press, thought leaders and bloggers will be invited to take part in the conference. A full social media strategy will be in force, feeding insights to Twitter and Facebook in order to ensure that the conference - and the subjects covered at the conference - gets maximum coverage. Conference materials, including flyers, presentations, and video will be compiled for online documentation during and after the conference.

Public relations Media reporting and documentation will be overseen by a media point person.

Reporting and evaluation Potential attendees have already been surveyed as to their expectations around Wiki Indaba. The draft programme will be posted for comments and input in a similar way. During and post event, all delegates will be required to evaluate the conference experience. In addition, an update will be sent to delegates allowing for analysis as to the conference's mid-term impact.

Beyond The Conference

Wikimedia South Africa, is now best positioned to support further community engagement by:

• Formulate regional Action groups at the conference with specific individuals assigned. Each group will have one WMZA-Member.
• Our full time staff will be facilitating follow up meetings for each groups every trimester at the very least.
• We will compile a Bianual report on the state of each working group, this way we are able to evaluate successes and offer further support.

Budget breakdown

Bill No. 1: Preliminaries and General

		Qty	Rate	Total (Rand)	Total (US Dollars)	Notes
1.1	Postage	1	1,000.00	1,000.00	92.19
1.2	Telcom costs @ R350 per month per organiser for three months.	5	1,050.00	5,250.00	484.02
1.3	Printed T-shirts, for the conference participants (incl Volunteers)	35	100.00	3,500.00	322.67
1.4	Event badges	35	100.00	3,500.00	322.67
1.5	Press Kits	5	200.00	1,000.00	92.19
1.6	Conference documentation	1	25,000.00	25,000.00	2,304.79
1.7	Program Facilitators	2	4,500.00	9,000.00	829.75
1.8	Incidental costs & contingencies	1	35,000.00	35,000.00	3,226.70
1.9	Project Management	3	10,000.00	30,000.00	2,765.82
	TOTAL BILL Number 1			104,250.00	9,611.05

Bill No. 2: Local Organising Team Setup

		Qty	Rate	Total (Rand)	Total (US Dollars)	Notes
2.1.1	Flights	4	2,500.00	10,000.00	921.91
2.1.2	Accommodation + breakfast: (@ R900.00/night per person for 5 days)	2	4,500.00	9,000.00	829.72
2.1.3	Meals (Lunch and Dinner) for Pre-Conference days (1day): (@ R350.00 per person)	5	350.00	1,750.00	161.33
2.1.4	Transportation (1 x Hired car for 5 days @ R500 per day)	1	2,500.00	2,500.00	230.48
2.2	Technical Equipment and Office Amenities
2.2.1	Laptops and cabling	1	5,000.00	5,000.00	460.97
2.2.2	Wifi wireless network connection (Dedicated for Conference)	1	7,000.00	7,000.00	645.36
2.2.3	Printer	1	1,000.00	1,000.00	92.19
2.3	Venue for LOC to coordinate project on the week of event
2.3.1	1 x Boardroom @ R1,500 per day for 5 days.	5	1,500.00	7,500.00	691.44
2.4	Miscellaneous
24.1	Photographer for group photos	1	6,000.00	6,000.00	588.81
2.4.2	Stationery (Paper, pens, staples... etc)	1	1,000.00	1,000.00	92.19
	TOTAL BILL Number 2			39,750.00	3,664.61

Bill No. 3: Conference Days

		Qty	Rate	Total (Rand)	Total (US Dollars)	Notes
3.1	Venue and Conference rooms: for three days.
3.1.1	2 x Track conference rooms @ R1500 per room per day	4	3000.00	12,000.00	1106.30
3.1.2	Flipchart table	4	500.00	2,000.00	184.38
3.2	Catering
3.2.1	1 x Coffee station for 4 days @ R1500 per day.	4	1,500.00	6,000.00	553.15
3.2.2	Lunch for 4 days (@ R75 per person)	35	300.00	10,500.00	968.00
3.2.2	Dinner for 3 days @ R120 per person (as one night is wiki night out)	35	360.00	12,600.00	1,161.61
3.3	Amenities
3.3.1	Water and sweets per room: three conference rooms for 3 days.	6	250.00	1,500.00	138.29
	TOTAL BILL Number 3			44,600.00	4,111.74

Bill No. 4: Social Events

		Qty	Rate	Total (Rand)	Total (US Dollars)	Notes
4.1	Wiki Takes: Johanesburg Heritage and Joburgpedia tour
4.1.1	Tickets	25	50.00	1,250.00	115.24
4.1.2	Transport to and from conference venue (15 seater Mini-Buses)	3	2,500.00	7,500.00	691.45
4.2	Wiki Night out: Event
4.2.1	group Buffet	35	150.00	5,250.00	484.00
4.2.2	1 Drink per person	35	20.00	700.00	64.53
4.2.3	Transport to and from conference venue (15 seater Mini-Buses)	3	2000.00	6,000.00	553.15
	TOTAL BILL Number 4			20,700.00	1,908.36

Bill No. 5: Travel Scholarships

		Qty	Rate	Total (Rand)	Total (US Dollars)	Notes
5.1	International Scholarships:
5.1.1	Flights (Average)	23	6,000.00	138,000.00	12,722.41
5.1.2	Visa Assistance (Countries that require Visa)	1	5,000.00	5,000.00	460.97
5.1.3	Accomodation + breakfast: (@ R900.00/night per person for 4 nights)	23	3,600.00	82,800.00	7,633.45
5.1.4	Transportation (@ R250 per person for 4 days)	23	250.00	5,750.00	530.10
5.2	Local Scholarships: (Total of 15; 9 off outside Gauteng)
5.2.1	Flights (Average cost)	8	2,500.00	20,000.00	1,843.83
5.2.2	Accomodation + breakfast: (@ R900.00/night per person for 4 nights)	8	3,600.00	28,800.00	2,655.11
5.2.3	Transportation (@ R250 per person for 4 days)	8	250.00	2,000.00	184.38
5.3	Keynote/Expert speakers:
5.3.1	Accommodation + breakfast: (4 days @ R900.00/night)	2	3,600.00	7,200.00	663.80
5.4	Travel Agency company:
5.4.1	Arranging and booking of flights	1	20,000.00	20,000.00	1,843.88
	TOTAL BILL Number 5			309,550.00	28,537.85

Bill No. 6: Chapter Awards

		Qty	Rate	Total (Rand)	Total (US Dollars)	Notes
4.1	Best New chapter Award: Rotating Trophy + Thank You Gift pack	1	2,500.00	2,500.00	245.34
4.2	Most Active Chapter Award: Rotating Trophy + Thank You Gift pack	1	2,500.00	2,500.00	245.34
4.3	GLAM Award: Rotating Trophy + Thank You Gift pack	1	2,500.00	2,500.00	245.34
	TOTAL BILL Number 6			7,500.00	736.02

Bills Subtotals

	PROJECT BILL OF QUANTITIES PRICE SUMMARY PAGE		Total in Rands (ZAR)		Total in Dollars (USD)
1	BILL NO. 1: PRELIMINARY & GENERAL	R	104,250.00	$	9,611.05
2	BILL NO. 2: LOC SET UP	R	39,750.00	$	3,664.61
3	BILL NO. 3: CONFERENCE DAYS	R	44,600.00	$	4,111.74
4	BILL NO. 4: SOCIAL EVENTS	R	20,700.00	$	1,908.36
5	BILL NO. 5: TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIPS	R	309,550.00	$	28,537.85
6	BILL NO. 6: CHAPTER AWARDS	R		$
7	SUBTOTAL	R	518,850.00	$	47,833.50
8	VAT (14%)	R	72,639.00	$	6,696.69
9	TOTAL BUDGET PRICE	R	591,489.00	$	54,530.19

• Above dollar totals were calculated at an exchange rate of 10.847 ZAR for dated 20/01/2014 see historic exchange rate. Recent exchange rate to be applied on total value in Rands of this budget.

Summary

Total project budget

R 726,864.00 or $ 67,010.60. R 591,489.00 or $ 54,530.19.

Total amount requested

R 726,864.00 or $ 67,010.60. R 591,489.00 or $ 54,530.19.

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

"Not yet confirmed"

Non-financial requirements

None

Resources

For more information on project team members and the local organizing committee, visit our external page.

Partners

The following Organizations have expressed interest in helping us undertake this project:

Premier Hotel.

Johannesburg Heritage Foundation.

City of Johannesburg.

Wiki Africa.

Open Society Foundation.

Impact

This project meets a number of mission targets for Wikimedia strategic plan (through 2015). They are outlined below:

Fit to strategy

The Wikimedia Foundation has acknowledged the difficulties that Africa, and other Global South regions, have within its various projects. It has also admitted to content bias in the Wikimedia’s Strategic Plan, which includes the following quotations:

Large segments of the world’s population do not edit the Wikimedia projects proportionate to their real-world numbers. The people who write the Wikimedia projects are disproportionately male, young, and from countries in the Global North:

• Four out of five editors are male.
• Half are under the age of 22.
• Four out of five edits come from countries in the Global North.

Increasing both the total number of editors, and their diversity, is a key priority for the Wikimedia movement. We need to improve our dispute resolution processes to prevent editor burnout. We need to recognize and reward editor excellence.

We need to invite readers to become editors — particularly women and people in the Global South. We need to improve the editing interface in order to reduce barriers to participation. When people try editing for the first time, we need to support and coach them.

Through 2015, the Wikimedia Foundation will:

1.Encourage the health and growth of Wikimedia communities and the projects they sustain.

• Develop new features and tools, such as a rich-text editor, enhanced navigation, and social functionality, to make editing easier and more fun.
• Support the recruitment and acculturation of newer contributors by encouraging a welcoming environment on the Wikimedia projects, as well as supporting community leaders who are eager to serve as recruiters, guides and mentors for newer volunteers.

2.Expand Wikimedia’s global footprint through catalytic investments and chapter support.

• Design and deploy catalyst teams to pilot activities spurring growth in readership and editing in the high priority areas of India, Brazil, and the Arabic-speaking areas of the Middle East and North Africa.

Increasing reach

Increasing Wikimedia's reach in the Global South is one of the salient points of Vision 2015, Africa is crucial to this objective. This conference will allow the target volunteers to meet and devise means of increasing reach in their own countries.

The conference will support continent-wide growth in readership and editing and participation by up-skilling, transferring knowledge, networking and supporting the fledgeling Wikimedia usergroups and Wikipedians across the continent. The conference will make an extra effort to reach out to Wikimedians across Africa who have little to no access to Wikimedia chapter activities; in addition, it aims to support and foment the growth of thematic and linguistic groups. This conference will primarily benefit English Wikipedia, as well as French, Swahili and Afrikaans Wikipedias, by bringing together editors from all across Africa. It will also support thematic and linguistic groups by supplying tools and event planning toolkits, as well as create a supportive continental network. Further more, it will strive to create a proactive strategy that will help to drive Africa's involvement in the Wikipedia projects, that is aligned with the Wikimedia Foundations own strategy goals.

The conference will be an environment where:

• Wikipedians and Open Movement activists from across Africa can form their own network, create a supportive community, and acknowledge and find solutions to local and regional challenges.
• Experienced editors and newbies alike will have the opportunity to learn about and discuss challenges relating to the relevant projects, resources and local communities.
• Wikipedians can share and create best practices around article credibility, local community, educational possibilities, technological innovations, and usergroup stewardship.

Participation

The potential of this project to increase active participation in African countries is huge. The delegates are viewed as change agents and catalysts required to initiate and drive communities in their own countries.

Due the high expense of travel within Africa as well as the limited means of most African based Wikipedians it is expected that the vast majority of delegate will need scholarships or some form of financial assistance to attend the event. Because of this the allocation of scholarships will almost certainly take the single largest proportion of funding.

Quality

African chapters/usergroups are in their infancy, and as such there is no set standard of quality in terms of chapter governance and volunteer activation and support. This conference aims to engage delegates in discussing peer monitoring and review mechanisms that will enable the establishment of common standards of chapter governance and management.

Credibility

By roping in local authorities, heritage societies and educational institutions as partners we will be able (to a great extent) to improve our credibility as a chapter and movement in handling such important issues as access to information for the continent through collaboration efforts with government organs, and in running large scale public events in African countries.

Benefits

This project will benefit African online communities as a whole.

Provide a brief statement (about 1 paragraph) about how your project is related to other work in the Wikimedia movement.

This conference is a continuation of the International move to create regional cooperatives within the international Wikimedia communities.

If successful, does your project have the potential to be replicated successfully by other individuals, groups, or organizations?

This conference will hopefully be the first of many, and WMZA hopes that the hosting of the conference will be rotated amongst regional chapters.

Please list any other benefits that this project will produce.

For us as a small chapter this project is crucial in fostering lasting and healthy communication withing the region with chapters and like minded Thematic groups.

External Portal and discussions

Discussions on this project and further information can also be found here:

1. Conference home page

Community Input & Endorsements

• You can find endorsements for this conference by African Wikimedia community members on our conference page here.
• A community survey was conducted by WMZA using this Google form. The following were the results of the survey:

22 respondants ( 20 of which are African based Wikimedians).

12 respondants are active Wikipedians.

All unanimously support the conference.

All have Wikipedia as the main Wikimedia project in which they contribute, and other sister projects.

All are involved in chapter or Working group activity.

All believe that a physical meeting would be more beneficial than other virtual forms of meetings.

Useless Info

This grant request and extensive researching of prices, took approximately 36 hours of volunteer time to compile.

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