Grants:Programs/Rapid Fund/Building Public awareness of Climate change through Wikipedia/Report

Report accepted
This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2021-22 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.


Goals

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Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Yes. The WikiforHumanRights workshop was a huge success. We achieved our goal of enhancing public awareness on climate change through Wikipedia. We hosted the 2-day Climate change Edit-a-thon from 24th to 25th June, 2022. The event was held at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Center for Excellence in ICT. The Youth Climate Council Ghana coordinated the event with kind support from the Open Foundation West Africa. We exceeded our expectations with 36 participants attending both workshops in-person. We also conducted a virtual training which attracted 40 participants.

Day one- The training compassed basic knowledge on Wikipedia and relevant facts to a new editor. Senior Campaign Fellow for Wikimedia, Ruby Damenshie Brown engaged participants on how the importance of editing and contributing to Wikipedia. The virtual was conducted in a similar format.

Day two- The day two of the training focused more on hands-on. We delved deeper into editing Wikipedia, Translation Tools, uploading images on Wikimedia Commons and a practical exercise of citing references in published articles.

Impact- Participants were introduced to Wikipedia and were given hands-on experience editing Wikipedia in both English and Akan Wikipedia. At the end of the 2-day hybrid training, 17 Females (45%) were trained. Additionally, 99% of the participants were new editors. 58 (76%) participants successfully created their Wikipedia account and signed onto the dashboard but only 5 were able to edit during the day of the training; the rest had an IP block which hampered their contribution on Wikipedia. A total of 10 articles about climate change were improved, 25 edits were made and 8 images were uploaded on Wikimedia Commons according to the dashboard.


Outcome

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Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.


Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
2 events 2 events n/a
80 participants 76 participants Some participants could not participate due to Internet connectivity issues and wanted to attend in person. However, there were no provisions to host people coming from other regions in Ghana. We hope we can be able to make provisions in the future.
20 articles to be improved 10 articles were improved Participants were focused on editing existing articles to help improve their skills and knowledge in Wikipedia editing.
70 repeated participants 60 repeated participants This represents participants who attended the two-day event.


Learning

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Projects 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?
  • What did not work so well?
  • What would you do differently next time?

Our partnership with Open Foundation West Africa was crucial in delivering a successful workshop. We sent out applications to our mailing and also leveraged social media to boost publicity for the training.

The training was well patronized by our members. We recorded a total of 76 participants (virtual and in-person) across two days.

4 trainers from the Open Foundation West Africa conducted the in-person training at the Kofi Annan ICT Center of Excellence. An additional four trainers conducted the virtual training across the 2 days. We recorded a minimum of 30 participants across the the two-day workshop

Virtual training - link.

All the participants were new to Wikipedia editing, therefore we had to spend a lot of time teaching them the fundamentals of Wikipedia. We also encountered a challenge with Blocked IP addresses and Blocked Wiki accounts. This did not allow most of the participants to edit on their own.

The team at OFWA engaged registered participants weeks before the event in creating their accounts which was also helpful as most of them had their accounts created before the day of the event.

We recorded a deficit in our budget due to an error in the calculation of Administrative costs. The amount allocated was GHC1500 but only GHC300 was reflected in the estimated total.

We hope to make provision for more people to attend in person in future as more people showed interest in the in-person participation, especially from other regions of Ghana. We had to cut down the number by shortlisting the in-person and encouraging more participation virtually.

We received positive feedback from our participants. They showed a great deal of excitement about the event and called for similar events in the future.

The Youth Climate Council Ghana will be happy to make this workshop a regular feature on our calendar.

PICTURES - DAY 1

PICTURES - DAY 2

Blogpost

Finances

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Gift for Speakers during Webinar = GHC900 Coordination of Webinar = GHC2000 Food, water and Snacks per event = GHC2400 Transport for Coordinators = GHC400 Facilitation Time of Trainers = GHC2000 Internet Data for workshop = GHC1000 Administrative Cost = GHC300 Training space and accessories = GHC2400 Communications = GHC1000 Souvenirs = GHC2000 Printing certificate = GHC600 Wikipedia Backdrop = GHC200

Total = GHC 15200

(Miscellaneous spent not covered= GHC 2000)


Grant funds spent

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Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.


We spent a total of GHC17200 on the 2-day workshop. The money covered cost of designing communication materials, graphics, certificate, T-shirt etc needed as well as socializing the workshop for the webinar and training workshops. Other expenses include, Food, water and drinks, Cost of T-shirt souvenirs for participants and event coordinators. Cost of printing hard copy certificates for 30 participants. Cost of conference space for the 2 days training. Administrative or operational costs. Internet Data for the 2 day workshops with participants. Transportation for 4 Trainers for the 2 day in-person workshop. Data and airtime to support 4 coordinators at YCC for mobilizing youth activists to attend webinars and workshops as well as hosting the webinar.

Remaining funds

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Do you have any remaining grant funds? There was no remaining funds. We spent all the money allocated for the workshop.


Anything else

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Anything else you want to share about your project?