This project is funded by a Project Grant

Report accepted

This report for a Project Grant approved in FY 2020-21 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Jagseer S Sidhu/Punjabi Audiobooks Project.
You may still review or add to the discussion about this report on its talk page.
You are welcome to email projectgrantswikimedia.org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Welcome to this project's final report! This report shares the outcomes, impact and learnings from the grantee's project.

Part 1: The Project

Summary

Punjabi Audiobook Project term- From May 2021 to June 2022.

We selected 10 books from Punjabi Wikisource to create audiobooks and out of the listed, 9 were completed. These Audiobooks were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource at the end of the project.

The project was conducted in two phases:

Wikisource contest- We successfully organized a Wikisource contest in June 2021 in which over 22 pages were proofread and over 600 pages were validated and 4 books were transcluded.
Workshops for skill development- We were able to successfully organize two voice-over trainings for the participants.

The first one was a one-day workshop, where trainer, Amit Jindal, introduced the fundamentals of sound and voice to the project team.
In the second workshop, the main focused topic was “subtext”. Trainer, Amit Jindal, told the team about the beauty and importance of the subtext and how to grab it.

Project Goals

Enhance Wiki content reach - With the help of the Punjabi Audiobooks Project, we were able to enhance Wiki Content reach. We had promoted these audio files on social media via the Punjabi Wikimedian official Facebook page and it increased the readership of Punjabi Wikisource. Some of the screenshots from promoted files are as below:

Gill Jassu sharing her Job experience

Upgrading skills - The second major goal of this project was to upgrade community skills and we are elated to share that one of the Punjabi Wikimedians, User:Gill jassu got a job at a regional radio station after skill enhancement through our training. She was actively involved in the project and is now an official storyteller.

Diversity - There are people who want to be a part of the Wiki Community, but not all of them are interested in creating/editing articles or proofreading. With the help of the Audiobooks Project, we were able to bring 3-4 newbies to the Punjabi Wikimedia Community. One of them is our trainer, Amit Jindal. He was amazed at the work that Wiki communities are doing in open knowledge. He even attended the Women Week 2020. Punjabi Wikimedians meet-up/edit-a-thot cum brainstorming event which was held at Patiala where he learned article creation and edit the existing ones on Punjabi Wikipedia.

Project Impact

Important: The Wikimedia Foundation is no longer collecting Global Metrics for Project Grants. We are currently updating our pages to remove legacy references, but please ignore any that you encounter until we finish.

Targets

In the first column of the table below, please copy and paste the measures you selected to help you evaluate your project's success (see the Project Impact section of your proposal). Please use one row for each measure. If you set a numeric target for the measure, please include the number.
In the second column, describe your project's actual results. If you set a numeric target for the measure, please report numerically in this column. Otherwise, write a brief sentence summarizing your output or outcome for this measure.
In the third column, you have the option to provide further explanation as needed. You may also add additional explanation below this table.

Planned measure of success	Actual result	Explanation
10 audiobooks	9 audiobooks.	Unlike creating/editing articles on Wikipedia, proofreading a book on Wikisource; the recording of an audio file requires an appropriate environment. The recording setup should be in a peaceful place. There are many more challenges we faced in the project so we could not meet our expected target.
10 new volunteers	5 volunteers	Our target was to bring 10 new volunteers through this project to our Wiki community but somehow we were able to get only 5 volunteers.
At least 5 trained voice-over volunteers	We have 8 trained voice-over volunteers	All project teams plus 2 new participants took part in the Voice-over training and they are ready to create audiobooks for the next projects.
Experimental voice-over	1	We chose a children’s poem book and all the participants recorded 6-7 poems each. User:Nitesh Gill, who is in co-lead of this project as well, recorded the poem with 8 year’s child and it generated a new energy among participants. A child worked enthusiastically to record the poems.
Female users involvement		Out of our 12 volunteers, 7 were females.
Employability		One of the active members of Punjabi Wikimedia User group User:Gill jassu got a job at a local radio station after the voice-over workshop. She already had a storytelling ready voice and this workshop polished her skills that eventually helped her to get a job.

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Story

Looking back over your whole project, what did you achieve? Tell us the story of your achievements, your results, your outcomes. Focus on inspiring moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes or anything that highlights the outcomes of your project. Imagine that you are sharing with a friend about the achievements that matter most to you in your project.

This should not be a list of what you did. You will be asked to provide that later in the Methods and Activities section.
Consider your original goals as you write your project's story, but don't let them limit you. Your project may have important outcomes you weren't expecting. Please focus on the impact that you believe matters most.

The project started in June 2020 with the selection of the books. With community discussion, we selected 10 books for recording and then we organized an edit-a-thon for proofreading and validating these books. After validating, we transcluded them as well. Once the books were ready, we started the audio recording. The recording was started before the training because of the imposed COVID restrictions. When things got under control, we organized our first Voice-over training session on 5th December 2021 at Punjabi University, Patiala. The first training was based on the basics of voice and sound. The trainer taught the team about the factors to be considered before recording. It was attended by 8 participants who later made a valuable contribution to the project.

Our second training was scheduled between 26-27 February 2022 at Patiala. This time it was for two days. The topic of the training was “subtext” and “mic handling”. On the very first day, we practiced some text and understood the concept of “subtext” and how important it is while recording. Second day of the training was conducted at the recording studio where participants recorded their stories one by one. It took 4 hours for 7 participants to record their selected content. After this, the recordings went to the editor for the final edit.

Once the audio files were edited, we promoted them on social media through Punjabi Wikimedia User Group’s official Facebook page. The content got a immense response in terms of increased readership of Punjabi Wikisource.

Survey(s)

If you used surveys to evaluate the success of your project, please provide a link(s) in this section, then briefly summarize your survey results in your own words. Include three interesting outputs or outcomes that the survey revealed.

As we planned that 2 audiobooks will be created by the professional voice-over artists, the aim was to evaluate the impact of voice-over training. To assess if we match their (professional voice-over artist) level after the training or we need to arrange advance training. We got our work reviewed by a radio presenter who is working as a professional voice over critic. Her reviews are as follows:

“

I have gone through all the stories and I appreciate the efforts of everyone involved in the project. Overall, the work is good but I am impressed by the quality of work done by volunteers who have performed better at some places than paid artists. Here are a few suggestions based on my experience:

Please add background music & SFX to enhance the quality.
Storytelling is an art of creating visuals in the mind of listeners so appropriate pauses are required and the pace should be a little slower than current.
There are a few issues with pronunciation as I discussed with you.
Voice modulation is very crucial when it is audio-only.
We transfer the emotions of the characters of the story to listeners through our voice only. This is the area where you need more attention and improvement.

Overall, everyone performed really well. Congratulation and Keep it up.

Good Luck!

”

— Damanjeet Kaur (Radio critic and Voice over Artist)

“

The workshop has generated a seismic effect, though I joined the community without any expectations. In the first workshop, I imparted few theatre & vocal exercises and then the volunteers practiced. But after, the second workshop on Subtext & delivery, the volunteers improved up to an amazing level, as one of the volunteers grabbed a job in the audio company. Astonieshed!!

”

— AMit Jindal (Trainer)

Other

Is there another way you would prefer to communicate the actual results of your project, as you understand them? You can do that here!

Nitesh Gill sharing her view about Punjabi Audiobooks Workshop
Gaurav Jhammat sharing his view about Punjabi Audiobooks Workshop
Rajdeep Ghuman sharing her view about Punjabi Audiobooks Workshop

Methods and activities

Please provide a list of the main methods and activities through which you completed your project.

Project resources

Please provide links to all public, online documents and other artifacts that you created during the course of this project. Even if you have linked to them elsewhere in this report, this section serves as a centralized archive for everything you created during your project. Examples include: meeting notes, participant lists, photos or graphics uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, template messages sent to participants, wiki pages, social media (Facebook groups, Twitter accounts), datasets, surveys, questionnaires, code repositories... If possible, include a brief summary with each link.

Learning

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you took enough risks in your project to have learned something really interesting! Think about what recommendations you have for others who may follow in your footsteps, and use the below sections to describe what worked and what didn’t.

What worked well

What did you try that was successful and you'd recommend others do? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

Since this was a pilot project, we almost met our set targets. Punjabi Wikimedia User Group now has trained volunteers who can contribute in creating audio content. We got 3 new users who are interested in audio creation activities.

What didn’t work

What did you try that you learned didn't work? What would you think about doing differently in the future? Please list these as short bullet points.

Due to some personal problem, the project started a month late and COVID restrictions delayed the voice-over training. As we mentioned above, recording took a lot of energy and time, we were only able to complete 9 books out of 10.

Other recommendations

If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please list them here.

Next steps and opportunities

Are there opportunities for future growth of this project, or new areas you have uncovered in the course of this grant that could be fruitful for more exploration (either by yourself, or others)? What ideas or suggestions do you have for future projects based on the work you’ve completed? Please list these as short bullet points.

Collaboration with an education organization that will help to involve students in the community.
Providing training to these students to generate more audio content.
Engage more people in the Punjabi Wiki Community through this project.
To collaborate with groups like WikiBlind and other organizations like LibriVox.

Part 2: The Grant

Finances

Actual spending

Please copy and paste the completed table from your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed the actual expenditures compared with what was originally planned. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided to explain them.

Expense	Approved amount	Actual funds spent	Difference
Equipments	60,000	57644	2356
Proofread and Validation Competition	15000	9200	5800
Appreciation Stuff of volunteer	20000	37974	-17974
Voice-over Training for community	40,000	30000 (Voice over trainder fee)	10000
Accommodation	30000	25935	4065
Voice over artist	30000	34500	-4500
Social Media Promotion	20000	20000	0
Travel	30000	18174	11826
Miscellaneous	25,000	35682	-10682
Total	270000	269109	891

Remaining funds

Do you have any unspent funds from the grant?

Please answer yes or no. If yes, list the amount you did not use and explain why.

No.

If you have unspent funds, they must be returned to WMF. Please see the instructions for returning unspent funds and indicate here if this is still in progress, or if this is already completed:

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadmin wikimedia.org, according to the guidelines here?

Please answer yes or no. If no, include an explanation.

Confirmation of project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

Please answer yes or no.

Is your project completed?