Grants:Project/Rapid/Empowering African schools with Kiwix

statusfunded

Rapid Grants

GastelEtzwane/Empowering African schools with Kiwix

The Kiwix offline reader enables users to have the entire content of Wikipedia on their device without being connected to the internet. Very many African schools are located in areas without electricity, phone landlines or reliable internet access, and Kiwix will provide invaluable reference material for the teachers when they prepare their courses - both Wikipedia and other Open educational resources. The teachers need to be introduced to this offline reader, and they need minimal training as well as some hands-on exercises so that they can best use it during the school year.

targetfr.wikipedia.org, commons.wikimedia.org

start dateJuly 9

end dateJuly 26

budget (local currency)CHF 1945 1375 CHF

budget (USD)USD 1984 $US$1,393

grant typeindividual

grantee• GastelEtzwane

contact(s)• gabrielthullen.com

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Project Goal

Briefly explain what are you trying to accomplish with this project, or what do you expect will change as a result of this grant. Example goals include, "recruit new editors", "add high quality content", or "train existing editors on a specific skill".

The Kiwix offline reader is a fantastic tool which enables its users to access the entire encyclopedia without being connected to the Internet. Like many great free tools, most people do not know that it even exists. I aim to fulfill the following goals:

• Introduce Kiwix, a free and open source program, to different African schools and training centers.
• Train the teachers is using Kiwix: finding information, copying and distributing Kiwix, updating the *.zim files, care of the Raspberry Pi device or the USB flash drives.
• Gather a community of Wikipedia users and/or contributors (in areas with adequate internet access).
• Work out a monitoring program with the teachers in order to evaluate the actual use of Kiwix during the school year.

Project Plan

Activities

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing?

I was in Senegal in August 2015, and I held 3 training seminars with Kiwix: one in a school in Thiès, one at the US Peace Corps training Center in Thiès and one at the Senegalese naval training facility in Dakar. I applied for a micro-grant last year, application can be found here: Plug Kiwix for Kocc Barma school (Thiès, Sénégal). In the end, I did not bill the movement for the grant money.

I will be doing follow-up visits to the KOCC BARMA school and to the different training centers, and I hope to collect their deliverables. I will spend some time with them and try to determine if the material they received was in any way useful. I have been contacted by a few schools who would like me to come and give them a seminar as well, in Thiès and in other cities. In 2015, I was unable to reach a school in Djilor due to time constraints (I was only able to stay for one week). I visited Djilor in 2014, and discussed Wikipedia and Kiwix with the local school authorities. They were very positive and enthusiastic, especially since there was no electricity nor internet in the town in 2014. Things have improved a little since then, but internet est not yet reliable. I met with the school administrator in August 2015, and we agreed to set up some training in 2016. I have also been contacted by a school in Ouro Sogui who are very interested in offline educational resources, and are looking forward to a seminar on Kiwix.

How will you let others in your community know about your project (please provide links to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions)? Why are you targeting a specific audience?

The community liaison person of the French speaking part of Switzerland knows about this project, and will keep the Swiss Wikimedia community informed. There was a large amount of talk last summer when I was there, but I cannot find any links to their discussions about it. In Senegal they do a lot of communicating and organizing by SMS text messages, so there is very little traces one year later.

What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project?

I will set up a Facebook page so that the different teachers can communicate about their experiences using Kiwix. It will not work using email, I tried that last year, and the contacts I have kept up have been through Facebook.

Impact

How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets and feel free to add more specific to your project:

1. Number of total participants: 150 Kiwix users
2. Number of articles created or improved (if applicable)
3. Number of photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (if applicable)
4. Number of photos used on Wikimedia projects (if applicable)

Resources

What resources do you have? Include information on who is the organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding).

I do not have any external resources, nor any in-kind donations or additional funding. I will not include my own travel expenses, nor the food and lodging in the different areas of Senegal.

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense:

• 1 Point of View Universe R1 7" Windows tablets - 50 CHF
• 1 64 GB flash card for tablet - 60 CHF
• 50 32 GB USB flash drives - 645 CHF (@ 12.90 per flash drive)
• Loading of Kiwix on flash drives by a student - 120 CHF (@30 CHF per hour)
• 2 1 Raspberry Pi Kiwix hotspots (including 64 GB microSDXC) - 220 CHF (prototype, still in development, approx 110 CHF per)
• shipping of Raspberry Pi to Thiès in September - 100 CHF (@ 50 CHF per Raspberry Pi)
• 5 drinks and snacks for attendees (the schools will provide lunch as part of the deal) - 500 CHF (average of 35 participants @ 100 CHF)
• Total: 1695 CHF 1375 CHF

Endorsements

• I think this is a wonderful project. Nattes à chat (talk) 07:07, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
• The Kiwix offline reader is a great project to increase knowledge at school. LaMèreVeille (talk) 07:47, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
• Anthere (talk) 20:59, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
• A great initiative in the field of Education that supports the dissemination of free knowledge and the Kiwix project Gabrielle Marie WMCH (talk) 16:13, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

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