Grants:Project/Rapid/Falanster/Participate in communities/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2016-17 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/Rapid/Falanster/Participate in communities.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went? Yes, we did. In general we are satisfied by the implementation of the project. Why?

Firstly, we achieve different audience: pupils, teachers, students, wikimedians. Secondly, we accelerated both local communities to make an advertisement for workshops/trips and wikimedia community to support and consult us how to make our activity more productive.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
recruit new editors as well as volunteers.	More than 50 new editors and 12+ volunteers who assisted in the project preparation and processing (mostly infrastructure).	In new editors we include just participators who added/edited at least 1 article and several pictures and who we could directly follow-up.
add new content (article, pictures) about local phenomenons, events, people in the Belarusian language.	50+ created/improved articles. Around 50 new photos placed on the articles. Mostly topics focused on local phenomenons.	It is more than we planned.
inform communities about educational potential of Wikipedia	At least: University of Hrodna (15+ Participants), Belarusian State University (30+ participants), Baranavichy (6), Minsk (10+), Zdzitava (7), Kruleuschyna (9), Babrujsk (25+). In total more than 100 participants took part in our events. 12+ volunteers who helped in the organization process. Eventually, we prepared 12 events (3 trips, 4+3 lectures, 2 wiki community meetings) and more than 5 preparation meetings.	Local communities informed the event in own social media with coverage several hundreds readers some use traditional media (local newspapers) and posters (in universities) autonomously without our intervention. We achieved almost 100 hundred followers in FB group (25+ new participators).
ice-break misunderstanding about wiki technology.	There were more than 6 teachers and 4 academic decision-makers who were engaged in the wiki-workshops or their preparation. 2 long term educational pilots in university.	it fits even more to our initial expectations.

Learning

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?
Firstly, it is positive trend of invitations our team in different places (schools, civil groups) to make workshops and training about wiki-technologies (increased necessity of this knowledge in society).

Secondly, there is positive feedback from participators after workshops what helped us to spread the words about wikimedian community among own local communities (outreach) significantly.

Lastly, the old-handed wikimedians actively interacted (mostly positive) with newcomers through wikipedia tools and with project teams making advice and sharing news about events even they did not participate directly. So our activity in both direction accelerated informational streams inside wikimedians and made our community more vibrant.
What did not work so well?
Local communities demands tons of time and our energy (1) to synchronise wikimedia community values and (2) their interest and readiness for open and inclusive cooperation. For example, it is to warm up a local gatekeeper for inclusive cooperation some of them wanted to keep monopoly for pre contact with participators.

We didn't evaluate so big interest around country to this topic. And we need to move some activities out of the project timeline and think how to develop internal team sources for meeting all needs of communities.

We started to use the outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org but it suits just for long-term projects with smooth and time-normalised contribution, but not for short-term (1-2 days) workshops because of big delays for updating statistics. And now we think how to organise the participant activity monitoring after an event in a more convenient way for us.

Lack of tech infrastructure in places. In spite of presence computers and the internet in local schools many of them did not work perfectly or internet connection was very unstable.

What would you do differently next time?

We will:

cut a bit more time for the project +1-2 months for unexpected points

expand a budget for logistics and accommodation and tech site.

be ready to spend more time in communication with the locals and provide more clear roadmap (what we did at the second part of the project. It means: workshop plan, make video skype call with community during the preparation, prepare wish list of articles from wikimedia community as well not only locals, develop form more detailed)

to be ready that you should not only provide wiki-knowledge but computer and media literacy which are necessary for normal work.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

Transportі = 271
Stationery = 98
Food = 194
Venue = 215
Prizes
- T-Shirt = 45
- Books = 174
- Printing wiki manual books = 224
Misc
- Badges = 83
- Postcards with photos of participants = 181
Internet = 77
Training events:
- Rent of premises = 118
- Dinners for organizers-participants = 77

Total: 1762

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project? It was very fruitful not only for sharing but collecting new knowledge and experience both technical and social during the project. We got tons of knowledge and new contacts. For whom just think: Identify community and go there!