Grants:Project/Rapid/InFormAzionI/Discovering Vergante

statusFunded

Rapid Grants

InFormAzionI/Discovering Vergante

Creating content about a small area together with a group of 8 high school students

targetit.wikipedia, commons, it.wikivoyage, it.wikisource

start date11 June 2018

end date15 June

budget (local currency)€ 247.50

budget (USD)$ 287.203

grant typeGroup

non-profit statusyes

grantee• Civvì

contact(s)• civvi68@gmail.com• User:Yiyi

organization (if applicable)• InFormAzioni

website (if applicable)• InFormAzionI website

friendly space expectations

ucc

privacystatement

Review your report

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 project is part of a broader project of some small towns in a hilly area in northern Italy (Piemont) called Vergante. Town councils are trying to organize some activities for local teenagers. In Italy high school kids have to spend some compulsory time (200 hours or 400 hours, depending on the school) in a sort of work-related learning or internships so together with the local communities we worked with 8 local high school students (11th-12th grade - 17/18 years old) on a 40 hours project on the knowledge and promotion of the territory through the creation of new content involving wikipedia, commons, wikivoyage and wikisource.

Project Plan

Activities

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

The activity lasted for 5 days (8 hours per day). We worked together creating content about and around three small towns, Colazza, Nebbiuno and Pisano.

We improved the Wikipedia articles in it.wiki, wrote some content in english and french (still in progress), we created the Wikivoyage entries, took a lot of pictures, mapped the area on OpenStreetMap in order to find and describe together with the students an itinerary on Wikivoyage, we scanned a book which is already on Commons. Some of the contents (texts and pictures) will be used in the official sites of the towns, goal is to use and promote the itinerary too. It was a nice mix up between sitting in front of a pc and walking around in the hills and woods.

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?

We didn't involve the community, goal was (is) to create a small group of "experienced" young users to involve in other - already planned - activities in the area and possibly in local schools as "peer educators".

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

At the end of this phase of the project we have improved some articles, scanned one historical book about the area, made a lot of pictures, written some articles on wikivoyage. A couple of the kids really liked some of the activities and they agreed about periodical meetings to go on working on the contents. Two of the kids confessed some past vandalisms but after this time they were sorry, one of them is on the way to become a fine and precise OSMapper...

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 = 8 studens + 3 volunteers
2. Number of articles created or improved = 3 improved on it.wiki - 1 created on it.wiki - 1 improved on en.wiki - 1 in progress for fr.wiki - 4 created on it.voy
3. Number of photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons = around 40
4. Number of books scanned = 1 (book in PD, already uploaded in IA and Commons and in progress on it.source)

It's not related to WMF but the group added also a huge amount of information to OpenStreetMap. All of the kids declared that the passage from passive user of the web to active creator of content was exciting.

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).

We had the support of the town of Pisano which provided the venue opening the local library and computer room for the whole week, they also agreed to let the group eat in the preschool canteen. Unione Montana dei Due Laghi will cover transport costs for the staff tutoring the students for the whole time, we also had the support of an expert of the Italian Alps Club (CAI Sezione Est Monte Rosa) who explained us history and criteria of mountain routes and itineraries. Thanks to a grant from WMCH we were able buy and start using a small book scanner, so we could start with the scanning of an antique book.

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

The whole project is quite and effort for these small towns so we would like to provide for the lunch expenses:

• 11 persons (8 students and 3 volunteers) * 5 days * € 4,50/meal = € 247,50
• We would like to use the remaining funds from this grant