Grants:Project/Rapid/Margott/Wiki Loves Earth Albania 2016

To increase the number of freely licensed photographs from the preserved territories and natural heritage sites in Albania;
To create new articles about natural heritage sites of Albania;
To improve the quality of the content on Wikimedia projects by securing topical images;
To illustrate already exiting articles about natural heritage sites in Albanian language Wikipedia;
To encourage active participation of photographers in the competition;
To promote the donated content through social media and other channels;
To raise the awareness of the natural heritage of Albania through the photographs uploaded during the competition;
To promote Wikimedia projects to the photographer and nature preservation community;
To engage public funded institutions related to natural heritage sites in Albania with Wikimedia projects .

Project Plan

Activities

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:

1. What content will the contest focus on, and why is it important to your community?
This is the first year organizing Wiki Loves Earth. And as far as we know in Albania there is no other photographic contest about protected areas in Albania which promotes creative commons licence. Neither Commons nor other platforms that supports creative commons. The contest will focus on pictures with the subject natural heritage (protected areas) In Albania. We have made available a list of protected natural monuments online confirmed by Ministry of Environment. The list around 70 different protected items/sites.
2. How will you let people know about the contest?
We are doing the promotion in collaboration with Kosovp. We are using different promotion channels. We have already sent press releases to media getting published in some of them such as Telegrafi.com, Koha.net and Koha Ditore daily and TV21 portal (also 1, 2, 3). Furthermore, we will be promoting in Facebook (sq.wikipedia.org, Twitter (sqwikipedia) and Albanian Wikipedia mailing list and other community mailing list like Open Labs and Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova.
3. How will you judge the contest and award prizes?
Considering the experience with Wiki Loves Monuments we will have a mixed Jury with 5 people.
4. For photo contests, what is the strategy to get images used on projects?
Wikipedians of Albanian Language User Group will has already start working for this task. Since the focus of this event is Wikipedia Albania and Commons after the events we will organize different workshops or edit a thons with the main goal to improve articles/add new ones about the protected zones. For most of the natural protected areas of Albania there is no article in any language of Wikipedia, and we have already started to write articles in collaboration with Kosovo for those areas in which we will also put contest photos.
5. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?

Creation and editing of relevant pages (in local language) with the necessary information about the project - 25 May 2016;
Inititation of collaboration with related governmental institutions - 28 May 2016;
Promotion of competition through the use of social networks, open source communities mailing lists, media and photo-oriented web sites - 25 May - 30 June 2016;
Finalize the list of protected areas to be photographed.- 25 May 2016;
Press release announcing the competition just some days before the starting date (press coverage before and during the contest);
Run the contest itself, June 1st - June 30th;
Selection of the members of the jury committee - 5 July 2016;
Submission of best photographs to the global competition data;
Preparation of posters and certificates that will be delivered to the winners and the participants of the event;
Awards ceremony - 2nd half of July 2016;
Project evaluation and report writing. August 2016;
Blogging and media outreach about the competition. August 2016;

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:

For photo contests:

at least 30 participants uploading one photograph or more;
at least 500 photographs uploaded and kept after review;
at least 20 new articles about natural heritage sites in sq.Wikipedia and other Wikipedias
at least 70 already exiting articles to be illustrated with the collected photos

Note: Since this is the first year that we are implementing WLE competition, the metrics mentioned above are hard estimation and also based on our expectations.

Resources

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

Team

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount.

Item	Cost (EUR)
Prizes - prizes for the best photographs and best contributors	300
~~Poster/banners - posters with the logo and the awarded photographs (10 posters-2 banner)~~	~~150~~
Certificates- certificates for the awarded photographers and jury members- from Albanian Language UG	20
Traveling/Mail expenses- Traveling or mailing expenses for people who are not living in the capital for the awards ceremony	100
Catering	100
Printing 10 best pictures for an exhibition	150
Miscellaneous	100
Total	~~920~~ 770

Endorsements

Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!

This is a great way to push the Albanian Wikipedia. And the language still needs some support to further improve and get acceptance in the public.
The Albanian Wikipedia community discussed this project while I was in Tirana and they are all very excited about it.
WikiLovesMonuments had a great impact not only for Albanian Wikipedia, but also many new images that were used in other languages. I'm looking forward for all the articles in many languages that will benefit from this project. Albinfo (talk) 11:04, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
As a member of Wiki Loves Earth international team I endorse this proposal. We have had a discussion with an Albanian representative at Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, and I am pretty confident that Albanian group will be able to deliver good results. They have an experience of organising Wiki Loves Monuments, and organising Wiki Loves Earth will be beneficial for the community — NickK (talk) 13:14, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Well, I've been to Albania multiple times so far and I was always dissatisfied with the very poor coverage of Albania (in general) on Wikimedia Commons. I tried to do what I could when it comes to having this better, but the country is not so small, so some crowdsourcing effort should be done. Having that there is no FoP in Albania, WLE sounds like a very good approach - as it will not create any problematic situations. Besides, having more articles should be also an important goal. From my perspective Albanian Wikipedia needs them - there is some content, but even the most basic topics are covered rather poorly. WLE would be also an important issue how to focus on national beauties that - the the governments in Tirana and Priština would like to see promoted. Just add here more info about media communication and possible outreach (do not forget to set the Centralnotice on Albanian Wikipedia as soon as possible! - or maybe also on Serbian and Macedonian, since they are close?), plan for press releases, and channels how everyone will know this is THE thing :-) --Aktron (talk) 17:01, 1 June 2016 (UTC)