Grants:Project/Rapid/OFWA/African Wikimedia Developers/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/OFWA/African Wikimedia Developers.
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?

Proposed Goals	Achieved Goals
Increase the awareness of volunteer developer opportunities in Africa	Currently over 90% of the communities in Africa are aware about the campaign. Also we have been feature in a tech blog by a Nigerian writerwho also thinks this is a great project to involve Africa in tech related events.
Recruit new volunteer developers from the continent	We have recruited 25 volunteer developers from the just ended event in Accra, Ghana and have a 100 subscribed members to the program mailing list (African Wikimedia Developer mailing list).
Create a community of developers on the continent	We have just began a community of 100 developers across Africa via our mailing list and have created an IRC channel to engage volunteers. This is just the beginning of many though.
Participate in solving technical problems from the larger community	We are sure by the end of the two months recruits will have contributed to this goal. Will be fully updated after the 2 month follow up period.
Promote participation in continental and international programs that benefit the community (GSoC)	We have created the excitement about such events and hope to encourage the participation of many from next year (2018)
Ensure participation from Africa in tech related community events such as Hackathon	We have created the excitement about such events and hope to encourage the participation of many from next year (2018)

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
At least 30 participants	25 people attended.	We fell short of this target by 5 people accounting for 16.7% of the total expected number of participants.
Recruiting at least 20 volunteers	We recruited 25 people at the event	In total we recruited more than 20 volunteers who have shown keen interest to contribute to this program. We exceeded this target by 5 more participants accounting for a total increase of 125%.
Maintain a minimum of 5 active developers at the end of the pilot phase	6	Even though we have achieved about 6 active contributors majority are not from Ghana. Albeit this downside also lies an opportunity, this is specifically activities to say that activities around the Africa Wikimedia Developers Project (AWMD) has been able to rope in developers who didn't contribute in the line. This shows great prospects for what our vibrance can do on the continent.
If 1/2 of the total number of communities in Africa know about us.	We have created the awareness of the program to more than 90% of the communities in Africa.	These countries have shown keen interest in the program by sharing our posts on their respective social media channels. Our activities have also enticed the request of at least 3 countries who wish to have a similar event in their countries.

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?

Our message dissemination methods and tactics was very successful as we were able to reach 88 registrations for the event. We employed all notable means of sharing information about the event. Some of which included social media, whatsapp, emails and newsletter of partner organisations (related tech communities and technology hubs).

From past experience, we have learnt that not all those who register for events attend. So this time we first made sure that we put in place mechanisms to mitigate such occurrences. One of this mechanisms was to clearly exceeded the number of expected participants during registration. Below are some further steps taken;

We were expecting 50 participants however we opened registeration for 88 people.
We sent email two (2) weeks to the training day. Reminding participants of the event, preparation before the event, shared some resources and gently prompted all registered participants to confirm participation or inability to attend.
We repeated step 2 again one (1) week to event date. This resulted in about 8 participants confirming their inability to attend.
In the week of the event, exactly two (2) days before the event date, we finally called all 80 registered participants to confirm their participation, averagely 55 participants confirmed attendance.

This precautionary steps I believe was the reason why we exceeded our expected number of recruited participants for the event. However we also think its keen to revise these steps to avoid further absenteeism as was experienced at the event.

Our training methods was also engaging and yielded good results at the training. The introductory talk (intro to the movement, Why this project, the essence of an African developer community and opportunities for developers) laid a very solid foundation for participants to clearly understand what their contribution meant to the movement. This was evident on the second day when newer (those who couldn't attend on the first day) participants kept on asking why we needed volunteers and what the role of developers was in the movement (It forced a recap of the intro presentation to ensure all understood the basis to contribute).The technical training also went very well as it was more practical than theory and so participants extremely appreciated the lessons taught.

What did not work so well?

In as much as we took several precautionary steps, some participants still didn't show up, which caused us a lot of excess in terms of food and souvenirs. The only good thing is that these tshirts can be used in subsequent programs and all excess food was consumed by those present, however it was a wastage in terms of funds.

What would you do differently next time?

We intend to leave a margin of error of about 40% in terms of confirmed participants in subsequent events. Even though we will follow all the steps mentioned to ensure we sieve for only those interested or willing to attend, we will account for about only 60% of the confirmed list of participants, to avoid a repeat of this sought. We will also liaise with local affiliate groups to come up with the appropriate margin of error for non-attendance, as the proposed 40%, may not be feasible in a different country.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

ITEM	TOTAL BUDGET GHC	TOTAL BUDGET USD	Actual Expenditure USD	COMMENTS
Tshirts	1100	268.29	1100	Needed as a marketing tool for the event during and after
Event Venue	1000	243.90	800	Venue for training
Food	5000	1219.51	5000	Since we will be keeping participants for long hours we wish to provide one coffee break and launch for 50 people x 2 days = 100 as stated in the quantity column.
Water	100	24.39	40	A box contains 24 so literally we need 2 for a day making 4 total. But we added one for contingency reasons
Internet	399	97.32	399	The program will require internet usage and we anticipate using the internet resources of the venue might create problems, so this is a back up
Transport	200	48.78	200	Transportation to and from venue for 2 days by resident organizers
Phone calls	50	12.20	50	Cost of phone calls in the execution of the project
Roll up banner	350	85.37	350	A marketing material that could be used in the host country for subsequent activities
Team pre- dinner	-	-	100	Arrival of speaker on a day before the actual training we met him and had something to eat.
Team Meeting	-	-	180	To analyse the training held and agree on a suitable plan for the way forward. This included food at a restaurant and transportation of the trainer to and from the hotel to the meeting venue GHC 142 + 20 + 18 (Food + Desert +Transportation).
Total	8199	1999.76	8219	Resulted in a deficit of about GHC 20 which was absorbed by the organising team.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

As per the actual spending outlined above we exceeded our budget by only GHC 20 which was caused by mainly not accounting for feeding for the guest trainer before and after the events. This amount has been soaked by the organising team.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

The first part of this project was truly successful in our opinion. The various steps we took to overcome the problem of participation was great, even though not overly responsive, it helped us attain our minimum targets. We are also glad to share the enthusiasm for this project by the African community and the requests already made by 3 countries who wish to be the next to host such a training. A breakdown of some incredible milestones:

100 subscribed members of the mailing lists - African Wikimedia Developers Project mailing list
3 Countries have shown a great deal of interest to host a similar event in their countries.
25 newly recruited developers (5 more than the estimated newly recruits).
90% of African Wikimedia Communities already know about the project.
Got featured on a Nigerian tech blog

Report after 3 months

We encourage you to read our 3 months report on the project via this blog post.