Grants:Project/Rapid/World Pulse Series of Edit-athon Trainings/Report

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Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Although we could not confirm 10 new editors were recruited during this session, we overall are happy with how the project went. Based on positive feedback from participants and our partner, Whose Knowledge?, we believe with a few minor improvements this can be a replicable model that we can embed in our global programs with the potential to reach many more women community-based leaders worldwide.

This Edit-a-thon aligned with World Pulse’s wider vision to give women the tools and skills they need to use the Internet to tell their stories and share their knowledge with the world. The event had 17 participants in total during the training from countries such as the Phillippines, Cameroon, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Mexico, the United States, and Canada. We can confirm that 5 participants created editor accounts during the session. Those involved in the event signed up and learned to contribute to Wikimedia Commons during the course of the session. The training was also shared with our members who could not join live, expanding the reach of potential participants and new editors, and our team offered support for those who wanted to continue uploading photos onto the Commons.

Our participants reported that the session was appreciated by them and beneficial, and that they have a desire for more events to expand their skills in sharing the stories, photos, and content of women on Wikimedia. Several World Pulse members, including Arrey-Echi in Cameroon, wrote posts on the World Pulse platform (https://www.worldpulse.com/community/users/arrey-echi/posts/99553) sharing their appreciation for the event and what they learned. Arrey described the Edit-a-thon as, “an eye-opening moment of learning and relearning new things in the digital space.”

This reinforces our view of events like this one as helpful assets for our community members. Though happy with how the event went, we do wish more could have attended the training and become editors. In future sessions, we can promote more widely by enlisting past participants and respected community members to generate enthusiasm for the event and share testimonies on how the training benefited them.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1 event	1 event	We held 1 session for the Edit-a-thon with our partner, Whose Knowledge?.
30 total participants	17	The Edit-a-thon included 17 participants from countries such as the Phillippines, Cameroon, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Mexico, the United States, and Canada.
10 new editors (Number of newly registered users)	5 confirmed	Although we believe the number of new editors to be higher than 5 from the initial session and those following along with the video after the event, we can only definitively confirm 5 new editors from the edit-a-thon.
Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects	>5	Based on our confirmation from 5 new editors who posted on the Wikimedia Commons, we know at least 5 posts/media were made. However, we were unable to collect links and discover if more were uploaded during and after the Edit-a-thon.

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?

World Pulse found that the Edit-a-thon had positive benefits for our community and also strengthened our partnership with Whose Knowledge?. Attendees were extremely motivated and asked for more trainings like the Edit-a-thon and trainings on the use of Wikimedia. Our community showed enthusiasm and curiosity during and after the Edit-a-thon and we escaped the pitfall of some trainings by creating an atmosphere of trust and camaraderie. Our partnership with Whose Knowledge? also went well, and we found we have strong mission alignment. Our partnership facilitated open communication, where both our teams reported feeling supported and had good feedback in our debriefing call. We see our partnership as still open for potential future collaborations.

Claudia Pozo, the Communications Co-Lead at Whose Knowledge? said of our partnership, “We were delighted to co-organize a #VisibleWikiWomen 2021 workshop with World Pulse. They not only created a space of trust and comfort during the event, but we were blown away by the level of enthusiasm, curiosity and engagement of the wonderful World Pulse women community. We’re looking forward to co-organizing more events in the coming year!”

Additionally, the sessions went well on the technical side using Zoom and break-out rooms for participants to work in groups on their postings. While some people had local problems connecting, including regional internet shutdowns, the recorded session was distributed so that the participants who missed the session or had their internet connection disrupted could work through the Edit-a-thon later.

• What did not work so well?

We would have liked to see more participation in the Edit-a-thon and more members becoming editors. This event was offered to World Pulse leaders who are highly involved in our programs and in our community, so the training was offered to only a small portion of the overall community. These highly involved members often participate in many World Pulse activities, as well as leading their own initiatives and grassroots organizations, which we believe contributed to many being unable to join in on this event. We also found that more time for the Edit-a-thon would have allowed for participants to create more entries and be more engaged with editing process on the Wikimedia Commons.

• What would you do differently next time?

Based on our experience during the event and after debriefing, we noted some improvements we could put in place for future collaborations and events like this. Primarily, we would open up the event to all community members, rather than the smaller group of World Pulse leaders this session was open to.

Going forward, we would expand the time needed for the session to allow for more workshopping. We also see the benefit of having a two-part workshop where we first demonstrate the editing process and how to use the Wikimedia Commons, then having a second session where the live editing and uploading occurs. In the future, we would also ask participants to share their usernames and links to their uploads during and after the training to see how active they remained after the event.

We also noted that when promoting future sessions, it would be beneficial to provide more clarity on what participants are there to do and to provide them with more guidelines, visuals, and prompts that they can leave with so they can continue posting, uploading, and editing on Wikimedia. Our team also saw the potential of doing future events like this one on a specific topic, such as menstrual hygiene, to spark interest from community members who otherwise may not be interested. Overall, we found the event to be a successful example of how we can continue to lead trainings in collaboration with partners to expand the technical skills of our community of women changemakers while also allowing them to share the deep wealth of knowledge they have on platforms like Wikimedia.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

Our expenses included: 1) Communications and graphics ($734 total); 2) Webinar platform fees ($185 total); 3) Project management tools ($650 total). Communications and graphics expenses included fees for Adobe and Hubspot, webinar platform fees included the payment for Zoom, and project management tools included Airtable and Atlassian fees used for our team to collaborate.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds? There were no remaining funds, with out total project costing $1,569.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

World Pulse will continue to collaborate with our partners on Edit-a-thons, trainings, and events such as this to strengthen our community's digital skills and bring the expertise of grassroots women changemakers online on platforms like Wikimedia.