Grants:Project/Wikipedia in DRCongo Youth Associations
This project is funded by a Project Grant
| proposal | people | timeline & progress | finances | midpoint report | final report |
gmail.comProject idea
editWhat is the problem you're trying to solve?
editWhat problem are you trying to solve by doing this project? This problem should be small enough that you expect it to be completely or mostly resolved by the end of this project. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
In DRC, access to information is critical for quality education, development purposes, and the need to build and/or maintain one’s cultural identity. As a division of the Ministry in charge of Youth in the DRC established to mentor youth for more than 40 years, we can see efforts made by many youth associations to disseminate information to people at different levels of literacy in their various communities as well as to teach them how to function in online spaces including how to access information online. A survey conducted some years ago noticed that Wikipedia remains one of, if not the only one, online source of information among the youth. However, Wikipedia lacks much content about the country, and for those that exist, they're in the stub state and lack images. You can notice that there're only 4466 articles about the DRC in french Wikipedia against 388976 about France. The reason for this is because the youth associations are disconnected from Wikipedia due to a lack of understanding and ‘ownership’ of the resource by them and every member of their user communities. Now is the time DRC voices on Wikipedia need to be more synchronized and amplified. We think that DRC youth associations are great allies for Wikipedia as it continues to push back the boundaries for free and open access to knowledge. So, getting more youth associations members to understand how Wikipedia’s treasure trove of information can help them serve their communities better, how it works, and to participate in adding content about the country and African continent (why not?) will help to acclimatize them to the resource while expanding its reach and usage as well as filling in information gaps about DRC and Africa.
What is your solution?
editFor the problem you identified in the previous section, briefly describe your how you would like to address this problem. We recognize that there are many ways to solve a problem. We’d like to understand why you chose this particular solution, and why you think it is worth pursuing. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
Invest in the youth in a way that they go from passive consumers to active producers or editors. More precisely, we aim at training approximately 40 young people from youth associations with adapted and reviewed Wikimooc curriculum (produced by Wikimedia France), modules design, and resources to acquire skills that will enable them to understand, evaluate the reliability and relevance of Wikipedia articles for information dissemination and research, create, edit Wikipedia articles and implement Wikipedia projects for their association members. This will enable more DRC young people to:
- be aware and use Wikipedia as a valuable resource for information and research,
- tell their stories in their own voices and
- fill in information gaps in a synchronized manner about the people, history, and values of the country that are mostly underrepresented in online spaces.
Following the committee review feedback, we're running a pilot project. Thus, having a full-time Wikipedian-in-Residence for 6 months to help adapt the curriculum in line with the francophone context and that will match with suitable learning objectives that align with Wikipedia community standards and processes is crucial. The Wikipedian-In-Residence will also assist "The Division Provinciale de la Jeunesse" (a Ministry in charge of the youth branch) to establish connections with communities of Wikipedians in the country and beyond.
As an official state entity, we've run so many programs of great importance to the benefit of the youth with well-established partners like Enabel (Belgium), Unicef (International), APEFE (Belgium), and more.
The experiences garnered and networks built-in running (training) program for the youth stands "Divisioin de la Jeunesse" in good stead for running the training and promoting activities of Wikipedia and its sister projects.
Project goals
editWhat are your goals for this project? Your goals should describe the top two or three benefits that will come out of your project. These should be benefits to the Wikimedia projects or Wikimedia communities. They should not be benefits to you individually. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
- Train approximately 200 young leaders from 40 associations to understand Wikipedia as a veritable resource for dissemination of information and a teaching tool that promotes quality education thereby increasing access to the resource and serving their user communities better.
- Train youth association leaders to teach their community members to use and contribute to Wikipedia by taking them through the editorial processes and quality standards of the resource. As part of the training, they will be encouraged and supported to physically run editathons in their respective communities as community projects or assignments integrating what was taught (eg Friendly Space policies) in the course with feedback pathways on the teaching platform to assist the facilitators to know the outcomes of the programs.
- Train them to be able to assess the quality and reliability of individual articles, edit and create content of local and personal interest on Wikipedia with laid down benchmarks for quality and relevance.
- Nurture relationships between Wikipedia communities with youth associations.
- Create awareness for offline Wikipedia (through Kiwix software)
- Produce audio content for local languages
- Train staff members for the sustainability of the project
Project impact
editHow will you know if you have met your goals?
editFor each of your goals, we’d like you to answer the following questions:
- During your project, what will you do to achieve this goal? (These are your outputs.)
- Once your project is over, how will it continue to positively impact the Wikimedia community or projects? (These are your outcomes.)
For each of your answers, think about how you will capture this information. Will you capture it with a survey? With a story? Will you measure it with a number? Remember, if you plan to measure a number, you will need to set a numeric target in your proposal (e.g. 45 people, 10 articles, 100 scanned documents). Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
- Hire a Wikipedian-in-Residence (WiR) for a 4-month appointment. The request to the Wikimedia Foundation is to support the salary of the WiR for the 4 months term.
- Reach out to Wikipedia volunteers to serve as mentors to the training
- Run campaigns to build awareness and get massive buy-in of youth association leaders and their community members about the place and value of Wikipedia in information seeking and research, and generate interest in the forthcoming training for DRC youth association members using Wikimooc adapted curriculum and materials.
- Adapt Wikimooc online training curriculum, modules design, and program materials for approximately 500 association leaders in DRC (10 each in 50 associations) that are affiliated with the "Division provinciale de la Jeunesse".
Do you have any goals around participation or content?
editAre any of your goals related to increasing participation within the Wikimedia movement, or increasing/improving the content on Wikimedia projects? If so, we ask that you look through these three metrics, and include any that are relevant to your project. Please set a numeric target against the metrics, if applicable. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
- 30+ new editors
- 25+ articles created or improved
- 10+ images uploaded on Commons
Project plan
editActivities
editTell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing? What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project?
Preliminaries: July 2021 - Sept 2021
edit- Hire WiR
- Reach out to volunteers and mentors
- Adapt WikiMooc learning material and translate other materials from WikiEdu
- Send out a call for participants to associations
- Create planing with associations
Training - Cohort 1: Oct 2021 - Dec 2021
editThere'll be two training sessions a day: morning and afternoon with a maximum of 25 learners per class. A typical month consists of three weeks of which 2 theorical and 1 practical. The contribution week will be run as follow:
- 2 days for Wikipedia (editathon)
- 1 day for Commons
- 1 day for Lingua Libre
Mid Training Evaluation: Jan 2022
edit- Make sure the training aligns with our objectives
- Fix any issue
- Give attestation to 1st cohort participant
- Prepare for the 2nd cohort
- Run a conference and/or a 1-day open source contribution day
'Training - Cohort 2: Jan 2022 - March 2022
editRun the second round of the training with the remaining 100 participants
'Post Training and project evaluation: March 2022 - April 2022
edit- Post Training survey for participants and mentors
- Analysis and reports
- Training for staff members
- Etc.
Budget
editHow you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. (You can create a table later if needed.) Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!
Link
Community engagement
editCommunity input and participation helps make projects successful. How will you let others in your community know about your project? Why are you targeting a specific audience? How will you engage the community you’re aiming to serve during your project?
Get involved
editParticipants
editPlease use this section to tell us more about who is working on this project. For each member of the team, please describe any project-related skills, experience, or other background you have that might help contribute to making this idea a success.
P. MPIANA - The head of "Division de la Jeunesse" with more than 20 years of implementing youth projects within the state youth department (division). (Divijeune)
Volunteer: I would like to be part of the project to contribute to the training of my young Congolese compatriots, as well as to help organize awareness-raising activities, edithatons ... VALENTIN NVJ (talk) 15:00, 17 Febuary 2021 (UTC)
Volunteer: Salimas
Community notification
editPlease paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. You are responsible for notifying relevant communities of your proposal, so that they can help you! Depending on your project, notification may be most appropriate on a Village Pump, talk page, mailing list, etc. Need notification tips?
Endorsements
editDo you think this project should be selected for a Project Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project below! (Other constructive feedback is welcome on the discussion page).
Support I would like to be part of the project to contribute to the training of my young Congolese compatriots, as well as to help organize awareness-raising activities, edithatons ... – VALENTIN NVJ (talk) 12:02, 22 Febuary 2021 (UTC)- SupportExciting project with great goals and solid strategy. I think it has great potential for long-term impact! --Opsylac (talk) 17:24, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
- Support Bringing people together and training them always has that magical lasting effect. Please see my question in the discussion page. -—M@sssly✉ 17:12, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
- Support, actually strong support. I think this proposal is the strongest of the project grants: it has clear objectives, clear benefits, and a reasonable budget. Prburley (talk)
- Support, Interesting project. So Wikimedia Côte d'Ivoire is ready to help. Good! Papischou (talk)
- Support Very good project, I encourage insiders – CapitainAfrika (talk)
