Grants:Project/Yorg/Wiki Loves Africa 2019/Timeline

This project is funded by a Project Grant

Timeline for Yorg

Timeline	Date
Milestone 1	Day Month Year
Milestone 2	Day Month Year
Milestone 3	Day Month Year

Monthly updates

Please prepare a brief project update each month, in a format of your choice, to share progress and learnings with the community along the way. Submit the link below as you complete each update.

June

Jury finalized winners. So top winners contacted (5)
Listing goodies to be purchased
Collecting info to wire prizes

July

Money prizes sent to the top 5 winnners
Planning goodies/Producing goodies
Clean-up categories for winners and winning pictures. Announcement page

August

Checking money prizes properly received (ongoing)
Winners 6-15 to be contacted (for mailing address)

September

All money prizes received
Winners 6-15 have been contacted. Most answered
Certificates and goodies sent to all but 2 winners (who were late answering emails)
Survey created, posted, ran. Results collected and published.
Financials up to date (but for last final expenses). Documents scanned.

October (planned)

Sending the last two packages
Waiting for confirmation that all packages have been received
Searching desperately where the packages are...
Sending a second batch with certificates for some recipiendaries
Writing report and posting financials.

Is your final report due but you need more time?

Extension request

New end date

Reporting due November 30th (instead of October 31th)

Rationale

I have had delays regarding the shipment of packages to the winners.

1 winner contacted me back very late, so package just only sent
Half of the packages were properly collected by the winners over a month ago. Much to my dismay, all recipiendaries (except the Italian one) have been charged a customs fee at delivery. For those winners who got a financial gift, that is fine. For the others... I am really unhappy.
Half of the packages still not collected by the users (either stuck at customs, or somewhere travelling in the country, or officially arrived at postoffice according to tracking number, but when recipiendary goes to the collect point, nothing there.... In all cases, I asked for packages to be send back to France if not collected, but that comes against a fee (which is not insignificant...). This is really an experience... and not a good one. I have taken upon me to send some people a second simpler envelop with the certificate (second print...) only, in hope that this will not attract the greediness of the customs or anyone else and that even if they never get the package, at least they will get the certificate...

So at this point, I'd like to make sure that all packages are either collected, or sent back against the fee, before considering the financials closed.

Incidentaly... I have not yet received the grant money... so all those expenses are from my own personal pocket. So it is complicated for me to consider closed a project for which I still have not gotten the money to pay the expenses :))) Anthere (talk)

@Anthere: Hi Florence, thanks for letting us know about the delays and customs fees that you and recipients have encountered, and I appreciate knowing both your experience as well as what recipients are going through. I've talked to a few other grantees who have also encountered these customs fees; they appear to be a fairly common experience, but also difficult for project organizers and recipients to anticipate, as information about these fees is not clear until a package is ready for pick up. I'm sorry that this has caused some frustration for you and contest winners. This extension for reporting for November 30th is approved. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:04, 6 November 2019 (UTC)