Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda/2020

Application or grant stage: grant in progress

Applicant or grantee: Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda

Amount requested: USD $13,874

Amount granted: USD $14,774

Funding period: 01 January 2020 - 31 December 2020

Midpoint report due: 15 July 2020

Final report due: 30 January 2020

Background

Annual Plan

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P6doThYZpNf6SBAWeoTFXF7cdexs1DAT0wFcFZzk2xY/edit?ts=5db856c1

Budget Plan

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/139h2oPD-lHhK4LD0iw5iR0AknFozLFbO6OXa_rFJUcU/edit?ts=5db85341#gid=0

Staffing Plan

N/A

Strategic plan

N/A

Introduction

Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda was officially recognized in 2018 (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Uganda).  Our mission is to promote free and open access to knowledge locally. We have been part of the rapid grant program from 2018 to date. This involved programs like;

• Wiki loves Africa
• Wiki loves Monument
• Wiki Loves Earth
• Outreach and Diversity
• 1Lib1Ref

In the year 2018/2019 we mainly focused on outreach and diversity through the wiki loves women program . Through this we were able to consolidate a core team and have an annual plan .Also we were able to get partners in our journey to promote free and open access to knowledge. This was also our first year to take part in Wiki Loves Earth which bridged a content gap in regards to the diversity of nature in Uganda. Through these activities the diversity of the core team improved , with two new ladies joining the team.

Programs

PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITIONS

Photographic competitions are a fun,easy and rewarding way to get new volunteers.They also offer a short timeline indicating an end and a beginning, making it less overwhelming for the organising team.

These competitions are good awareness campaigns for wikimedia projects and also increase the diversity of content contribution .

Uganda has organised photographic competitions since 2014 starting with wiki loves Africa. Later in 2018 we started to organise Wiki loves monuments and wiki loves earth in 2019. These competitions were the initial activities that helped us to reach out to volunteers. These competitions have increased core group participation as most of the members in the core group came to join through such activities.

In the first years of organising these competition , we handled launching the competition, photo hunts, upload sessions. During this time we never managed our own finances directly with the foundation but depended on a middle person. As we continued to take part we learnt how to apply for rapid grants , manage and account for funds received. We also started creating juries for the competitions and giving national prizes. We initially used to hand out gift items to winners but in the last competitions, we have given out voucher/gift cards which seemed to be a better motivator. For wiki loves Africa 2019 our jury comprised of a photographer ,medium and communication personality,ICT program manager.

During the photographic competitions in 2020, we plan to organise , publicise , carry out the judging process, hold edit-a-thons in related topics, upload sessions and give national prizes.Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki loves Earth, Wiki loves Monuments will be in the months of February, May and September respectively.

Objectives

• Increase number of contributors
• Increased content , images, and videos about Uganda’s heritage, Nature and way of life
• Use of media in related articles
• Collaborate with other Eastafrican countries in the organisation
• Create awareness for wikimedia projects
• Increased partnerships with Photographers

DIVERSITY AND CONTENT GENERATION

This will focus on identifying and filling content gaps that exist within online content about Uganda. In 2014- 2015, the user group worked on building content on the Luganda wikipedia through collaboration with the department of languages at Makerere University. We worked with six volunteer students and were able to go beyond the 1000 mark of articles. This was mainly through translation of content.

For the past two years(2018-2019) we have organised wiki gap events on Women's Day in collaboration with the Swedish embassy. The Swedish embassy was able to fund the activities for this event.

We organised Wiki Loves Women in Uganda for the year 2018- 2019 which greatly contributed to the increase of female participation in the core team. We were also able to create a lot of partnerships and through the continuation of this program, we will be able to consolidate these partnerships.

These programs will increase content on Wikimedia projects eg. wikipedia, wiktionary and wikisource. Through the identification of repeat editors , we will recruit them into the community and focus on the needs of these editors and how to improve their future edits.

Projects

• WikiGap(March)
• Luganda wikipedia Translator-Thons
• Wiki women
• Africa Month(May)

Objectives

• Closing content gap about Uganda
• Increasing skills for editing/contributing
• Recruitment of new editors/contributors
• Increasing awareness of wikimedia projects
• Increase Female Participation

EDUCATION

Open education resources

The biggest population of Uganda speaks and uses Luganda as a local language but there is limited content in luganda online. This project seeks to bridge the content gap by availing localised content online in Luganda. We want to target Students in secondary schools to utilise open education resources like Wikipedia, wikisource in their learning. In turn we want to collaborate with the department of languages , Makerere University to avail content relevant to the students learning.This will be a one year initiative.

Goals

• Train five teachers on how to use open education resources in their classrooms
• Works with university to create content to be used by secondary school teachers

Objectives

• increase digital literacy through the use of Wikimedia project for participating students and teachers.
• Improve the luganda wikipedia interface.
• Create awareness on the use of Luganda Wikipedia in the selected schools.
• Conduct advocacy meetings for the adoption of Luganda Wikipedia as an education resource in Uganda schools.
• Increased content on luganda wikipedia

GLAM

The user group will run the 1Lib1Ref campaign for the second time in Uganda. We are also targeting working with at least two GLAM institutions in the year 2020. GLAM projects improve the quality of content about Uganda available online through referencing but will also lead to content generation through our partnerships with GLAM institutions. We have not really reached out to and included the GLAM community and yet they are a potentially beneficial partner because

• The nature of their work makes them familiar with the mission of the Wikimedia Movement
• Their positions place them in a very strategic position to access and allow other users access to the kind of information that we may be lacking in order to produce quality content (for example access to online and other subscription-based electronic resources for reference)

Projects and campaigns

• 1Lib1Ref campaign (bi-annually)
• Introductory sessions for various GLAM institutions through their collective associations eg ULIA (Uganda Libraries Association),UgCLIA (Uganda Community Libraries Association), CUUL (Consortium of Uganda University Libraries)
• Introduction and edit-a-thons for Wikimedia Projects particularly WikiData, Wikipedia and Commons

Objectives

• Engage and recruit from the GLAM community further
• Collaboration with GLAM institutions and their umbrella organisations
• Increase support and awareness for Open Knowledge / Free Content movement
• Increase contributions by and from the GLAM community using the collections they have access to
• Increase accuracy and/or detail of contributions
• Increase visibility and respect for Wikimedia projects within the GLAM community

Grant Metrics Reporting

Metrics, targets and results: grants metrics worksheet here.

Midterm report

Program story

• https://wikiuganda.wordpress.com/
• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Uganda/Events_%26_Projects

Program Progress

PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITIONS

Wiki Loves Africa 2020

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2020/Uganda

Challenges

• The sudden change of schedules from offline to online events (due to the global COVID-19 pandemic), led to a reduction of momentum for volunteer participants who were new to Wikimedia projects.
• The photographic competitions require additional training to volunteers on the basic guidelines, and best practices of editing, updating Wikimedia projects, and interaction with the Wikimedia Community, beyond procedures of how to participate in the competition: which is sometimes overwhelming to the organizing team.
• Tracking users (in and outside Kampala) who had not enabled email notifications under their preferences, led to a delay in announcing competition winners in time.
• It was not possible for the upload wizard or montage tool to detect external usage of images before they are uploaded to commons.

Learning points

1. It's good to contact all participating local volunteers, even when they are not participating with the Usergroup.
2. It's helpful to prepare pre-competition training sessions for volunteers to understand the Wikimedia community, and basic usage of Wikimedia projects, before the official start of a photographic competition.
3. When contacting volunteers (winners of a photographic competition), consider reaching out through other communication channels beyond user talk, and discussion pages.
4. Even when a project has been successful, user feedback is important for improvement.
5. It's always a good practice to document project activities, sharing with the Wikimedia community for present and future reference.

Wiki Loves Earth 2020

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2020_in_Uganda

Challenges

• The national Lock down of places due to COVID-19 made it impossible for volunteers to carry out photo hunts to upload images for the competition.
• Uncertainty of when the lock down would be lifted caused constant changes in the local competition schedule and timelines.
• Some of the volunteers needed hands on support, even when most of the competition guidelines and information was available on Wikicommons and project pages.
• It was not possible to meet all Volunteers' expectations on prizes that were to be given out.

Learning points

1. Prizes are a key motivation to volunteers participating in photographic competitions.
2. It can be helpful to have participants' roles and expectations shared in such photographic competitions, from photo uploaders to jury members.
3. It's good for local organisers to keep in constant contact and communication with the main international contest organisers.
4. Wikimedia being both an online, and offline community, it's possible for activities to take place, even when volunteers can not meet, in-person.
5. Using a participatory method by having volunteers take on simple project roles provides collective ownership and implementation of projects.
6. It's not a good idea to make assumptions that volunteers will read and understand all competition guidelines/instructions that are posted on project sites.

DIVERSITY AND CONTENT GENERATION

WikiGap(March)

Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda in partneship with the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, represented through the Swedish embassy to Uganda, and School of Women And Gender Studies College of Humanities And Social Sciences Makerere University, and Internet Society of Uganda Chapter organized a Wikipedia edit-a-thon on Saturday, 7 March 2019 in Kampala which was followed by a WikiGap challenge that run for 6 weeks until 17th April.

33 people participated in the wikigap challenge, 23 of those new editors, producing a total of 59 new articles on notable women in Uganda.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Uganda/WikiGap_2020_in_Uganda

Challenges

• The COVID-19 local down prevented us to do some of the planned activities like the closing ceremony
• Some of the participants were students who had no access to personal laptops, they had planned to use university computers, but the university was closed due to COVID-19
• Lack of sources for some notable women in Uganda, meant that there articles could not be approved
• Lack of openly licenced photos for notable women in Uganda that could be used to illustrate the articles written.

Learning points

• The covid-19 lockdown meant people were stuch at home with a lot of time on their hands, which helped them to find more time participate in the program.
• 5 of the most active editors were people who had participated in the wikigap challenge in 2019, which shows the importance of engaging former participants a well as new ones.
• The collaboration with Makerere university as well as other women organizations helped make the work more relevant and useful.

WikiForRefugees Editathon in Uganda

On February 22 and 23 the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda conducted a #Wiki4Refugees Editathon Sprint in collaboration with Platform Africa an organization working with refugees in Rhino Camp Refugee settlement in Notheren Uganda. The editathon engaged different stakeholders from Refugee Settlements in Uganda to co-create and collectively improve information about Refugee Settlements on Wikipedia.

This program was divided into three parts

• Intensive training: Introducing the participants to key skills and tools on how to update/ edit and add articles to Wikipedia for participants of the event
• Edit-a-thon - Dedicating the second day of the program to improving stub articles and creating new entries about critical topics, underrepresented groups, initiatives and putting up-to-date figures about refugees, etc.
• Creating content for upload on Wikimedia Commons including videos, audios and videos to document the life of refugees in Uganda

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Uganda/WikiForRefugees_Editathon_in_Uganda

Challenges

• There was power challenges in the refugee settlement, the generator could not start, and we had to wait for several hours to start the training
• Several participants did not have laptop and had to share, three people one laptop.
• There were few women participants.
• The introduction to wikipedia training left participants yearning for more, so there is need to plan a followup traning.
• With a shared internet connection, the IP was blocked and people could not easily save their changes during the editathon

Learning points

• There is very little content covering the over 1 million refugees hosted by Uganda on wikipedia, and there is need to do more
• We need to acquire laptops as a user group that can be borrowed out to participants at an editathon.
• There is need to request in advance for multiple accounts to be created during an event

WikiForHumanRights Editathon

On the 25th January 2020, the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda held an editathon to celebrate the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR] into practice. The campaign began in November 15, 2019, and was to end on January 30, 2020. Its purpose was to celebrate the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by strengthening the factual coverage of human rights on Wikipedia. This year’s theme was “To claim your rights, you need to know your rights”. As part of the theme, the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda highlighted individual activists and organizations in Uganda that were championing Human Rights, to recognize the positive role or participation in collective movement in Human Rights. Articles and Wikidata of Human Rights Activists and Organizations working on Human Rights in Uganda were created to contribute to the theme. The major aim was to build awareness about gaps on Wikipedia in Human rights and to introduce new editors to the topic of human rights and to build Wikipedia editing skills among participants and support more experienced editors creating content.

During the editathon, a total of 10 articles were edited, 112 total edits were made, 16 editors participated, 3.75k words were added, 34 references were added, 46.9 articles views and 1 Wikimedia commons upload was made. Also, WikiData items were created. Follow link below for details: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Uganda/Wiki_For_Human_Rights_Uganda_(January,_2020).

This contributed to improved the quality and quantity of human rights content on Wikipedia and contributed to the shared commitment to increase access to human rights information and promote freedom of expression and information on the https://wikiuganda.wordpress.com/2020/05/13/how-it-all-went-down-at-the-wikiforhumanrights-edit-a-thon-in-uganda/

Challenges

• Limited relevant sources for reference that meet the notability criteria of the human rights activists in Uganda.

• Limited computers to enable participants to contribute enough content through profiling human rights activists and organizations on Wikipedia.

Learning points

• It is important to invite experts on certain topics such as Human rights which can also be borrowed and applied in other projects. For instance, during the Wiki For Human Rights editathon, the user group invited an experienced human rights expert to give a contextual overview of what Human Rights is.

Wiki Women(Visibility Project - East Africa)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Visibility_Project/East_Africa

Challenges

• Mentoring different individuals from different countries presented a number of challenges such as language barrier.
• Dealing with especially females in the workplace made us deal with the reality of work vs time for example we had to work around their schedules which would normally be after work IF they had no competing and urgent interest.

Learning points

• Cross-country partnerships presented the opportunity to explore local language Wikipedias in the languages of the participants.
• Dividing students into classes with mentors provides the opportunity teach on an individual basis and better understand the individual's needs, interests and learning gaps in relation to editing.

GLAM

1Lib1Ref African Librarians Week

Under the 1Lib1Ref campaign, the inaugural African Librarians Week as a collaboration between African Library & Information Associations & Institutions (AfLIA) and Wikimedia took place between 24th - 30th May 2020. As a user group we mobilised and trained local librarians on what the 1Lib1Ref campaign is about and how to participate. At the end of the campaign, we had at least 3 repeat editors and recruited 6 editors. You can read more about it in the GLAM Newsletter - https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/August_2020/Contents/Uganda_report

Challenges

• Motivating local participants to just get involved in the first place.
• Online participation was lower than expected because of a number of factors eg poor and expensive internet connectivity,technical literacy, lack of equipment such as a computer
• Despite the period given, a number of participants still had competing interests so they did not contribute as much as they would have wanted to.

Learning points

• Local and regional partnerships are crucial for thematic mobilization.
• Participants tend to respond better to calls for participation in campaigns if and when they are mobilized by umbrella organisations that they subscribe to.
• Facilitating participants in terms of data may not be sufficient motivation for online participation and thus creates an unfair picture for expected results.

Spending update Midterm

Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the first half of your grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yLBeMtPzqR1Uk38nE8GSPWRCZijM2FWJY-DIwtB-7Uo/edit?usp=sharing

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period:

• UGX 8,741,451

Grant Metrics Reporting Midterm

Metrics, targets and results: grants metrics worksheet here.

Final report

Program story

Optional. Please tell or link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period. This can be another meta page, a blog post or any other source that tells your program story.

Learning story

Optional. Please link to one learning story that shows how your organization documents lessons learned and adapts its programs accordingly.

Programs Impact

PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION

Wiki Loves Monuments 2020

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2020_in_Uganda

In 2020, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were unable to hold a physical meeting for Wiki Loves Monuments, however, online training was conducted in order to train new contributors. People went for a photo hunt and took photos of monuments from different regions of Uganda including Western, Central, and Eastern Uganda, and later uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons. A total of 13 participants participated in the photographic competition with 325 photos added to Commons.

Challenges

• Difficulties to coordinate contributors due to COVID-19.
• Limited participation of contributors.
• Limited quality photographic tools such as cameras.
• The jury team faced difficulties with the jury tool due to frequent failures.

Learning points

1. Doing virtual events provided an opportunity to have more reach far beyond Uganda.
2. Providing t-shirts for participating teams motivated them.

Sub-Project	Goal	Status	Description
Wiki Loves Monuments	100 participants 300 photos 20 images used	partial	325 photos were uploaded by 13 participants
Wiki Loves Earth	100 participants 300 photos 20 images used	Success	321 total images uploaded to commons by 21 participants (known to the Usergroup) Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the competition was successfully completed entirely engaging with volunteers online. There were 7 new participants taking part in the competition, in addition to those who participated in the previous (Wiki Loves Africa 2020) photographic competition The competition strengthened East Africa's regional collaborations with the participation of one of the Wikimedians in Rwanda, and also attracted volunteer Wikimedians, participating outside the country. 15 images were used in other wikis The Usergroup received a donation for the volunteers from the winner of the 1st prize.
Wiki Loves Africa	100 participants 300 photos 20 images used	Success	569 images were uploaded by 16 total participants (known by the Usergroup) All the above participants (including 8 newly registered users) stayed engaged in the Usergroup activities. Through a competition closing survey, 100% of the 10 respondents expressed willingness to join the next annual Wiki Loves Africa Competition. 105 images were used in other wikis

DIVERSITY AND CONTENT GENERATION

WikiForRefugees Second Editathon

The second #Wiki4Refugees Editathon Sprint which is an initiative of Platform Africa and the Wikimedia User Group in Uganda took place in September for 2 weeks. The aim was to gather diverse stakeholders from Refugee Settlements in Uganda to co-create and collectively improve information about Refugee Settlements on Wikipedia. During the two weeks editathon, 16 editors took part in the editathon. 34 articles were created, 75 articles edited, 676 total edits, 45.4k words added, 269 references added, 292k articles views and 124 commons upload. See more here:

Sub-Project	Goal	Status	Description
Wiki for Human Rights Editathon	The main purpose was to celebrate the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by strengthening the factual coverage of human rights on Wikipedia. The major goal was to build awareness about gaps on Wikipedia in Human rights and to introduce new editors to the topic of human rights and to build Wikipedia editing skills among participants and support more experienced editors creating content.	success	During the editathon, a total of 10 articles were edited, 112 total edits were made, 16 editors participated, 3.75k words were added, 34 references were added, 46.9 articles views and 1 Wikimedia commons upload was made. Also, WikiData items were created. Follow this link for details. We also had a guest speaker who shared about Human Rights. This contributed to improved quality and quantity of human rights content on Wikipedia and contributed to the shared commitment to increase access to human rights information and promote freedom of expression. Blogpost
Wiki for Refugees Editathon	To engage South Sudanese refugees living in Uganda in edition Wikipedia to improve the coverage of refugee settlements in Uganda on Wikipedia	success	In the first editathon, 5 articles were created, 16 edited, 122 total edits, 14 editors, 8.55 words added, 25 references added,1.66 words views and 8 commons The second training engaged 16 participants for a period of 2 weeks to create content on refugee settlements in Uganda. 34 articles were created with 124 commons uploaded. See more here:
WikiGap 2020 in Uganda	To organize the WikiGap editathon and WikiGap Contest in collaboration with the Embassy of Sweden	success	We created over 50 new articles on notable women in Uganda. The highest success rate ever since we started organizing WikiGap in Uganda.
Wikisoccerthon	This project had similar objectives of the Usergroup's Diversity and content generation program, but also two unique objectives; Increasing the diversity of Wikimedia volunteers Increasing the geographical reach (footprint) of the Usergroup in Uganda	Partial	An outreach was made which ensured awareness of Usergroup activities beyond Kampala: in Mbale, Jinja, and Iganga. Volunteers in Jinja contacted the Usergroup in February 2021 (at the end of the pilot project) with interest in more activities. Contact was made with two new education institutions for future Usergroup activities, also resuming collaboration with one additional institution which the Usergroup had worked with in the past. A focused team of 8 female volunteers participated. The project provided an avenue for volunteer retention by providing an opportunity for new and existing Usergroup volunteers to get involved in leading roles for event and training preparation. A total of 11 editors were able to participate: editing 3 articles and uploading 24 commons upload, despite this being a pilot project limited by limitation to most of the offline activities.

GLAM

Due to the situation presented by COVID-19, we were not able to have offline events. This however provided the opportunity to engage participants in Uganda online and open them to working with other editors out of the country. Our focus was mainly on English and Swahili Wikipedia and less on Wikidata. We were able to mobilise some Ugandan librarians to participate in the inaugural African Librarians Week under the 1Lib1Ref campaign in May 2021. Later in August of the same year, we were able to partner with the Wikimedia Community User Group in Tanzania for Uganda-Tanzania 1Lib1Ref.

Challenges

• Training new editors online is a challenge as many did not have the necessary devices to use for meetings.
• We were limited to citations and not new articles because of the low levels of digital literacy among the new recruits.

Learning points

• Online events provide an opportunity to further the reach of some events.
• There should be events that purely aim at teaching information literacy in the Wiki-universe

EDUCATION

Luganda Wikipedia

Due to the pandemic Our focus for Wiki for education changed to working online with teachers and students of Luganda at the African languages department , Makerere University. Luganda Wikipedia was the focus project on which content was to be improved and created. [[1]]. We set out to improve the number of articles on the Luganda wikipedia and the quality of articles since many articles were stubs. We had one in person edit athon and an online webinar to get on board more participants and to increase the content on the Luganda Wikipedia. The dash board has more about this. https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikimedia_Community_User_group_Uganda/Luganda_Wikipedia. We had planned to have more activities but these were hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic that led to school closures, where we held prior events.

We held a competition to boost editing frequency which had a winner and a runner up depending on quantity and quality of edits

We sought a partnership with Buganda Kingdom leadership, notably the Ministry of culture, to get on board more dedicated editors and support from a team with more knowledge and culture and proficiency in Luganda language. We held a meeting that showed showed promise for future collaboration.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Luganda_Wikipedia_For_Education_2020

Challenges

• we had planned to collaborate with academic institutions. These were closed throughout 2020 because of COVID-19. With the computer labs closed and restrictions to movement, these collaborations were not possible.
• Many people we approached to join the data had challenges in writing Luganda which is the language we use for this project.
• Computers to use to create content for the project since some people use work computers or organisational equipment they could not access.
• Many people had moved upcountry due to the pandemic and business closures and could not collaborate as they had promised due to poor internet connection and a lack of computers.
• We had planned to train five teachers on how to use open education resources in their classrooms. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this.

Learning points

• We leant to plan tor both online and offline events since something like a pandemic can distort plans.
• We shouldn't rely mostly on schools for this since if closed, it is hard to follow through. We should get the greater community to embrace the project.
• People love Luganda literature and history and are willing to contribute.

Spending update Final

Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

Expenses Report Wikimedia Uganda User Group SAPG 2020

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period:

• $8826.75 USD(32,019,029.00 UGX) USD/Local currency

Grant Metrics Reporting Final

Metrics, targets and results: grants metrics worksheet here.