Grants talk:Project/AfroCuration/Final

Final Report Review

Dear Tochiprecious, Papa , Kristie , Elena and the team at Moleskine Foundation,

Thank you for all the incredible work you are doing for the world and in this project, contributing to the mission of Wikimedia Foundation and in collaboration with Wikimedia communities.

We celebrate with you the achievements you have gained with this project including and not limited to;

• Conducting the first AfroCuration in Mozambique and supporting the activation of a Wikimedia community which continues to grow with the support and mentorship of the WiR.
• Enriching your partnership with Constitution Hill Trust and supported by the Wikimedia South Africa for AfroCuration projects.
• Collaborating with the National Gallery of Zimbabwe for AfroCuration in Zimbabwe with the support of a Zimbabwean Wikimedian who continues to spearhead the catalyzed efforts in growing a Wikimedian community.
• Collaborating with partners such The African Leadership Academy ,Politecnico di Milano, Twi Wikipedia User Group and Wikimedia Tanzania on projects shifting the narrative on African culture , history and design and in the process introducing newcomers to projects such as Wikidata.
• Sharing your work with Wikimedia communities through platforms such as Edu Wiki week to talk about the AfroCuration events and our learnings.
• Developing the toolkit and testing it out in some of the planned events. We look forward to seeing the learnings of the pilot in the implementation of your new grant.

We have a few questions focusing on the learnings of the project;

• One of the goal you had in this project was to build the capacity of, and support, 20 movement organizers in the 10 target African languages and while you partially achieved this goal, we are interested in learning more about the learnings you will take towards your recently approved grant. In the new grant, you have a goal to working with 15 organizers including the WiR. In this report you indicated ; this goal is still a work in progress as the prospective movement organizers require more training and mentorship.Our intended method of simply pairing movement organizers identified with local chapters did not prove as effective as intended.

Based on this realization, what approach do you intend to use moving forward?

• It was clear how challenging Mozambigue was especially due to the barriers of language and not having a wiki network. In the new grant, you have indicated that you will be working with Senegal, where we don’t have an established community, though we have a few community members. What approach do you intend to avoid experiencing challenges experienced in Mozambique?

• You indicated that it was the first instance of putting to test the participant recruitment and management system. We are glad to learn that it worked and that you had a few learnings to take forward. Would you share what those were.
• You mentioned , ‘The root cause of many challenges faced during the event series was connected to the events being mainly online’, we are curious how this insights influences the implementation of the events in the new grant.

Thank you once again for all you do and looking forward to learning more from the response to the questions shared. VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 13:24, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you @VThamaini (WMF) for taking your time to review.

Kindly find the responses below:

Question 1.

• Building on the learnings of the event series, going forward we’ve decided to work more closely with the Wiki Communities. This proved more effective with the Politecnico event than working with select Wikimedia volunteers and pairing the participants with communities after.

Question2.

• As opposed to 6 Luzophone countries in Africa, there are 21 Francophone countries with more of them having Wikimedia volunteer communities. This limited number of Wikimedians from Luzophone countries made it more difficult to work with Mozambique but for the Senegal Community, we would seek the support of other experienced Wikimedia communities from various Francophone countries to make things easier. Especially Wikimedia DRC and Cameroon User Groups.

Question 3

a. Having a partner that owns and can control its own community makes a difference.

b. Introducing a mandatory application form for the participants ensures that they are committed to participate

c. Having a call with the participants one week before the event keeps their enthusiasm high, builds the event anticipation, solidifies the group already before the event and ensures the participants actually show up on the day of the event

d. Identifying 3-4 most active participants and keeping in touch with them after the event ensures the continuity of the program, where they can become facilitators and movement organisers for future events

Question 4

As stated, the root cause of many challenges faced during the event series was connected to the events being mainly online. This had numerous, and far reaching implications, some were completely unexpected. We tested an alternative by carrying out a hybrid event both on-line and physical) from the fourth to the sixth event which worked well. We would also be replicating this method in the new grant. Also, Covid situation permitting, we will see if the physical events would be possible for some of the planned events, which would alleviate the technical challenges. However, electricity power cuts and low bandwidth in some countries and contexts will continue to remain a challenge. We're also open to other effective solutions that the Wikimedia community has to address these issues. Tochiprecious (talk) 11:13, 22 June 2022 (UTC)