Movement Strategy implementation Meetings in Kenya

The initial conversations on the Movement Strategy implementation in the Wikimedia community in Kenya began around the time of the East African regional call- Online meetup in October 2020.

It however emerged that majority of the community members were not conversant with the 10 Wikimedia movement recommendations. We resolved to give members time to go through the recommendations as well as take time to reach out to more wikipedians in the country.

On October 26th, 2020 during the The AfroCine Project/Months of African Cinema/2020 edit-a-thon in Kenya, the organizers introduced the participants, mostly new editors, to the 2030 strategy and gave an overview of the 10 recommendations.

Virtual Prioritization Call

We subsequently held a virtual prioritization call with afew representatives in mid November ahead of the second set of Global Calls and resolved that instead of submitting recommendations based on less than 10 individuals, we would work on making the process more inclusive and try reach out to as many wikipedians in the country as possible. We embarked on a sensitization campaign which included sharing links to the movement strategies on personal contacts and social media platforms. This bore fruit and on December 4th, 2020 we were able to hold a coordinated meeting that brought together a total of 18 active wikipedians in the Kenyan commnuity to discuss our prioritization recommendations.

Top Priorities and Initiatives for Implementation in 2021

The following are the top three recommendations voted by Wikimedians in Kenya as captured in the Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Prioritization events/Table;

Improve User Experience - Initiaves 11 Resources for newcomers
Invest in leadership and capacity building - Initiatives 31 Global approach for local skill development - gathering data, matching peers, mentorship, recognition, 32 Leadership development plan and 33 Skill development infrastructure
Identify Topics of Impact - Initiatives 36 Identify the impact of Wikimedia projects & content, Identifying impactful topics,37 List of high-impact topics and Bridging content gaps

Organizing Team

Winnie Kabintie
Teri Wanderi
Sean Obell

Participants

Below is a list of names of all individuals who contributed in the discussions;

Winnie Kabintie
Teri Wanderi
Abdulahi Abdi
Carol Mwaura
Josephine Ejay
Esther Josephine
Esther Nyanga
Judy Mwaniki
Mary Nyambura
Noreen Likimani
Sarah Itenya
Ruth Andiye
Faith Mwanyolo
Nyakundi Nyambane
Terry Boke
Ruth Andira
Cosmas Chumba
Sean Obell

Upcoming Events

Wikimedia Community Kenya Strategy 2030 Meet Up

AGENDA- Journey to User Group Recognition and Significance in the 2030 Strategy Implementation

During the 4th December virtual meeting, it was agreed that it's about time we sought for recognition as a user group as this will help us advance wikipedia projects and the 2030 strategy implementation as a team. Considering the increased number of young people showing interest and participating in the edit-a-thons and photo contests that some of our members have organised this year, including but not limited to Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth and the Afrocine Edit-a-thon, we also believe that the structure that comes with a user group will help in coordinating new editors.

The Wikimedia Community Kenya Strategy 2030 Meet UP was subsequently set for Saturday, 12th December,2020 in Nairobi and with the support of the Wikimedia User Group Uganda and Wikimedia Community User Group Tanzania; led by User:Jadnapac and User:Douglaseru we managed to have a roundtable discusion with 10 representatives drawn from active wikipedians in Kenya including the Librarian community who have been involved in Glam Porjects. We also had a representative of the new wikimedians who had just recently joined the community from the Afrocine Edit-a-thon in Kenya.

User:Jadnapac and User:Douglaseru, who have also been the liasons for movement Strategy Conversions in East Africa , took the Kenyan community members through the process, criteria and requirements of getting recognised as a user group. Ingo from Swahili Wikipedia also joined and added his input as well.

Proposed Activities

Series of Edit-a-thons - Users to increase indivindual conrributions in Wikipedia so that we can meet the requisite threshold of atleast 300 or more contributions to a Wikimedia Project on a registered account.
Skills and Needs Assessment - Inline with recommendations we have chosen nto prioritise as a community partcicularly, (Invest in Leadership and Capacity Building and indentifying Topics of Impact), and also in view of the desire to be recognised as a user group, which calls for teamwork and knowdge sharing, we resolved that it would be prudent to do a skills assesmsnt exercise to identify the strengths of each member. This will go along way in allocation of roles during projects as well. Some of the three main skills highlighted by User:Douglaser that are key in running and managing sucessful user group are: - Project Management, Community Management, Communication and Transparency.
Develop a plan for 2021 -This will be a great guideline, with realistic and short goals to be accomplished with a year.
Identify Topics Of Impact - This is one of our three priorotization recommendation and we resolved to identify the topics that appeal to members, bothy new and established editors. Our guest Speakers also advised that as a user group we must have a few common topics being prioritised. In this view, Project Leads who have in the past individually co-ordinated Wikipedia Projects and have tangible results would be given a priority when it comes to implentation.
Resources For Newcommers - We resolved to start with having functional communication platforms to ensure seamless communications and check-ins with editors, both new and established.

Summative Report

Our Summative Report on the Movement Strategy implementation Meetings in Kenya