Wiki Loves Africa 2017/Participating country event guidelines

Guidelines to submitting a Country Engagement Plan for Wiki Loves Africa 2017

The following are suggestions to consider before submitting a Country Engagement Plan from teams across Africa to participate in the Wiki Loves Africa 2017 competition.

• Timeline for contest : 1st of October 2017 - 31st of November 2017
• Theme for 2017: People at work
• Deadline for submitting your country's engagement plan: 20th of August.
• To submit your country team's proposal: Write it up on meta and submit a request here
• Budget : around 800 to 1000 USD per country

Eligibility criteria

• must be from those countries : Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi. ALL the other countries should directly seek a Rapid Grant
• Grantees must adhere to the Friendly space expectations and have some type of Friendly space policy for in-person events.
• Funds are typically for direct expenses and not used to pay for people’s time. When stipends are offered to participants (to cover travel costs etc.), a document must record how much was given to each stipend recipiendiary. The recipiendary will sign the document to confirm he received the stipend.
• Grantee must agree to the reporting requirements and provide the Yorg with information needed to process the funding (identity document and bank information)
• Funds may typically cover
  • Facilities, equipment and materials, such as temporary working space for short-term project organization, Equipment to be shared amongst Wikimedia community members, Offline (hard-copy) publishing for targeted networking or training, Merchandise (swag) to recognize exceptional volunteer contributions,
  • Internet access data costs during events or photo hunts
  • Local travel for project planning, execution and follow-up
  • Food and drinks during local events

What should your request look like

• Work with your groups to develop an engagement plan. The plan should consider the following:

1. a cohesive plan of events from October 2017 to November 2017 (and perhaps slightly beyond);
2. an event and communications budget that should be between 800 USD to 1000 USD for each country (stronger programs will be expected to have higher budgets requests); As an exception, budgets of up to 1200 USD could be considered;
3. a list of the core team members (including email addresses) along with the tasks they will manage;
4. a list of possible partners and targets for local support and funding (in-kind or monetary);
5. a list of local GLAM or content partners who are already involved in the subject of the theme and ready to be involved; and
6. an idea of how to encourage quality submissions, e.g. an alliance with local photography groups, etc..

• For events, please consider the following options:

1. a press launch, if you feel it is necessary;
2. an event aimed at introducing Wikimedia projects to a new audience that could potentially contribute and add to the user group team - a hub, interest group, school/ university, etc.;
3. an event in a different part of the country - if it can be justified by capturing a new audience or specific group relevant to the theme;
4. a demonstration by a local photography group aimed at encouraging quality photographs before a wikitakes or photo hunt event;
5. a photo hunt party;
6. a collaboration with local artists, or musical event, or heritage institution;
7. a post-competition (or late in the competition) edit-a-thon or cat-e-thon to improve the usage of the images that have been submitted, and improve articles that the images could be related to.

Access samples of year 2016 requests

What should your budget look like

In 2017, we will use the same category system and the same financial reporting system than in 2016.

Here is what the 2016 financial report looked like : 2016 financial report

Categories for the budget submission

All expenses proposed in the budget should belong to one of those categories. If you are ensure where an expense belongs, please ask. If you think a category is missing, ask for help.

• En français
  • Communication - Marketing (flyers, tee-shirts, roll-up banner, guide, stickers…)
  • Achats publicité (publicité Facebook, encart pub, temps radio etc.)
  • Papèterie hors communication marketing (papier, encre…)
  • Internet et Tel
  • Réception (location, frais de repas, matériels, nourriture et boissons)
  • Déplacement (train, bus, voiture et essence…)
  • Frais de mission
  • Cadeaux (aux gagnants)
  • Prix (cadeaux) en espèces

• In English
  • Communication - Marketing (advertisement, flyers, tee-shirts etc.)
  • Marketing Campaign
  • Stationary apart from marketing
  • Internet and phone expenses
  • Events (food, drinks, rent, air-conditioning, projector)
  • Travel (train, bus, car, fuel)
  • Salaries and stipends
  • Gifts (books, amazon vouchers, prints etc.)
  • Gifts in cash

Access samples of year 2016 requests

We expect that at least 80% of the expenses will be documented (with real, dated receipts), so please plan ahead and be careful to keep your receipts very carefully.
For stipends, we will expect a complete document listing the full name of the people who received a stipend, as well as the amount given and a description of what the stipend has been delivered for. The recipiendiaries of the stipends will be asked to sign the document.

Expectations

1) The general quality of pictures could be (should be) improved

2) The usage of the images on Wikipedia pages stayed low (=compared to other contests) and should be improved

Quoting Alex Wang (WMF)

We support the proposal to fund 10 national teams. (...) We understand having a local prize, post-contest event to incorporate photos and more travel are possibly all good uses of resources. We are able to support up to $1,000 per team, depending on the quality of their proposal and use of funds in previous years (if applicable). Alternatively, you can focus on providing more resources to fewer countries to better understand how the addition of local prizes, more travel, and post-contest events impact participation, content, and community building.

While we understand article writing is not a core focus of the project, photo usage is an important measure of the encyclopaedic value and quality of photos. Photo use was relatively low (in 2015). We encourage teams to use additional funding to hold post-contest events focused on integrating new content.

With up to $1,000 per country, we would like to see local teams prioritise the events or materials they produce. It may not be that each local team has increased travel, prizes, and events. We look forward to doing a retrospective after this year and thinking more about how to increase coverage about these topics so the content submitted during WLA can be used more on wiki and participants continue to be engaged.

Related links

• Wiki Loves Africa
• Wiki Loves Africa on Commons
• African Wikimedians mailing list
• Grants:Project/Yorg/Wiki Loves Africa 2017