Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia Libya Community Support Grant 2025

Dear Wikimedia Libya,

Thank you very much for submitting an application for Round 1 FY 24/25 of the Wikimedia General Support Fund. We appreciate you taking the time to describe your activities and projects in support of the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement. The Regional Funds Committee has initially reviewed the proposal, and wishes to offer some initial feedback and questions for your review:

• The Committee commends the user group for the Learn, Celebrate and Implement framework, with clearly identifying how the different projects relate to this framework strategically.
• The Committee also recognizes that the user group is diversifying itself across a number of Wikimedia projects, with significant progress in milestones and evolution of metrics given that you are still an emerging user group
• While the Committee understands that the user group has faced some challenges related to the exchange rate, the increase is quite high at 150% from the previous approved grant (assuming it would have been an annual grant). There is a concern that given that the organizing team are only three individuals, with one member playing only an advisory role, does this team have the capacity to lead the program that you are proposing?
• Given your proposed increase in budget, the Committee would expect that the user group is no longer in the experimentation phase and rather has concrete programmatic activities that have shown impact. The Committee sees that the programs are still in experimentation phase, with metrics still relatively low given the amount requested in the budget. May the user group share more the rationale for the increase in budget given that you are still piloting projects?
• The Committee values the ambitious plan set by the user group, and is curious to learn more on how you plan on implementing this given that you are operating in Libya where there are two regions that are very geographically dispersed (Benghazi and Tripoli), with limited transportation between the regions. If there is one person representing the group based in Libya, how can this person deploy the program across the territory? Are there other organizers besides Salema based in Libya that can support this program? Given that the other organizer is not based in Libya, how do they plan on supporting the user group and what will be their exact role? The Committee would like more details of the paid roles and what exactly they will be paid for.
• May you please share an updated list of the members of your user group, in addition to how the user group has been growing over the last 6 months?
• The Committee also has a couple of clarifying questions with regards to the budget:
  • Regarding the scholarships requested, is the user group requesting three scholarships for three people, or for three times for the same individual? How will the user group mitigate the risk with regards to visa issues or challenges facing Libyans in the attendance of Wikimedia conferences?
  • May the user group explain the rationale for the salary of two organizers at 1,050ドル/month?
  • May the user group also clarify why an activity costs 5,000ドル which is rather different from the rest of the budget?
• The Committee recommends that the user group focuses more on a Train the Trainer program to recruit more organizers and build the capacity of the user group to expand their activities.
• The Committee also recommends to significantly decrease the outlined budget as it is more than double the previous year.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you on the comments shared and if you would like to meet with the regional funding committee, please inform the program officer. FElgueretly-WMF (talk) 10:00, 1 November 2024 (UTC) Reply