Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Annual Project Plan 2025 Wikimedia Kenya Usergroup

Dear Wikimedians of Kenya User Group,

Thank you for submitting your application. The regional funding committee and regional program officers and expert staff reviewed your application and have the following questions and feedback for your response;

• We noted that you will continue to work on implementing the campaigns to support your goal of community building. We would like to know who will be leading the trainings and workshops we assume you will host to equip members with Wiki skills. Additionally, please clarify or confirm the assumption we have.
• Please review your budget ensuring it follows finance formats and that it has enough details including units / quantities / periods etc.
• Please review your response to the question on the portion of your budget going to operational / programmatic and staff. We see a number of costs included in the programmatic costs that stand out as operational.
• We see a lack of efficiency in planned resource allocation especially for costs running with every program. For instance with each campaign - there is a banner, stationery , merchandise and swag . We see opportunities for being efficient with funds here. Please review.
• We are keen to know who makes up the team and the volunteers of the affiliate. Please point us to the Meta page where we can see those details together with the usernames of the team members.
• How did you decide the metrics you will focus on? Before developing metrics, it is important to note what you will measure to help give you signals on whether you are making progress or not. What you measure and how you measure including tracking is important. So, how did you decide what to measure and how will you measure?
• Knowing that you will be implementing Wikimania - how are you planning to implement your planned activities recognizing the demand in effort and time from the global event.
• In the last grant and as part of the funding decision - the affiliate needed to put in place governance structures to enhance affiliate health. What is the progress so far?
• What is the status of the progress made in relation to volunteer community building ?
• Please share in detail the job description of the lead project coordinator. How will they be hired and who would they report to ensure accountability of their role? Including towards the volunteer community.
• We see a 60% increase in your budget and request for a rationale for this significant increase.
• We see that the metrics remain the same even with the request for increased capacity in the team and resources. Please share with us more on the rationale.
• We do not understand, why you need at this point in time both a lead project coordinator and social media role - we are curious on how you thinking about these different role and the possibility of the coordinator also supporting coordinate social media needs of the community.
• Please provide details of the accounting service - is this someone or a service that will be hired and that is different from what is in your current annual budget? We ask this seeing that the outputs related to finances such as the proposal budget or mid point report lack accounting expertise.
• We need clarity on what these costs are and why they are in every activity and what are the documented guidelines for some;
  • Video Recording + Photography
  • Documentation
  • Coordination & Facilitation - what are the guidelines on this cost area?
  • Miscellaneous,
  • Contingencies

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.

On behalf of the regional funding committee and staff Iwuala Lucy (talk) 09:06, 29 October 2024 (UTC) Reply

Dear regional funding committee and staff, Please see the responses to your queries below; I have copied both the Q&A for ease of flow. The question are in bold and responses below.

We noted that you will continue to work on implementing the campaigns to support your goal of community building. We would like to know who will be leading the training and workshops we assume you will host to equip members with Wiki skills. Additionally, please clarify or confirm the assumption we have.

The training will have different facilitators/trainers based on each focus area but the idea is to have the Project Coordinator develop a training model and schedule based on community needs and liaise with the Team Lead and other Core team members to identify trainers for each edition. These may include experienced UserGroup members, campaign leads, and other wikimedians from other communities.

Please review your budget ensuring it follows finance formats and that it has enough details including units / quantities / periods etc.

This was done and updates or on the budget. Please review your response to the question on the portion of your budget going to operational / programmatic and staff. We see a number of costs included in the programmatic costs that stand out as operational.

 changes made

We see a lack of efficiency in planned resource allocation especially for costs running with every program. For instance with each campaign - there is a banner, stationery , merchandise and swag . We see opportunities for being efficient with funds here. Please review.

For banners each campaign often needs a backdrop banner but one of the things we did in 2024 was to develop some general re-usable UG general banner and other photo frame so that cost will not apply in any campaign budget.

For merchandise and Swag we are actually keen on streamlining production to lower cost in our next budget and are planning to in 2025 produce general usage merchandise that we can re-use beyond 2025, which will significantly lower our merchandise cost in the 2026 budget. We are in the process of actually developing a catalog of merchandise that will bring about a requirement for each campaign organisers to pick from the pool of merchandise to ensure that the strategy works and we have a variety of merchandise for both internal and external events use.

We see it prudent to maintain the figures as they are in this budget-line to enable us achieve our goal to eventually lower the costs in the next budget.

We are keen to know who makes up the team and the volunteers of the affiliate. Please point us to the Meta page where we can see those details together with the usernames of the team members.

Winnie Kabintie and Carol Mwaura are the representatives of the usergroup, with Winnie acting as the Team Lead, where she provides strategic leadership and hold organisers accountable to ensure project goals are met. She also develops work plans and signs off contracts with service providers when needed.

Other members of the UG can be seen on our [page].

How did you decide the metrics you will focus on? Before developing metrics, it is important to note what you will measure to help give you signals on whether you are making progress or not. What you measure and how you measure including tracking is important. So, how did you decide what to measure and how will you measure?

We cannot honestly say that we have a well-figured out approach in setting metrics,it’s one of the areas we hope to learn more on during out trainers of trainers planned sessions. Our metrics currently are based on afew things that include; number of active community members, expected target no of newcomers/participants in campaigns and the UG’s objectives. We would be happy to get more guidance on how we can best measure and track our impact.

Knowing that you will be implementing Wikimania - how are you planning to implement your planned activities recognizing the demand in effort and time from the global event.

The 2025 Wikimania COT has a regional representation only 4 of our members are in the COT, and while some members of the community will support in various ways, the conference does not in anyway hinder any of our projects in any case it actually enhances our capacity in various fonts.

In the last grant and as part of the funding decision - the affiliate needed to put in place governance structures to enhance affiliate health. What is the progress so far?

We only managed for starters to scope out the functions the Team Lead would provide and enhance our community engagement and consultation process to ensure that members were actively involved and informed on activities.

Outlining these functions helped a great deal in improving our internal operations, easing the decision-making process and timely delivery of services. Eg the Social Media intern does not have to go through a long list of reviewers and approvers and it’s also easy for their work to be tracked as per the performance indicators.

What is the status of the progress made in relation to volunteer community building ?

We have activated a new community of volunteers as part of our Wiki for the university project in Pwani University and identified and continue to train the Lead Coordinator; Michael Maua (User:Mmaua1 )

We have also trained 3 existing members to become campaign organizers; User:Faith Buyaki, User:Anitah Pezz and User:Mmaua1.

We now have a monthly virtual meet up that heps us to check-in on each other, share experiences and challenges and engage newcomers as well

We hosted a physical meetup up and the beginning of the year to goal set and team building and plan to host our general AGM at the end of the year.

We have had..... Newcomers trained and onboarded in the UG by Novemeber 22, 2024

Please share in detail the job description of the lead project coordinator. How will they be hired and who would they report to ensure accountability of their role? Including towards the volunteer community. The Project Coordinator will report to the Team Lead as per current leadership structure and will preferably be recruited from the community.

The role will be advertised and the team lead alongside key lead organisers will be on the interview panel.

Job Title: Project Coordinator Location: Remote (Kenya-based) Reports to: Wikimedia Kenya User Group Team Lead Job Summary: The Project Coordinator will play a key role in planning, executing, and monitoring Wikimedia Kenya User Group initiatives to ensure all objectives are met. The role involves coordinating community-driven projects, managing partnerships, and ensuring the successful implementation of programs aligned with the group's mission to advance free knowledge, promote Media and Information Literacy, and close gender and content gaps in digital media. Key Responsibilities: Coordinate and manage projects, including timelines, budgets, and deliverables. Engage and support campaign organizers in organizing campaigns such as Wiki for Human Rights, Art & Feminism, and other global initiatives. Facilitate partnerships with stakeholders to amplify the group's impact. Organize community events, training sessions, and outreach activities. Ensure timely reporting and documentation of projects and activities including the GSF application and reporting. Represent Wikimedia Kenya User Group at regional and global forums when required.

Qualifications and Skills: Strong project management skills, with experience in volunteer-driven or community-based initiatives. Excellent communication and organizational abilities. Passion for free knowledge and familiarity with Wikimedia projects (e.g., Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons). Commitment to promoting gender equity and closing knowledge gaps. Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a remote environment.

We see a 60% increase in your budget and request for a rationale for this significant increase.

Increased costs is largely driven by inflation, where costs of meals, venues and transport have increased significantly. The initial budget-lines we also had for things such as child-care was also not reflecting the number of folks who need the provision.

We see that the metrics remain the same even with the request for increased capacity in the team and resources. Please share with us more on the rationale.

That was an oversight! We ammended, we have a slight increment in our metrics but worth noting is that we are also keen on prioritizing quality of quantity when it comes to on-wiki contributions based on the a need we have seen.

We also recognize that engaging and maintaining community takes time and conceited efforts and sometimes it’s hard to just quantify impact or success in numbers and are keen on establishing other ways to gauge our community health; either surveys and other possible ways

We do not understand, why you need at this point in time both a lead project coordinator and social media role - we are curious on how you thinking about these different role and the possibility of the coordinator also supporting coordinate social media needs of the community.

Looking at the specific needs we have for the Project Coordinator that is a different role from that of a social media coordinator requiring different skills sets. While its easy to say "lets add social media management in the Project Cordinator’s JD" we ran the risk of having a person who will just be good in one area and not good in the other and the work is impacted. We can however share the Project Coordinator JD with the social media specialist and see if they have the capacity to take it up and areas they may not be good in and see how we can navigate. if it turns out positive and they are able to deliver on the major tasks, we will then just expand their portfolio and revise their stipend. (we are kicking this off as the time of responding to these queries and will update responses accordingly once we have the answers)

Please provide details of the accounting service - is this someone or a service that will be hired and that is different from what is in your current annual budget? We ask this seeing that the outputs related to finances such as the proposal budget or mid point report lack accounting expertise.

Initially we had planned to engage an accountant to help with consolidating the APG budgeting, filing tax returns and the general report, which we were under the impression that will be required towards the end of our financial yr. Our general 2024 report should reflect this expertize.

We are however hope to have the project cordinator have some basic accounting and finance skills.

We need clarity on what these costs are and why they are in every activity and what are the documented guidelines for some; Video Recording + Photography Documentation Coordination & Facilitation - what are the guidelines on this cost area? Miscellaneous, Contingencies''''''''''

As you will note most of the major campaigns we have in scope such as W4HR, we host workshops. These require video recording and photography as part of the project documentation.

documentation, we often engage rapporteurs during the workshops, as participants include external mission-aligned organizations and in most cases the workshop outcomes are used as references to feed on key documents that in some cases inform policies. A good example of these is during our W4HR workshop where we engaged with the Organization of African Youth, and eventually got involved in a training they are leading targeting youth workers. OAY was also in the process of documenting as part of stakeholder engagement, a paper for the gender ministry that seeks to have guidelines on who the government of Kenya considers as a youth worker.

We were able to give our recommendations that were documented. Therefore ensuring proper documentation of or workshops becomes a crucial component of work and also gives us a reference point for our advocacy efforts.

Facilitation: This is a provision that goes to the respective campaign organisers, we often have 2 for each campaign but more folks are involved is some cases, as a stipend that covers some costs they incur. It’s standardized across all campaigns for equity. The amount allocated rate is calculated as per hours we estimate folks will be involved in the planning, execution and reporting of the project.

Miscellaneous: this often accounts for unforeseen or minor costs that may arise during the project lifecycle. May include transport, bank transaction, meals, data etc

We are happy to meet with the regional funding committee, to engage on any further clarification or recommendations

On behalf of Wikimedia Kenya UserGroup --Ms Kabintie (talk) 11:46, 22 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

Hello ! I was just reading your annual plan and was very happy to see WLA planned in your 2025 activities ! Yoohoo. Only wanted to note that WLA is in March-April and your program mentions April-May. No big deal, but preferred to point it out. Thanks Anthere (talk) 18:14, 12 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

Part 1: Impact, learning and conclusions 1.1. Looking back, how would you describe your achievements or the impact of the work?

We have organized three major workshops, Art & Feminism, Wiki for Human Rights and AfrocCreatives.

Trained 3 community members on event organizing.

Wikipedia, Wikicommons and Wikiquotes training to U.G members and new members.

Introduced 14 newcomers to Wikipedia in the community and creation of over 35 new Wikipedia user accounts.

1.2. What was the main improvement in your work?

We have identified and trained a local Swahili coordinator for the Wikifor university club project in Pwani University.This is inline with our objective to contribute in the growth of swahili wiki and to expand our reach beyond Nairobi.

Better planning and internal reporting structures.

Hosted Regular community meet-ups both in-person and virtually that have helped the community to stay engaged and create a sense of belonging. The meet ups have also been instrumental in onboarding newcomers.

1.3. What main conclusions did you draw or what lessons did you learn from your programs/strategies? Is there anything you would do differently based on what you learned?

Early planning and project evaluation makes a lot of difference in the successful implementation of a project. Training and onboarding new campaign organizers to facilitate campaigns alongside the Campaign Leads is key in enhancing capacity of leaders as well as distribution of labour to avoid burn-out. Having a clear communication strategy is also essential General dashboard usage - We learned from our mid-year learning cycle the need to use a general dashboard to capture contributions from our members outside the specific campaign dashboards. Initially, we were only working with respective campaign dashboards. We also saw the need to provide a well-defined role of a project coordinator. 1.4. Can you please clarify your work on underrepresented audiences/content? What tactics did you use that proved successful?Note: This question is also present in the final report form, we only ask specific questions to understand a tactic better, or if the explanation is not detailed enough in the final report. Through our wiki for universities campaign and objective to grow Swahili Wikipedia , we facilitate a workshop and art contest on Art&Feminism. Reaching out to the media, students, the teaching faculty at Pwani University in Kilifi County, which is considered a marginalized region in Kenya. Our activities focused on raising awareness and calling for interventions on gender-based violence among institutions of higher learning. Having a well-coordinated media engagement strategy helped in providing the visibility and media coverage needed for the event, as media is a powerful advocacy tool in Kenya. We got coverage in 4 mainstream publications. Part 2: Community and partnerships 2.1. In what ways did your community or partnerships benefit from your work? Did you have specific programs or approaches that helped in retaining your cooperation with them?

The consistency that the APG provided in ensuring we could host in person community meet-ups and events helped a great deal in keeping the community engaged and bringing in newcomers as welled have by Nov 5th onboarded 16 newcomers in the community and creation of over 35 new Wikipedia user accounts

We Organized 3 major workshops; Art Feminism, Wiki for Human Rights and Afro Creatives which featured external stakeholders (filmmakers).

We partnered with the Africa Narrative for the Afro Creatives workshop, where we trained 52 filmmakers on contributing to Wikipedia and wiki commons.

We trained 3 community members on event organizing.

On wiki Training for UG members on wiki data, commons and Wikipedia policies

Part 3: Challenges and support 3.1. What stressful or challenging situations did you face? Where did you find support in these situations? Is there anything we can support you with?

Demanding work schedules for the co-leads has led to burn out. Our proposal in 2025 have a project coordinator on a part time basis who will dedicate more time to executive and lead campaigns and training.

Lack of adequate awareness of what is expected of us in the mid-year reporting structure. Follow up meetings were done with the grants team to understand the expectations for reporting.

Lack of photowalks for WLA owing to projects not getting funded in the APG made us unable to meet campaign expectations. We have included the project proposal for our 2025 APG proposal grant.

The user group has experienced an increase of female editors hence the amount allocated for childcare has become less . Proposed amount allocated for 2025 has been added in the project proposal.

Part 4: Future plans 4.1. In which areas do you plan to grow (programmatically or organizationally)?

Create more awareness about Wikipedia in Kenya.

Have a plan of retention of the UG members.

Have a plan to engage participants throughout the year rather than waiting for a campaign.

Register the user group to an established NGO.

Continuous engagement with partners to see where they can help.

Dear Wikimedians of Kenya UG,

Thank you for submitting your application seeking General Support Funds - Wikimedia Community Fund. The MEA Regional Committee and Staff have reviewed, discussed and deliberated upon your application and made the decision to fund you at the local currency equivalent of 20,000 USD for the grant period of 1st January 2025 - 31st December 2025.

Here are a few points to note on the decision:

• While we were intentional in supporting the group we observed that there is need for significant improvement in how you prepare your proposal and importantly how you respond to the questions from the committee. While there was an attempt to respond to the questions, there was a lack of organization in how it was done. Please improve on this.
• Focus on training. We noticed a lack of explicit mention and therefore inferring a lack of focus on training which we know are an essential part of building a well-skilled community. Campaigns are great but they need to be accompanied by skilling opportunities especially when the intention is for the community to nurture active contributors.
• To us it is important that we have quality, active and trusted users on projects in the user groups and overall communities. While we see the interest in building organizer capacity via the coordinator role it is very important that the training component of the community is well supported.
• Active users need to lead the work. We made an observation that the core team and leaders of the affiliate are not active contributors on the projects. Like we mentioned before, we mention this so that the team ensures that those leading trainings are active and well-trained contributors. To further clarify, the reference to "active contributors" is meant to encourage a balance between leadership and hands-on engagement with Wikimedia projects. This includes editing, mentoring, training, and organizing.
• Financial planning and management of user groups - we see a need for the affiliate to improve on its financial management practices including budgeting and reporting. As is, it is unclear the role the accounting capacity has been playing in this group especially since we funded it in the last grant. We need to see significant improvements on this and to further support, we are funding with the plan that you will be working with Kiwix as a fiscal sponsor who will also support you in improving your reporting capabilities.
• We are only funding a coordinator role and not the social media role at this time. We believe give the scope of the project and the opportunity to bring in volunteers to support with the program implementation this role needs not be prioritized together the other costs that we find secondary at this time that include;
  • Video Recording + Photography
  • Documentation
  • Coordination & Facilitation - You did not share robust guidelines on this cost area
  • Miscellaneous and contingencies - we were not sure what was the difference here.
• Lastly, we recognize that you have been selected to be part of the Issroff Family Foundation partnership - supporting your participation in the Collaborative Learning Initiative which will support organizational strengthening and leadership development. Please allocate funds to support this program participation for the 1st year, which at this point we understand is internet data support and in-country meet-ups where appropriate.
• During our next learning conversation, we hope to hear and learn about the outcomes achieved from the program and at the end of the program, we hope to learn more about your strategy as an affiliate that we recognize if important.

Once again, Congratulations! We thank you for your participation in the grant application process and hope to continue to journey with you as you embark on a new year of project implementation.

Best regards from the MEA Regional Committee and Staff, FElgueretly-WMF (talk) 09:44, 14 December 2024 (UTC) Reply