I think Rexford and Asaf raise some good points here. If we are serious about Africa having a stronger presence at future Wikimanias we must improve our efforts at increasing the number of editors from the continent whist encouraging more editors to apply for scholarships with high quality applications. It's a long road to travel that requires a lot of work but I feel that the rewards in terms of edits from African sources and representation within the broader community make it well worth it.
Regards,
Douglas.
On 11 Mar 2016 23:13, "Nkansah Rexford" <nkansahrexford@gmail.com> wrote:Thank you Ellie for the short breakdown of the stats in here. Will be on standby for more of these stats to be put up on the wiki.
I think things will be more clearer when all the stats are up.
Thanks.
On 11 Mar 2016 7:25 pm, "Ellie Young" <eyoung@wikimedia.org> wrote:Isla,I am in the process of putting up information from the scholarship committee onto the wiki and will respond to the other thread on wikimania-l soon.124 Scholarships were awarded.Of the 400 scholarships that passed into Phase 2 of the review, 20 were African applicants passed Phase 2. 4 of those got scholarships, so by my calculations that's 20% of the eligible African applicants.Geographic regions are *not* the emphasis of the program.You might want to take this up directly with the Scholarship Committee if you have ideas for changes to the program in the future?Ellie YoungWMF Events Manageron behalf of the Scholarship CommitteeOn Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 6:18 AM, Isla Haddow Flood <isla@wikiloveswomen.org> wrote:Okay - so - of 170 potential full and partial scholarships offered by the WMF, Africa got 4.FOUR.that is 0.02% of what was on offer.Mexico I could understand was difficult to access. BUT you couldn’t get closer to Africa than Italy, if you tried.That is just not acceptable.