Due to the coronavirus crisis, it has been advised that all offline (in-person) public events funded by Rapid Grants, Project Grants or Annual Plan Grants had to be cancelled or postponed until further notice.

Naturally, it impacts the operations of the Wiki Loves Africa photographic contest. 

An online meeting was organized on Saturday 14th of March to brainstorm and decide how to best mitigate the situation. The notes of that meeting may be found here : https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WikiLovesAfrica_2020

Those are the main elements

1. Contest will close April 15th It has been decided that the deadline to submit images would be extended by 2 weeks to accomodate the groups who had planned upload sessions and have to cancel them. Please note that the display of site notice calling for participation to the contest will not be extended.The site notice will still be displayed till March 31th. But it will be possible to upload images till April 15h. 

2. Ceremonies will be delayed until further notice One of the important elements of the contest is to promote wikimedia projects in Africa, but also to rejoin and share a happy moment with wikimedians and winners. It would be quite unfortunate to replace ceremonies with simple sending of certificates and gifts by postal mail to thank winners. There is no urgency to decide on winners and to announce them, nor to have ceremonies. We propose that jury meetings and winners ceremonies can be delayed by a couple of months, or even to fall 2020. 

3. Delays for reporting rapid grants will be asked to WMF grant teams Naturally, if ceremonies are delayed by several months, it may be that the deadline of the rapid grant requests need to be extended as well. We will discuss that with WMF. We can not be sure what they say, but please do not let the fear of a report deadline prevent you from doing what seems sensible doing. We are heading toward difficult times and we need to be smart. Safety should be a concern. A grant report deadline should not be.

4. Increase of social media presence in the next 2 weeks We advise that the social media presence (facebook, twitter, instagram) be reinforced until the end of the contest. Most countries are currently being quite active on social media, but their announcements are often focusing on offline events and announcements of outcome of such meetings. We advise that communication now focus on - display of excellent images, disrupting images, funny images etc or - communication of figures of participation in the country or globally so far - or promotion of wikipedia articles reusing contest images (those are examples, be creative !)

5. Organization of online edit-a-thons by countries Other wikimedia groups have done so last week-end, and it worked. This could also be done in local languages. You may use skype, or hangout, or zoom (or any other mean you will find suitable for you). This is quite new for all of us... but our community is usually willing to make new experiments. So why not online edit-a-thons ? :)

6. Organization of two online webinars (one French, one English) - recorded We will try to organize in the next 10 days two online sessions, with - general presentation of Wiki Loves Africa contest. Its context. 5 years outcome. - this year contest. 2020 theme and examples. General outcome so far. - demo of the upload sessions

- stories from local countries (1-3 stories from 1-3 people)

- discussion Those sessions will be recorded then posted online and promoted. We will use EventBrite to pre-record participation and send reminders. Of course, if someone wants to do the same in Arabic, please jump in WE NEED VOLUNTEERS ;-)

Discussion ---> on our Telegram Group Page to coordinate : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Africa_2020/Online

Let’s do the best based on the situation. Please everyone stay safe. I am aware this may seem very far away and odd for some of you because your countries are mostly disease-free. Mine is confined and this is no joke.