Hi all,

In the second round of Project Grants, 21 eligible proposals were submitted for review. The committee recommended 12 projects for a total of $194,490 in funding. WMF has now approved all 12 grants. Here’s what we’re funding. [1]

Kiwix/Offline medical

Wikimed is a medical encyclopedia app that runs on the offline platform Kiwix. It serves as a powerful resource for its users, who are predominantly based in areas of the Global South with limited connectivity. This project will update the existing Kiwix code to improve access and content quality, benefitting both Wikimed and other Wikimedia projects supported by Kiwix. [2][3]

Video templates
Video is used by Wikimedians for many reasons, like sharing on social media, providing trainings, reporting on successes and more. This project will produce templates to enable volunteers to more easily develop professional-level videos compatible with our visual identity guidelines. The templates will be developed for open source software. [4][5]

GLAMpipe
GLAMpipe is an open source web application that allows GLAM institutions to upload and process more complex data sets. Initially developed in 2016 with support from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, the grant will fund the next phase of improvements, focused on adoption by key GLAM-Wiki contributors, and extension of the tool to bring data to Wikidata. [6]
Fountain

Running wiki contests involves extensive preparation for organizers and volunteers, from devising requirements and guidelines, to scoring edits and determining winning participants. Fountain is a tool that creates and organizes online contests, and includes the ability to review edited quality articles. It has already been used on Russian Wikipedia, and was used by organizers of Asian Wikipedia Month in November 2016! This grant will expand the tool for multiple-language and multi-project environments. [7][8]

Offline outreach: seven projects funded

Offline Wikipedia outreach in Mongolia
Progress Gateway, an NGO that specializes in building better education in Mongolia, will lead a pilot project that will integrate offline Wikipedia into classroom curriculum in both urban and rural areas. The project aims to build skills in utilizing English Wikipedia, and provide an introduction to editing in Mongolian Wikipedia. [9]
Let’s fill the gender gap through community building
This project seeks to build on the success of the Let’s fill the gender gap workshops for another year. Focused on building motivation among new female volunteers in the Geneva region, regular meetings will be hosted to build personal relationships among participants and a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia community as a whole. [10] [11]
Joburgpedia 2016

Wikimedia South Africa, in partnership with South African History Archives, will be engaging participants in edit-a-thons and in a digitization initiative as part of Johannesburg-based JoburgpediA. Notably, this project will include documentation of the work of photojournalist and activist Gille De Vlieg, who photographed life in South Africa’s townships and shanty towns during the Apartheid era. [12][13]

Music in Canada @ 150: A Wikipedia and Wikidata Project
This project aims to fill a gap in content about Canadian music. Through a collaboration between music communities, librarians and archivists across the country, a series of offline events will strategically encourage new contributions to both Wikipedia and Wikidata. [14]
Bashkortostan User Group Event Planning for Q1 2017
Through this multi-part project, Bashkortostan Wikimedians will run contests, conduct trainings and offer social meet-up opportunities to build the volunteer community contributing to Bashkir language Wikimedia projects. [15]

Initialization project for Iraq Wikimedians User Group
The Iraqi User Group will run a multi-part project focused on: building the user group, conducting trainings and edit-a-thons, hosting photo trips, coordinating Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments campaigns and launching their first version of the Wikipedia Education Program. [16]

Wikimedia Belgium Public facing activities 2017
Two years after its founding, Wikimedia Belgium seeks to further build its capacity by developing GLAM partnerships, establishing education programs and expanding its volunteer community through offline events. [17]

Online outreach: one project funded

Whose Knowledge?
This project seeks to build a base for a global campaign to create, collect and curate knowledge from and with marginalised communities. The grantees will pilot their model with two communities: the Dalit community in India and its diaspora in the US, and women’s human rights defenders in the global South. [18]

You can read more about this round on the Wikimedia Foundation blog [19]

The next open call for 2017 Round 1 of Project Grants will begin February 13, 2017 and end March 14, 2017. Note that this is a change from the previously posted schedule, reflecting a shift from quarterly to biannual funding rounds. After piloting our new programs for the last six months, we determined that we are not adequately staffed to conduct four rounds per year and still maintain the level of support we want to offer our grantees. Consequently, we are scaling back to make sure we offer quality support all the way through the life of our grants. Assessment of the design of all our new grants programs will be ongoing as we seek to meet the needs of the community and align with Foundation’s resources and capacity. We will be doing a community survey in early 2017 to understand how the changes have impacted our grantees. [20]

In the month leading up to the next Project Grants open call, an Inspire Campaign will be conducted to invite community ideas on engaging and developing partnerships with outside knowledge networks – such as experts, libraries, and cultural institutions – to improve the quality of content in our projects. These ideas may be developed into Rapid or Project grants in cases where funding is needed. [21]

Congratulations to the successful grantees!