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---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:51 AM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Indonesia and Humanitarian Open Street Map receive ALL VOICES GRANT To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:48 AM, Anna Torres anna@wikimedia.org.ar wrote:

Hi Isabella,

Great news! Congratulations to all of you :) In Argentina we are planning to build up a fundraising strategy this year. Is there somewhere we can take a look to the project?

While the WMID team puts online their project documentation, I can provide a bit of background which will be useful to other chapters.

The very short version, without buzzwords, is we will be creating OSM mapping data and Wikipedia articles of Kalimantan, training local groups and producing a training kit so they can continue to do it after the project funding finishes. Their will be project evaluation reports so that other regions and countries can assess whether they will be able to reproduce the outcomes of the project.

The Making All Voices Count website isnt very informative about the program at the moment, as they have replaced most of the information about the program with details about the projects being funded. More information might be buried in their blog entries from last year.

The first call for proposals for the innovations grant program needed to have impact in one of eight countries: Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/news/first-call-proposals/

Based on the history of the funding body, and entities backing the funding body, it was obvious that any innovation in the area of citizen participation in open government was the broad theme. It is always difficult knowing precisely what is going to succeed in a first round for a new grant program. Now that they have selected a group of proposals to fund, it is easier to see what types of projects will be successful in the next rounds.

http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/news/28-cutting-edge-projects-to-boost-g...

The next round (it should be opening soon) will be for Bangladesh, Mozambique, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

One of the requirements is that there is a local organisation as part of the grant proposal. The local organisation doesnt need to be a well established organisation with lots of capacity. The bulk of the work can be done by a foreign partner, but they want to see a formal partnership exists between the two (i.e. a signed agreement as an appendix). It is a great opportunity for a bigger chapter to help a smaller chapter attract external funding and complete a project which will have real impact in their country. Or for a chapter to partner with another organisation in their country.

Wikimedia is known to be good at crowd sourcing and citizen engagement. Those skillsets needs to be wrapped into a project concept that will have measurable impact in the real world (i.e. outside of the wikiverse), and then sold so that funders can see that using wikis is an innovative component *with* a key strength being that using wikis ensure that others can continue to build the project after the funding runs out.

Some of the other requirements for the application: * focus providing a voice to minorities (esp. people with disabilities) * 500 word executive summary * A detailed budget * complete resumes of four key people in the project * biographies of the participating organisations

The three Asian countries for round two (Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines) are the 'easiest', all having very active local wikimedia groups that are well connected to the International community.

Mozambique is a challenge. ;-) Portuguese Wikipedia has a few contributors living in Mozambique. As well as the 'Wikipedians in <country>' category (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8645200), more wikimedia people can be found using searches like https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org+intitle:user+Mozambique https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org+intitle:Usu%C3%A1rio+Mo%C...

As example, one of the Portuguese speaking chapters could partner with an advocacy group in Mozambique to write Wikinews stories on Portuguese Wikinews about a topic which usually isnt covered well in traditional media. e.g. Interviews with people with disabilities, from people in villages through to their first two Paralympians? (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1442458)

Or Wikimedia South Africa may be able to partner with a group in Mozambique to help build Tsonga/Xitsonga Wikipedia, which currently has less than 300 articles after many years, and was even proposed for closure. There are other languages of Mozambique that do not have a Wikipedia yet. Would a $40,000 funded project be sufficient to build/regenerate a new Wikipedia language community?

Or work with a relevant peak body/Quango/NGO to put one of their existing books on Wikibook, translate it to minority languages and distribute it. e.g. Marie Stopes International

Distributing Wikipedia via Kiwix may also meet open government development goals, if the content is of sufficient quality, (or $40,000 can make it high quality content), but that depends a lot on what are effective distribution methods for a target audience.

-- John Vandenberg

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