On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:48 AM, Anna Torres <a...@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-government-accountability-citizen-engagement/

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%C3%A7ambique

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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