Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Iraqi Wikimedians 2024 plan

Feedback from the Middle East and Africa Regional Funding Committee on your proposal

Dear Iraqi Wikimedians User Group Team,

Thank you very much for your proposal, describing your activities and projects in support of the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement. The Regional Committee has initially reviewed the proposal, and wishes to offer some initial feedback and questions for your review.

The committee was delighted to see that the group is planning to revitalize the community in Iraq, through the organization of a series of workshops, competitions, and activities designed to attract new editors and engage existing members, which we considered a positive step toward this effort.

We would like to understand better the following aspects of your revival efforts:

• Since the User Group was dormant for some time, as mentioned in the application, and you are making attempts to revive it, have you evaluated what led to the dormancy of the community in the past, why things were not moving as expected? If yes, could you provide details from that evaluation? If you have not, can you please provide us the SWOT analysis or community survey that informed this proposal?
• Did you develop perhaps a strategic vision or plan, to describe how the UG is planning for self-sustained community and programmatic work that reflects the community needs and the local challenges? Have you identified a list of potential partnerships in education, GLAM or gender that could feed into this vision/plan?
• What is the foundation that you are building for yourselves as a User Group in terms of your core team, governance structure, financial administration?
• What is the plan or vision for capacity building of key and new volunteers (because if this is a new community that you are coming to revamp or restart, there's a need for you to empower your trainers, in order to employ them or allow them to carry out autonomous activities in their own local context, even when the core team is not available)?

Can you please clarify further for us the following aspects of the current proposal:

• Can you please provide more information about the implementing team? Who would be responsible for what activity, and how did you calculate the staff costs? In your budget, you mention management expenses and a project coordinator (incl. Social media and the UG), while in the proposal text you described a project coordinator and a Wikipedia Administrator (Graphic Designer) position.
• What is the rationale for the 2-days meetup in Baghdad, how does this guarantee the engagement with the former editors versus organizing regular online events and meetups for engagement?
• In the timeline, activities are missing for the month of November, besides online meetings, is there a reason for that?
• The planned metrics are too low considering the numerous activities planned, can you please revise them?
• During the planned awareness raising events, who are the targeted audiences (e.g. general public, advanced contributors or sectoral representatives)? Do you plan to organize content contributions or training activities during these events? What are the expected outcomes and impact of these activities?

We hope you find this initial feedback useful. In terms of the schedule for our review process, please complete your review and responses to committee feedback by 01st of May 2024. After this time, the Regional Committee will begin a final review of the proposal to make a formal decision.

Thanks again for your work on the proposal and supporting our review.

On behalf of the Regional Committee, Dnshitobu (talk) 12:28, 11 April 2024 (UTC).