WLW Inspiring Women's Train-the-Trainer

ITU’s 2019 report declared that over 53% of the global population is online. Internet penetration across Africa stands at 33.8% for men and 22.6% for women. The digital gender divide is widening, and is attributed to lack of affordability, digital skills, and meaningful online content. 

Being seen, inspired, sharing stories and building confidence on global platforms can never be underestimated, especially in developing countries. Wiki Loves Women (WLW)’s Train-the-Trainer Programme has two elements - a train-the-trainer programme and podcast series. Both are designed to inspire action and train  gender-focused activists and organisations across Africa with the tools, skills and strategies to encourage their members and students to add freely-licenced content about their heroines to online educational platforms (Wikipedia or Wikidata). The course will be an online facilitated MOOC. In-person training programme (hosted by partners) on WikiFundi with resources as an offline technological solution to navigate poor connectivity issues.

Analysis of these statistics mentioned above indicate the following barriers: Affordability and Accessibility, lack of digital skills, lack of meaningful content (that women are interested in or relate to), lack of content represents their experience (e.g. expert women as thought leaders), and a lack of cultural considerations. 

These barriers ensures a self-perpetuating cycle. If women do not see themselves represented online with information that is in their language and relevant to their culture, they are less likely to contribute. They are also less likely to encourage their daughters towards better education.

Without the training and visibility of successful inspiring local women, others will not know how to follow similar path. 

Across Africa many might happily follow an online MOOC, but with bad connection or expensive data, they will never be able to complete the course. This problem can be solved with our multi-access solution. WLW’s Inspiring Women interventions cover a podcast series (with advocacy campaign) and a Train-the-Trainer programme, that will be available via online platforms and with an offline solution using technology and resources to deal with the poor access to the training material. 

Leaving nobody behind is a central precept of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Wiki Loves Women (WLW) activates, trains and encourages women and girls across Africa to seize their own agency in addressing the persistent systemic bias that exists about African women online and in the media. WLW bridges the digital gender divide by focusing specifically on participation and content creation. It encourages the contribution of meaningful content to the Wikipedia movement's projects by transfering skills, building confidence and self-worth within a supportive community, in a way that shows direct impact. Funded by Goethe-Institut and Wikimedia Foundation, Wiki Loves Women has operated for five years with 76 gender-focused, cultural and community organisations in 8 countries across Africa. 

The WLW Inspiring Women Train-the-Trainer Programme is a free course that trains trainers how to encourage their students and members to contribute content to open movement platforms. The course will be available either online and offline (via WikiFundi) in English and French. Trainers will be drawn from gender-focused organisations, tertiary and secondary schools, journalists, writers and cultural practitioners. Partners will be urged to host in-person training to leverage local gender-focused networks, harness existing facilities to improve access, and work with existing research, data and content. Potential partners include universities, libraries, gender-focused NGOs, and cultural organisations.

Only 0,53% of all Wikipedia biographical articles are about African women. Across Africa, women are underrepresented. This does not just relate to the lack of content that reflects their experiences (negative or positive), or the lack of coverage celebrating women’s achievements online and in the media. They are also sidelined in positions of authority and leadership. 

It is also important to stress that addressing the Gender Gap is a significant focus for the Wikipedia community. The gender gap does not relate just to content, and then to contributors, but also to leadership and organisers. 

Impact on participants and beneficiaries are detailed below.

Participants: Train-the-trainer: min. 36 lead trainers, activists and educators in education, gender and LGBT+ activism from partnering gender-equity focused organisations and advocacy groups, after schools programmes, tertiary institutions, local and national journalists.

Direct beneficiaries: female, male and LGBTQ+ members of the organisations that have volunteered their trainers to be trained; and will now be trained in content contribution using materials supplied.

Indirect beneficiaries: women and girl and LGBTQ+ readers and listeners from southern Africa using the internet and education resources to search for inspiring subjects (the podcasts, and search Wikipedia, Google, etc.)

The WLW Inspiring Women initiatives focus on solving this challenge by facilitating access for trainers to relevant training tools, platforms and programmes that supports upskilling women and girls into contributing information to the open movement. This not only provides new skills and opportunities for women and girls. By concentrating on profiling inspirational women within their community, it will build a critical mass of information online that inspires the next generation of girls to succeed. It provides two elements: a call-to-action campaign, and online and offline access to training to address the critical gender digital imbalance themselves.

Wiki Loves Women and WikiFundi bridge challenges that have been experienced in the course of its earlier work. This project has two innovations: 

1. It creates and distributes a facilitated online MOOC to train-the-trainers, supported by a visibility campaign (podcasts and social media) for context. Training could either be self-motivated or at in-person workshops and coaching that is hosted by local partners. In this way, the project mitigates against poor connectivity and data costs that makes mooc difficult to complete. It also provides human support to trainees, and not overburden to local Wikipedians.

2. Providing an offline solution that facilitates the creation of wikipedia-like articles whilst offline, and provides resources to extend the learning process.

Both innovations assist in ensuring that people have the access and technology to do the course and write their articles.

WikiFundi is an offline environment (accessible via Rasberry PI) that will have the WLW Inspiring Women Train-the Trainer programme added to its current offering. WikiFundi presently hosts the materials and required training environment that mimics Wikipedia Editing. Ensuring that the WLW Inspiring Women Train-the-Trainer programme is available on WikiFundi (and providing each trainer with WikiFundi should they need it), will further enable organisations and schools that have data and connectivity issues. 

The innovation further harnesses the power of the global open movement (both its tools and its platforms) to ensure that Africa's women and girls are trained to share their experiences and aspirations with the world: to see that their voices and experiences matter locally and globally.

Our solution uses several technology bricks. 

First, with regards to online training, our MOOC will be a pilot hosted on the training platform operated by Wikimedia France for the benefit of the Wikipedia community at https://formations.wikimedia.fr/. This platform is based on Open edX but integrates elements that make it interconnected with mediawiki (software supporting Wikipedia, among others). There is no equivalent solution that merges the features of a MOOC with the open editing on Wikipedia (shared login, edits tracking, etc.). We will participate in the pilot phase as a new mooc after it launches in mid-2020. 

Second, with regards to offline training, our solution will use the 1) WikiFundi software platform, 2) Raspberry PIs as the hardware, and 3) offline resources made available by Kiwix for the open source community and the greater public.  

Finally, the course will be in English and French. The Wikipedia community will be encouraged to translate it into other major languages.

Our team conceived, developed and published the WikiFundi software in 2016 as a collaborative solution that enables groups of people to create and modify Wikipedia-like articles offline. It is a back-up solution (when connectivity fails during editing sessions locally), but it is also a safe way to organize training workshops in groups, at no costs and without the hassle attached to being a beginner (Wikipedia environment is quite well known to be a bit of a fighting ground). 

WikiFundi was first published in 2016 and is primarily based on mediawiki software. A second version has been published in 2018, with the technological support of Kiwix association. It is fully operational and already used by Wikipedians in Africa. It is successfully used in several education programs such as WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique. Foreseable features of a new updated version include a synchronization system to further close the gap between offline and online.

Problem trying to solve:

Africa’s women are not online. This is due to a lack access and meaningful and representative content. The lack of meaningful content is due to the lack of access, skills, confidence, consistent opportunities, contribution, and thus, meaningful content.

Activities:

1. Create Train-the-Trainer programme,
2. Create support materials and training guidelines,
3. Create and publish Inspiring Women podcasts and social media campaign,
4. Publish all content onto WikiFundi and make it accessible for training.
5. Facilitate MOOC sessions.

Outputs:

1. 6-module online MOOC,
2. 12 podcasts + supporting social media campaign,
3. Training curriculum and materials for trainer to host their own course,
4. Venue partners to host in-person train-the-trainer programmes,
5. Train-the-trainer + training materials and resources on WikiFundi.
6. Key assumptions: Trainers will encounter issues around connectivity and access once in their training environment. WikiFundi loaded with resources and platform will mitigate this challenge.

Short term outcomes:

1. Activists, teachers, gender-equality org members are trained to teach their community to access and write articles about inspiring women on open platforms.
2. Women and girls are inspired through podcasts and accompanying campaign to learn how to contribute; seek out the trainers trained in the programme to acquire the skills to contribute. 
3. Women acquire skills (writing, critical thinking, sourcing, collaborating, using digital tools, linguistics, etc.)
4. Women better understand the impact of not being seen.

Medium term outcomes

1. Women are trained in how to access and contribute to the open knowledge platforms via the trainers’ organisations and partners. 
2. More articles are created profiling successful women in their country.
3. Online drives and national contests help to drive enthusiasm and participation.
4. Women being inspired to write content online and pursuit paths within the open movement.
5. Key assumptions: Digital access improves as the cost of data reduces due to demand and pressure.

Long term outcomes:

1. Increased access for women to digital content and opportunities via increased skills and confidence online
2. Increased contribution by women in Africa to online content due to skills and confidence online
3. Articles on free-to-access online platforms that celebrate notable women from across Africa
4. Girls inspired to follow in the footsteps of these women; parents encourage daughters.

Since 2016, Wiki Loves Women has worked with, and trained, over 76 gender-focused Civil Society Organisations in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe (supported by the Goethe-Institut and Wikimedia Foundation). Since 2016, we have had 43 team members, 20 of which were women. The project teams have facilitated over 120 events that combined have trained over 1,468 people (0.36% of which were women).  

• Create a 6-module online course available as facilitated and self-learning options;
• Create an in-person course for partnering organizations;
• Encourage 1500 self-learning online participants (300 persisting through to certification) per year over 2 years;
• Host 2 online sessions per year for 2 years; 
• Encourage 8 partners across four southern African countries to host in-person courses; and
• Encourage 16 in-person courses (training a min. 10 participants; 2 courses per year per partnering organisation) over 2 years.

Conservative estimates:

• Current numbers are 1,500 women
• Numbers over 1 year: 
  • 750 online self-learning participants (200 to certification); 
  • 160 in-person trainers being trained (min. 8 partnering organisations, training a min.10 participants; 2 courses per year per partnering organisation)
• Numbers over 5 years:
  • 3,750 online self-learning participants (1000 to certification);
  • 480 in-person trainers being trained (min. 8 partnering organisations, training a min.10 participants; 2 courses per year per partnering organisation)
  • 96,000 trained women and girls (each trainer trains a minimum of 40 women or girls per year over)

The activities will take place over several key phases: 

• Year 1: 

• Phase 1 (3 months) research and development;

• Phase 2 (8 months) course creation; podcast creation

• Phase 3 (3 months) beta testing and visibility building; podcast release and social media campaign.

• Year 2: Phase 4 (12 months) launch and initial operation

• Year 3 and ongoing: Phase 5 (ongoing) online and in-person training

There are a number of factors that we have identified that might be considered issues. These are:

External: COVID. Explanation: Training events could be disrupted

Financial: Foreign exchange rate fluctuations. Explanation: Money sent through reduced due to 

Operational: Full funding not provided. Explanation: 

Safety and security: Social unrest and instability. Explanation: Working in high-density suburbs has its own set of challenges, including social unrest and instability.

Data and technology: Internet access failure due to data costs or connectivity issues. Explanation: While technology (computers and equipment) will be a specific requirement of the training partnering organisation, the data might still be an issue.

The factors that we have identified as risks have a number of solutions in order to prevent or overcome them. These are:

Overcoming risk:

External: COVID. Solution: Toolkits allow for online training and webinar creation to assist with programme

Financial: Foreign exchange rate fluctuations. Solution: Foreign currency account set up to ensure that money received stays in foreign currency until required.

Operational: Full funding not provided. Solution: Volunteers in South Africa and part of the global movement could assist and fill in for key personnel. Additional funding could be sought elsewhere.

Safety and security: Social unrest and instability. Solution: Local partners are highly aware of the possibility, and prepared in advance should tensions arise. Training programmes would be postponed or taken online or held outside of the high density suburb to ensure it continues.

Data and technology: Internet access failure due to data costs or connectivity issues. Solution: The WikiFundi (www.wikifundi.org) offline environment will be used as a backup for the training programmes enabling access to the materials and required training environment that mimics Wikipedia Editing.

We have had up to 43 people volunteering as part of the Wiki Loves Women teams since 2016; There are two project leads and Wikipedia teams in each of the 6 main countries we have been operating in.

The main project leads are Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood.

Our team has been operating in that area for 10 years through the successful and recognised WikiAfrica projects. Wiki Loves Women is well recognised in the african wikipedia community and we can rely on a full network of local partners from the community. Besides, project leads (both women) have been operating in the gender sector for several years and are activists in other gender-related networks.

Wiki In Africa is a South African registered NPO whose work across the continent activates, trains and supports the active contribution of African content to open education and knowledge platforms, such as Wikipedia. Through strategic layering, its programmes are implemented across Africa and bridge the digital divide through both the content contribution and skills transfer. Wiki Loves Women, Wiki Loves Africa, WikiFundi, WikiChallenge African Schools and WikiAfrica Schools are fun, engaging programmes that create multiple pathways for people from varied backgrounds, cultures and access to resources to learn how to contribute content. These programmes have operated in 22 countries across Africa and draw people together around a common goal and focused regional events. Through its Wiki Loves Women project, Wiki In Africa has trained the members of 73 gender-focused organisations in 8 countries to draw the knowledge within each archive onto global digital platforms

We work with a host of organisations, partners, funders and volunteer networks. Recent partners on gender gap initiatives include numerous volunteers of the wikipedia mouvement, over a dozen african more formal usergroups or chapters such as Wikimedia Nigeria, Wikimedia Ghana, Wikimedia Côte d’Ivoire, Wikimedia Tanzania, Wikimedia Uganda etc. and gender-oriented partners locally, such as CEE Hope in Nigeria. We also participate in various gender-gap international efforts, such as the WikiGap, co-hosted by Wikimedia Sweden and the Sweden Embassy. Other partners typically include “Women in Red” and “les sans pagEs” (in the French sector), both of which enjoy excellent results and recognition. 

Most of the work done with partners is managed in a very horizontale and collaborative manner, largely relying on wikis, social network, and other communication plateforms. Our extended team is spread over the planet, with members in over a dozen african countries, in France, in the United States, in India, in UK etc. We work primarily online, but enjoy a few opportunities to meet face-to-face when situation permit. When needed, conventional agreement are signed with partners.

Our former funders for the Wiki Loves Women project include Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit behind Wikipedia) and the Goethe Institute. 

Wiki in Africa, the association hosting Wiki Loves Women, is currently involved in other related projects, involving other partners and funders, such as Fondation Orange or the Moleskine Foundation.

As a non profit organisation, we rely mostly on Grant money. The association receives an annual funding from Wikimedia Foundation, that covers core funding, but is not sufficient to fund large scale projects.

From a financial point of view, beyond developing the content and publishing it, there are virtually no costs associated with hosting the podcasts or the MOOC. As freely licenced content, once the podcasts are published, they will remain on each free platform in perpetuity (Wiki In Africa, Wikimedia Commons, iTunes, etc.). The licencing also enables people to use, and redistribute and remix the content in their own way. There are no direct sustainability costs.

Wiki In Africa receives limited operational and project support from the Wikimedia Foundation in the form of a recurring annual grant. Once developed and published, the WLW Inspiring Women Train the Trainer and Podcast Series will be added to, and maintained as, a specific element of each year’s annual plan.

We need funding + partners

Wiki in Africa is looking for long-term strategic partnerships, funders and specialized mentoring from experienced organizations or individuals in the field.

We understand that Solve is not just another way of funding, but a community that can help us obtain the exposure needed in different sectors that could be interested in our learning-by-doing initiative with a special focus on solving a gender issue in a vulnerable community.  

We believe in the work we are doing, in the work done by thousands of wikipedians, in work done by the open source community, and in the power of the talented pool of various social innovation global actors that Solve is bringing together. 

We are applying to Solve, expecting to become part of the amazing network that is being built. 

Aside from all the expertise building benefits that Solve provides, we are excited to get to know organizations going through similar experiences than ours, we would love to hear about their journeys and learn from their global paths.

We are applying a range of different technologies that are suitable to the specific environmental and financial issues faced by women across different socio-economic realities in Africa. The range of technologies allows for each one to be monitored, but also allows for appropriate paths to access. It is not one size fits all.

With the right education and gender-equality partners, Wiki Loves Women's Inpsiring Women intitiatives could make a real difference as a solution for women and girls across the spectrum. With the incorporation of WikiFundi, the programme could leverage trainers across Africa to build digital literacy, celebrate local heroes and culture, solidify a sense of self and confidence and ensure that women and girls from Africa are both seen online, but especially see themselves and others like them contributing to global knowledge. 

This programme is aimed to capacitate existing trainers, and provide them with the tools and support to encourage digital literacy, pride in self and culture and ensure that Africa's women share their heroines, aspirations and stories online with the world. With the right partnerships and financial support the programme has the potential to scale  into the millions across Africa and beyond. We believe it has a very real chance to contribute immeasurably to Adult literacy and sense of self online