Introducing the Free Knowledge Free Data project

Data scholarships by Wikimedia Ghana User Group for Wikipedia editors

Recently, as part of our Ghana Edits Wikipedia (#GhanaEditsWikipedia) activities, we have held offline workshops and edit-a-thons to improve the content on Wikimedia wikis and also train and engage editors.

For these events, we have provided travel support (T&T), refreshment and free Wi-Fi for participating learners and content creators.

This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have moved our activities online. The move means volunteers and editors who have access to free internet at our events no longer have that incentive.

Hence with support from Wikimedia Foundation grants, we are reimbursing selected editors for their data expenses when they participate in any of our virtual workshops, edit-a-thons or events, till Wikimedia lifts restrictions on offline events.

We have named this project Free Knowledge Free Data (#FreeKnowledgeFreeData)

Terms and Conditions

Eligibility

Everyone who attends an event is eligible once there’s proven and satisfactory participation.

Access

Accessing a data scholarship comes by participating in any of our events. So look out for activity notices via any of our channels.

Your information

Also, for purposes of reporting successfully the impact of these scholarships to the Wikimedia Foundation, we will require the following from recipients.

1. Recipients should have a Wikipedia account and conduct edits through that account for the designated event
2. Recipients should be willing to be captured in our financial reports
3. Recipients should be able to provide Wikimedia Ghana with a data number for the purchase to be made via an electronic transfer to that data number

Other conditions

1. Wikimedia Ghana User Group will only release refunds after the event in consideration and recipients will be informed before online event ends.

As we are doing our best to use virtual meetings to fill the gap after offline events were cancelled, we hope these scholarships will be a good incentive the same way free internet access at our events has been.