Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group/2021 Strategic Plan

Strategic Plan for 2021

Dubai, UAE
2021

Who we are

Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group is a user group of the Wikimedia Foundation, an U.S.-based non-profit organization that operates and manages the Wikimedia projects. Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group (Arabic: مجموعة مستخدمين ويكيميدية الإمارات العربية المتحدة) created and approved on 04 February 2020 by active members of Wikimedia contributors living in UAE, who are interested in organizing and participating in outreach activities on a national level. It aims to promote and participate in the projects offered by the Wikimedia Foundation and to organize the UAE community. One of its core missions is to aid and encourage people to collect, develop and disseminate knowledge and other educational, cultural and historic content in the public domain or other licenses that allows everyone to freely use the knowledge, and to distribute and modify said content for free. Since March 13, 2020, Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group is an officially registered Non-Entrepreneurial (Non-Commercial) Legal Entity in UAE.

Vision

Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group shares the vision statement of the Wikimedia Foundation: „Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.“

Mission

The mission of Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group is to aid and encourage Emiratis to collect, develop and disseminate knowledge and other educational, cultural and historic content in the public domain or other licenses that allows everyone to freely use the knowledge, and to distribute and modify said content for free. Also, promotion of Knowledge (initiation and stimulation of public interest in Knowledge and in means of creation, development and spreading of Knowledge and access to it), promote access to knowledge and education for all citizens and expats, regardless of their social or other status, to organize such access, assist in the preparation of laws and other normative acts that promote knowledge creation, accumulation, development and dissemination. Our mission and goals are consistent with our organization’s Bylaws.

Values

Accessibility
Collaboration
Community
Diversity
Education
Gender equality
Independence
Transparency
Sharing
Volunteerism

Strategic Plan

This Strategic Plan defines the programs of Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group divided into five main goals: 1) Content Gap, 2) Increasing Participation, 3) Community Support, Development & Promoting Wikimedia, 4) Collaborate with GLAM, Universities, Educational Institutions and other Wikimedia and Non-Wikimedia organizations. All of these programs are designed to develop Wikimedia projects in Arabic and other Wikimedia languages.

Goal 1: Content Gap

One of the main goals of Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group is to increase the content of Wikimedia projects (the most important Wikipedia) in Arabic language. To achieve this goal, Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group will hold various competitions (Article Contests, Photography Contests...ex) on the Arabic Wikipedia. Contests are international and local.

Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group will participate in the International Wikipedia Asian Month a series of edit-a-thons are held across Asia, by supporting the international organization and the local workshops in UAE.

The first objective of this goal is to develop and disseminate the sum of human knowledge in Arabic language, under a free license or in the public domain in UAE:

Conducting and facilitating edit-a-thons and other types of contribution workshops to Wikimedia projects.
Supporting pedagogic projects in universities that include contribution to Wikimedia projects in class.
Providing technical support for the creation and the growth of new Wikimedia projects in Arabic language.
Putting an emphasis on events that aims at closing the gender gap on Wikimedia projects, both in terms of contributors and content.
Organizing and participating in the International projects.
Providing resources to help contributors develop and improve content, such as access to references.

The second objective is to develop free content about UAE and Arabic cultures, languages, history, geography, sports and other fields of knowledge on Wikimedia projects by:

Conducting and facilitating thematic contribution workshops to the Wikimedia projects.
Conducting and enabling photographic events, such as photographic walks, in UAE for Wikimedia Commons.
Organizing photographic contests, such as Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth for Wikimedia Commons.

Also, Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group will contribute to the development of other important Wikimedia projects in Arabic.

Goal 2: Increasing Participation

One of the main goals of Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group is to increase the volunteers of Wikimedia project editors. The increase of the number of participants in Wikimedia projects, primarily in the Arabic language, is strategic for us, since the growth of the Wikimedia content and the quality of the content created depend on the number of participants.

We seek to different groups and individuals, including under-represented in our community by supporting and organising trainings aimed at increasing participation in the Wikimedia movement. We are working with our community to find opportunities to increase participation and improve the climate for newbies in Wikimedia projects. This is done through outreach activities, partnerships with particular outreach institutions, on-wiki initiatives. These activities have parallel aims of improving content and attracting more participation from the target groups.

To attract new volunteers and participants in the Wikimedia project in UAE, we will carry out the following projects:

We will conduct active trainings and workshops in educational institutions and for interested parties.
We will conduct thematic competitions and contests.

Also, Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group has developed a trainings specifically for representatives of educational institutions (Teachers). Teachers are an important resource for us, as they are the primary agents who have direct contact with students and young people, who are the future resource of the Wikimedia movement and Wikimedia projects. For this reason, we consider it important to inform and teach teachers the Wiki-Technologies, which in turn will teach these skills to students and all interested persons. In the end, we will get a result that will help us promote and popularize Wikimedia projects in UAE.

Goal 3: Community Support, Development & Promoting Wikimedia

It should be noted that activists and Members of the Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group have been creating such small local groups in their cities since 2020 to support Wikimedia projects in the Arabic language, but unfortunately there are no logistic and material resources for the developmentour training in all UAE. We, through our program, will facilitate to have a big numbers of techers/trainers of the Wikimedia projets.

While supporting these groups we will do:

We will establish a framework for this trainers.
We will provide logistical, material and financial support.
We will conduct regular trainings, workshops and meetings with the comunity members, we will train them to work in Wikimedia projects.
We will help the members of Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group to secure grants (individual) from the Wikimedia Foundation to execute their own projects.
We will to organizing regional and local meetups to bring contributors and volunteers together and promote the growth of local community groups.
Highlighting high quality work of UAE contributors on the UG website, project site, blog and social media.

One of our main goals is organizational development. At the moment, our organization is a User Group and our goal is to become an official Wikimedia chapter, which will also promote Wikimedia projects in UAE as a user group. To achieve this, we will use different paths.

Organizing face-to-face meet-ups is important for both Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group members and the whole WikiCommunity in UAE. They allow to enhance online cooperation, boost useful networking connections among volunteers, and facilitate knowledge sharing in the format of presentations, discussions, and personal meetings. Bringing volunteers together is especially crucial for community development in UAE because of the geographical vastness of our country. Organizing conferences and other events in regions also helps boost and increase local communities.

We will also carry out training sessions for volunteers devoted to certain specific skills, such as technical tools or conflict resolution. Organizing training events or funding volunteers’ participation in training sessions helps to develop community’s skills and, therefore, increase the quality of our contribution and address important issues within the community.

Providing scholarships for international events is an important part of community and organizational development and the promotion of knowledge sharing. Attending conferences and other events provides members of the local community with an opportunity to build and strengthen connections, gain new knowledge, and share it through their reports, notes, articles, photos, and social media posts. Since it is difficult for economic reasons for most UAE citizens and expats to afford expensive international travel, Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group scholarships are especially important to the community.

An important part of our work will be the promotion of Wikimedia projects using media. To achieve this, we will use social media as well as Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group blogs, and project site.

Goal 4: Collaborate with GLAM, Universities, Educational Institutions and other Wikimedia and Non-Wikimedia organizations

Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group begins to collaborate with collaborate with GLAM, Universities, Educational Institutions and other Wikimedia and Non-Wikimedia organizations. Such collaborations can take diverse shapes like uploading archives fonds to Wikimedia Commons or transcribing old manuscripts documents on Wikisource. Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group will mainly collaborate with all organizations that express their interest in working with Wikimedia projects rather than approaching ourselves. Memorandum of cooperation will be concluded with all parties. Today, our organization has such a memorandum with two organizations, both of them is a non-governmental organization (one of them is ISNI).

Our future goal is to start cooperation with the some ministries in UAE, which are very important organization in its field and under its leadership is a huge database. We are going to use their database for Wikimedia projects in Arabic and other languages. Also, our organization will conduct a series of trainings and workshops for Library staff, so that subsequently the library staff themselves can independently work in Wikimedia projects.

Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group will continue to be an active affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation and part of the global Wikimedia movement. It will keep building on its relationship with all affiliation across the arab world and seek other relationships with other chapters and thematic organizations in order to share lessons learned and resources, and to conduct projects in partnerships. The UG aims at increasing the involvement of Emiraties and expats in the Wikimedia movement.

Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group in order to achieve its goal in cooperation with other Wikimedia Foundation affiliations, it will conduct joint projects with these organizations that will strengthen and develop bilateral relations, which in turn will contribute to the development of Wikimedia projects.

Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group will collaborate with non-Wikimedia organizations to attract volunteers and editors to Wikimedia projects, as well as to integrate different ethnic groups into the UAE Wikicommunity, since diversity in movement and in Wikimedia projects in Arabic language is very important for us. We have already begun work in this area.

One of the main areas of our work is cooperation with educational institutions, including Universities. Educational institutions are the main source of volunteers for Wikimedia projects in UAE, therefore, cooperation with them is a strategic direction for us. At the same time, there are problems in educational institutions, in particular universities, where the stereotype exists that Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information and there is a Wikipedia anti-PR, we will try to communicate to them and teach them how Wikimedia projects work and what benefits we can get from them. Along this path, we will conduct joint projects with universities and other educational institutions, including contests, trainings, workshops and meetings.

Conclusion

Non-Entrepreneurial (Non-Commercial) Legal Entity "Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group" Strategic Plan for 2021 approved at the Meeting of the Board of Trustees (Protocol №2021-01), on April 21, 2021.

Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group The Board of Trustees
Protocol №2021-01 21/04/2021
[Signature] Ahlam Bolooki [Signature] Hani Yakan [Signature] Serine Ben Brahim Round seal of the Organization