2021 AWUG Annual report

Annual Report 2021

Arabic Wikimedians User Group

For a better coordination between the Arabic-speaking communities

Preamble

The Arabic Wikimedians User Group aka AWUG is a Wikimedia community affiliate organization. During spring 2021, the recognition of the Arabic Wikimedians User Group came very difficult circumstances - a restriction on travel, a lockdown of meetings and events held at a remote location, the dispersion of the group's members did not make the mission any simpler; in spite of this, the group found a vocation in the attempt to build a new path towards collaborations between groups in the Arabic mode.

This report outlines key accomplishments and activities organized by the group for 2021 and  2020

The group is composed of members of the Arab community based in different cities in the Arab world or expatriates around the world, most of them are members of other Arab user groups, what brought them together to find this group is the activities that concern the Arab world and Arabic speakers :

• Enriching Arabic content
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Diversity
• Expansion
• Project management

The group page provides a more detailed explanation of the reasons for the creation of this group.  

The Pre-Recognition

The period before the recognition was rich in activities and the group launched events according to the availability of volunteer members and the constraints of remote work that lasted more than a year before the pandemic, but a recognition had to be done in order to fill the gaps and take advantage of the benefits that a recognition can provide.

Among these activities that were initiated before, we can mention the most important ones that gave us a very positive feedback :

The Plateforme

Create a platform project for users that is considered as coordination between Arab groups and between the rest of the groups in the world and the institution as well as external institutions

Project house

Create a page to receive project proposals for everyone who has experience to help the community develop their skills and enrich free content in Arabic

Wiki Loves Monument

Push to participate in Wiki Loves Landmarks contest for 2020 resulted in record participation 9 countries

1. Egypt
2. Algeria
3. Morocco, West, sunset
4. Sudan
5. Jordan
6. Palestine
7. Lebanon
8. Syrian Arab Republic
9. Iraq

And the surprise was in order 6 photos from Arab countries in the top 15

Algeria: 3 rd

Egypt: 5 th

Syria: 7 th

Egypt: 11 th

Iraq: 12 th

Iraq: 14 th

Arab winner in wlm2020

• 
  Casbah of Algiers, Algeria by Abdelatif Nour
• 
  Citadel of Qaitbay, Egypt by Summer Kamal Eldeen Mohamed Fara
• 
  St George's Cathedral, Aleppo, Syria by Mohammad Abo Helal
• 
  Gayer-Anderson Museum, Cairo, Egypt by Mohamed Wardany
• 
  Abu Dulaf Mosque, Samarra, Iraq by Omar Hussain Ali
• 
  The Mesopotamian Marshes, Iraq by Ahmed Abdulameer Lazim

Visual identity

The group has worked to create a visual identity including a logo and colors for the group that will allow it to do activities in social networks and awareness well visible

The Post-Recognition

Period was not as easy as that, We are still facing a hard time to work physically and to meet in real life, the work remotely is very difficult, very long and takes a lot of time if we add that all of us are volunteers and reconciling professional life, volunteering and private life is very complicated, it requires a lot of sacrifice if it is not the love of free knowledge that prevails and pushes the group to continue to find solutions to collect free knowledge

Global discussion participation

Members of the organization participated in the following discussions:

With the confinement linked to the pandemic inaugurating its second year, the remote meetings and the Wikimedian movement saw a great effervescence of the movement and of the members of the group who also participated in many meetings linked to the strategy of the movement.

especially during board elections

the discussion of the movement charter and the discussion of the hubs

Anass one of the very active members of the group during discussions following an unofficial meeting with a staff member and the Arab group decided to conduct a study on the hubs with the Arab community which resulted in a study received positively through the global Wikimedia community

Participation in conferences

• Wikimania 2021 - Presentation from the user group about Arabic Wikimedians User Group: Connecting Past, Present, and Future

• Wikiarabia 2021 - Presentation from the group about its activities.

The 25th initiative

Wikipedia, which celebrated its 20th anniversary, is an encyclopedia that is recognized as the world's leading knowledge platform. In it, the Arabic Wikipedia project has surpassed one million article barrier. Communities have grown to more than 220 million single accounts created, a continuously expanding traffic, every day new communities established and recognized by the WMF, exceeding this year 178 affiliated group.This exponential expansion of knowledge, communities, projects, means allocated, makes the current structure fragile, hence the strategy and its implementation priorities which is well aware of the stakes and the urgency to find new solutions to strengthen the entire structure of the movement. In the context of investigating regional hubs planning, The Arabic Wikimedians

User Group (AWUG) takes the initiative to launch a project for a possible proposal for a model for a regional community support structure. In accordance with the global movement's efforts in line with the Wikimedia 2030 strategy, the user group by this action intends to understand how the Arabic-speaking communities can be supported in their geographic, thematic and linguistic scope through a series of live meetings and surveys to discuss and collect information, to analyze it, to allow for a proposal of an integrated structure having roles, responsibilities in defined thematic areas supporting a geographical area recognized as the Arab world. The Arab Wikimedians User Group will have a volunteer steering team driving this implementation work, while paid specialists will perform the necessary efforts to take the project tasks and activities to completion.

Financial Support

Due to the difficulty of working online with such a diverse and globally dispersed group, members are opting for activities that take this constraint into account, and this last project is the 25th implementation of the strategy that the group intends to launch in its next year with the Arab communities.