Grants:Conference/ARE/Wikiarabia 2022 in Dubai

This Wikimedia Foundation grant has a fiscal sponsor. The Emirates Literature Foundation administered the grant on behalf of Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group.

Event overview

Please give a brief description of the event you are planning. What do you hope to accomplish during the event? Why is this event important for your community?

The purpose this WikiArabia 2022 is to provide an opportunity to the Wikipedians/Wikimedians of the Arab region to interact and to share their experiences and their activities. It is also a chance for the Arab community to bring up organizational problems and discuss possible solutions in order to enrich the quality and quantity of the content of Arabic projects. This edition is Also the conference where a Wikiarabia steering committee will be established and implemented, the main topic will be the Arabic Wikipedia policy & the future of the Wikimedia movement.

Do you consider this to be a Regional; Thematic or Growth event? You can read more about each category here.

Regional event.

Is it a Remote, or in-person event?

This event will be in-person

Important details

Please add key information to the table below. The dates, location and number of participants can be estimates and do not need to be finalized at this time.

Proposed date(s)	28th-30th October 2022
Proposed location	internet and Dubai (UAE)
Number of participants	100
Event page	WikiArabia/2022
Primary contact person	Reda Kerbouche

Background

Community input

Use the results from the community engagement survey to fill in the table below. Since you cannot cover all topics or meet all needs at one event, prioritisation is important. Please rank the priority of each topic, skill, project or problem as high, medium or low. Finally, please answer the questions in the table below, if any of the questions are not relevant leave it blank.

	Description	Priority
Strategic discussions: What are the top issues affecting your community that need to be discussed in person?	We will prioritize the strategic discussion especially on: Notability Policy of Wikipedia in Arabic The Middle East and North Africa hub(s) Transparency of the Wikimedia Movement Coordination between Wikimedia communities (steering committee?) Finding new contributors and laying foundations and guidelines for dealing with beginners, especially when dealing with violations such as articles deleted from them or any editorial disputes with them.	HIGH
Capacity development: Are there important skills that many people in your community need to learn?	Development of editorial and technical skills, Education program Develop Wikisource & find technical solutions around the language, such as proofreading, translation, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR).	MEDIUM
Working groups: Are there joint projects that need to be planned in person?	Half of the events will take place remotely. the community that will be on-site and the local community will have workshops and a series of presentations and social events.	MEDIUM
Community building: Are there other in-person activities are important for community building?	Development of the UAE community, and have lots of events with the Arab online community to talk about the implementation that will come in the years to come in the foundation.	MEDIUM

Survey analysis:

1. How many people did you send the survey to? on Facebook (Wikipedia in Arabic group): 11 269; telegram group of the last Wikiarabia: 73, and 5 days of banner on Wikipedia in Arabic.

How many people responded to the survey? 95

2. Did you see consensus around shared goals that this community wants to focus on in the next 12 months? What were the top 2 goals? Yes

Finalization and implementation of the Middle East and North Africa hub(s).
Updating the policy of Wikipedia in Arabic.

3. Based on survey responses, what are the most important things your community should do at the conference to achieve those goals?

Discussion and creating a steering committee for certain projects and strategies in the MENA.
Gather all the stakeholders around one table for discussion of the policy.

Context

It is helpful to get an understanding of why this event is important to your community, and what experiences you have had in the past. Please answer the applicable questions below.

1. What inspired your community to begin planning this event?

The previous conferences have inspired us to continue and especially with the emergence of new users groups in the MENA. From these conferences, we always attract new people to the movement from the volunteers who helped us to do the conferences.

2. How does this event relate to other activities that your community is working on?

In addition to building new affiliates, this conference will help implement WMF's 2030 strategy, starting with the hub(s) first.

3. Do you have any Thematic or Regional committee or group? (Such as WISCom, CEE, Iberocoop, etc).

NO

Plan

Venue and Logistics

1. Do you have any proposed venue for the event? If so, please share details (such as: how far is it from the airport or transportation hub; how close is it to the hotel, do you anticipate any challenges with using the space for the event you are planning?)

We chose the Hilton Dubai Al Habtoor City in Dubai. The conference place is easy to access by public transport or taxi, and near cultural activities. We will not use the airport because of all our participants are in the same country.

2. Is the event venue and hotel accessible for people with physical disabilities?

Yes.

3. Are you planning to outsource some of the services? For example - a travel agency, an event production service?

No, we have the capacity for this planning because all our participants are from the UAE.

Friendly space policy

Friendly space policy for Wikimedia Foundation events will be used for this event.

Participation

It is crucial that most participants have a minimum level of Wikimedia experience so that they can engage actively in workshops and discussions. Please answer all applicable questions below.

1. Please describe the target audience for this conference or event.

Attendees are active and new Arab speaking contributors on Wikimedia projects, and also other people working on open knowledge, as well as local UAE contributors.

2. If your conference has an outreach component to also target non-wikimedian individuals or mission aligned institutions, can you explain your intention for this outreach (for example: how will you ensure engagement with these participants after the conference, and what impact do you see them having on the projects)?

Wikimedia UAE has established strong partnerships with universities over the past few years. Our relationship with them is essential to the smooth running of our activities, which implies that we already have the means to involve them in events such as workshops and also to use their volunteers and students to help us enhance the wiki platforms.

3. Are you thinking about collaborating with potential partners? Such as national; educational or thematic groups and organizations? If so, will this partnership be a financial one (such as sponsorship), or a visionary one (to collaborate in regards to the content of the event)? Please share some details if you have any.

We are going to have partners who can provide us with volunteers, such as universities. and maybe sponsors who will finance parallel activities to those we have planned.

4. In which ways can Wikimedia Foundation staff support your event onsite? If you would like support, please list the different capacities in which we can support, or describe how you would like Wikimedia Foundation staff to be involved in the event. (Some examples of Wikimedia Foundation support or involvement might be: for outreach and communication efforts; to lead specific sessions; for legal or safety reasons, etc).

We will not need assistance from WMF staff on site due to covid. however, if the restrictions end, we would love to see the education team in Dubai (we will still invite them to the online session). We would also like to have the experience of the organization team of Wikimania.

Scholarships

1. How many scholarships would you like to offer and what expenses will the scholarship cover?

We would like to offer up to 55 for locals integral for the participants that will cover travel, transportation, accommodation & meals.

2. How will scholarship recipients be selected?

By a scholarship committee made up of the community itself

3. Do you plan to target or prioritize specific communities or participants?

Yes, we will give priority to candidates from the United Arab Emirates, in order to support people from different places in the Emirates. We will also consider diversity criteria relevant to our community, including gender, race, and nationality. The event will also be open to Wikimedians from other countries if they are in the UAE.

4. How will you ensure diversity and inclusion in your scholarship process?

The scholarship committee will set up some guidelines for awarding scholarships to ensure diversity and inclusion.

Resources and risks

Describe the resource potential for successfully executing this project and the key risks/threats.

Resources

Organizing team

Team	User Names
Wikimedia Foundation Liaison	Reda Kerbouche, هاني يكن
Logistics	دانية دروبي
Conference Program	Bachounda Mouhamed; Walaa Abdel Manaem; Ala’a K Najjar; Anass Sedrati; Reem Al-Kashif.
Scholarships	Yamen Bousrih; Olla Abdalla Mahadi; Adel Nehaoua; Nanor Garabedian; Serine Ben Brahim; شيماء
Communications	TBD
Volunteer Coordinators	Serine Ben Brahim, Iyhab Barakat
Other team members	Ahlam Bolooki

Risks

Examples of risks, along with how you would minimize or overcome them, are:

It will be difficult to mix the 2 online and face-to-face events (technical problems) and synchronization.

Examples of how to minimize these risks include:

Recruiting volunteers with desired skills to the team.

Budget

Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here. See Budget Guidelines.

All past proposals can be found here, you can use these for inspiration and reference but you are required to do your own local research and come up with your own budget numbers. Keep in mind that each event is different, has local context and needs, and there is not a one-size-fits all for our communities events. While making decisions on what to fund we will consider the local context and community needs for each event.

Event budget table

№	Items	Unit	Quantity	Cost per unit (AED)	Total Cost (AED)	Total Cost (USD)
Total travel and accomodation costs					285 085	76 972,95
1	Air travel	Tickets	55	-	185 055	49 964,85
2	Ground travel - Transport	taxis	55	390	21 450	5 791,5
3	Hotel rooms	Single rooms	10	495	14 850	4 009,5
4	Hotel rooms	Double/twin rooms	28	595	49 980	13 494,6
5	Catering	Meals	3 days include morning coffee + lunch + afternoon coffee	250 per person	13 750	3 712,5
Total venue costs					330 000	97 200
1	Rent	Venue	3 days includes 2 ballrooms 2 workshop rooms	20 000	60 000	16 200
2	Technical support	Service per day	3 days	10 000	30 000	8100
3	Video and audio	Service per day	3 days for 1 ballroom	40 000	240 000	64 800
4	Livestream and recording	Service per day	3 days	10 000	30 000	8 100
Total staff costs					56 000	15 120
1	Operations coordinator	Position	5 months - 20 hours per week	5000/month	25 000	6 750
2	Communications officer	Position	4 months - 20 hours per week	4000/month	16 000	4 320
3	Administrative officer	Position	5 months - 20 hours per week	3000/month	15 000	4 050
Total other expenses					160 510	43 382,5
1	Internet support		3 days	-	10000	2700
2	Human sim translators		3 days	9 000	27 000	7 290
3	Design / logo / Marketing			-	40 000	10 800
4	Cultural activities		55	500/person	27 500	7 425
5	Permits, Visa processing and NOC		55	350	19 250	5 197,5
6	Media coverage				25 760	7 000
7	Welcoming gifts ( t-shirts, pens, cups, stickers ....)		55	200/person	11 000	2 970
Grand total					831 595	232 675,45

Total cost of event: The total estimated cost of the event is around 232.675,45 USD

Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program: 97.200 USD

Please confirm that you are aware that changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.: YES

Discussion

Endorsements

Do you think this project should be selected for a Conference Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.