Grants:Project/Rapid/Anass Sedrati/Wikipedia Event in Rabat

statusFunded

Anass_Sedrati/Wikipedia Event in Rabat

My name is Anass Sedrati and I am the project coordinator of the user group "Wikimedia Morocco". We have participated in many events before, but all of them were outside of our community, either in Regional or International context. Our aim is to organize our fist editathon in Morocco, which will be a presentation followed by an edit-a-thon. It will be held at the university, will be public and everybody will be welcome to attend it.

targetAll versions of wikipedia, as the idea is to contact all kinds of people. Morocco is a multilingual country, so use of the language differs from person to person, and a situation to another. Our goal is to raise awareness about wikipedia for all the present in the audience. We can say that the most impacted languages will be: Arabic, French, English, Berber, Moroccan Arabic and Spanish. But it might be that other projects will be covered if any person is willing to.

start date26 November

end date26 November

budget (local currency)2000 MAD (Moroccan Dirham)

budget (USD)$200 (25th October 2016)

grant typeIndividual

grantee• Anass_Sedrati

contact(s)• sedranas@gmail.com

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Project Goal

Raise awareness about wikipedia between people in general (students in particular)
Network with university and explore means of collaboration
Recruit new editors
Increase skills for existing editors
Add or improve content

Project Plan

Activities

1. Are you doing one editathon or training or a series of editathons or trainings? We are doing a presentation first (to make the audience familiar with Wikipedia, Wikimedia and the related terminology), where we will highlight specifically the Wikimedia projects in Morocco in order to have a local viewpoint. Then we will have an editathon following the presentation, for all the present people. Eventually, I have discussed the possibility of organizing another (more advanced) editathon in the afternoon, for the PhD students, and people having intermediate/advanced knowledge of the encyclopedia.
2. How will you let your community know about the event? Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. In our preparation, we have discussed with the university "INPT" (Institut National des Postes et Télécommunications) that will host the event. In that sense, their Enactus branch will help us to prepare the event and market it. They have promised us to publish information about out event in their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Enactus-INPT-484695361561868/?ref=ts&fref=ts . The event will also be advertised in the Wikimedia Morocco pages on facebook and Twitter: https://www.facebook.com/WikimediaMAUserGroup/?fref=ts , and by personal means to the interested people, that will be asked to spread to their networks. Moreover, Enactus INPT promised to do a work in the field by advertising either at their university or at the neighboring ones in the campus.
3. Do you have experienced Wikimedia editors to lead the event? I have joined wikipedia in 2013 , and I am an editor in the Arabic Wikipedia. I have participated in different Wikipedia events such as Wikiarabia and the Francophone Wikipedia. I will be participating along with the president of Wikimedia Morocco, Reda Benkhadra, who joined Wikimedia projects in 2012. Reda has participated in Wikimedia conference and the Francphone Wikipedia. Reda had also co-organized the first Wikimedia event in Morocco, that was Wiki loves earth in 2015.

4. Do participants have the equipment or skills needed to participate and contribute high quality content? If not, how will you support them? We expect from most of the participants to have the minimun equipement or skills. In this case it will be: Computer/Smartphone per person. This should not be a problem as the target are mainly students that live at the university, or in the nearby campus, so the equipment is close to them. Moreover, the university has different computer rooms that can be used for different projects. For the skills, most of the public would be engineering/medical students, so we expect from them having the minimum skill a university student has, and that they know surely a lot of information that deserves to be shared with the world.
5. How will you engage participants after the event(s)? We will keep in contacting the co-organizers (Enactus INPT), and encourage the participants to continue editing in Wikipedia through showing them that they can write at whatever subject they love. Eventually also, explain to them the translation tricks, as the Arabic/berber contents need a high amount of translation. In this sense, the presentation itself is very important in motivating the participants and make them aware of the role that they can play in making wikipedia better and bigger. We will also work on a follow-up plan for the new editors: I will be alongside with Reda mentors for the interested people. We will gather Email adresses, and eventually Facebook accounts (it works better in Morocco with Facebook). We will add the interested to our Facebook page, that is updated often. We can also create a special Facebook group for the after event, where all new editors can reach to us and discuss the different issues and ask us all questions they have or difficulties they encounter with editing in Wikipedia.
6. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?

Impact

Number of events : One single event
Number of participants: Between 100-150
Number of new editors: We estimate new editors to be around 10
Number of of articles created or improved: To be added after the event
Number of repeat participants (for projects that include a series of events)

Resources

What resources do you have? Include information on who is organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding). We have the local, that will be a big room at the university. We do also have a part of the material, that will be provided by Enactus INPT (computers/projects..) We expect the participants to come with their own material, but we can have extra resources for use of few people who do not have computer/cmartphone.

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount. We would like to print Business cards in order to spread our contacts, to reach out to as many people as possible, and to keep the contact with the participants, in order to make them regular wikipedia users in the future: Approximation cost: 1000 MAD (Sets of 100 Cards in 3 languages: Arabic/Berber/English) We would also like to provide food and drinks for the participants. It has been proven that events with food(breakfast or light lunch) attract much more than those without. In this sense, we expect to have some snacks,pizzas and sodas to encourage the participants to stay longer. Approximation of the cost: 1000 MAD Total: 2000 MAD

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