This project is funded by a Project Grant

Report under review

This Project Grant report has been submitted by the grantee, and is currently being reviewed by WMF staff. You may add comments, responses, or questions to this report's discussion page.

To read the approved grant submission for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Sarmad Yaseen/Initialization project for Iraq user group.

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Welcome to this project's final report! This report shares the outcomes, impact and learnings from the grantee's project.

Part 1: The Project

Summary

attracting new volunteers, increasing the Arabic and Kurdish articles, adding new photos to commons and distributing the cultures of Wikipedia in Iraq.

Project Goals

User group meetups to coordinate the different efforts.
Launching the first version of Wikipedia Education Program.
Doing workshops to teach new volunteers.
Arranging Editathons.
Arranging WLM & WLE competitions.
Arranging 2 trips to take photos of Iraq Monuments.

Project Impact

Targets

Planned measure of success (include numeric target, if applicable)	Actual result	Explanation
User group meetups to coordinate the different efforts (4 meeting in total)	only 1 meeting is held	The security issues in Iraq, closing airports in Erbil as well as not stable situation in 2017 made it difficult to move & meet.
Launching the first version of Wikipedia Education Program.	Failed	We've tried in 2 different locations, The American university in Sulaimaniya AUIS, & The University of Kurdistan UKH. We've done 2 small workshops for instructors & students to explain the WEP but none of the instructors in both universities agreed to participate in the program.
Doing workshops to teach new volunteers (4 in Total)	1 workshop is done in Erbil, & 1 in Baghdad
Arranging Editathons (2 in Total)	None has been done	the lack of good editors in one city.
Arranging WLM & WLE competitions.	Only WLM has been held successfully, 282 photos have been uploaded, 3 local winners.	No one was around for WLE, WLM was a very good success that's why we are intending to repeat it for 2018.
Arranging 2 trips to take photos of Iraq Monuments.	None arranged	lack of members in one place.

Story

Actually we had a couple of successful projects earlier but a bunch of bad circumstances held this project of success. Basically the greatest success was having 282 photos uploaded for WLM for Iraqi monuments that were not there for related articles. Other than that, the WEP didn't work out as well as attracting new volunteers, obviously we need to change the whole strategy & focus more in order to attract people who they can continue & be part of the Wiki community.

Methods and activities

WLM method worked out fine, we've used social media (Facebook) to announce the competition & it attracted attention definitely.
For WEP we had personal meeting at first with the universities in order to convince them to have a small workshop/presentation for instructors & students to present the program, we've managed to have that but after that none of the instructors agreed to participate in the program basically because 70% of them are above 50 years old & they strongly believe that Wikipedia is not a reliable source & they avoid using it academically.

Project resources

Please provide links to all public, online documents and other artifacts that you created during the course of this project. Even if you have linked to them elsewhere in this report, this section serves as a centralized archive for everything you created during your project. Examples include: meeting notes, participant lists, photos or graphics uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, template messages sent to participants, wiki pages, social media (Facebook groups, Twitter accounts), datasets, surveys, questionnaires, code repositories... If possible, include a brief summary with each link.

Learning

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you took enough risks in your project to have learned something really interesting! Think about what recommendations you have for others who may follow in your footsteps, and use the below sections to describe what worked and what didn’t.

What worked well

What did you try that was successful and you'd recommend others do? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

Your learning pattern link goes here

What didn’t work

What did you try that you learned didn't work? What would you think about doing differently in the future? Please list these as short bullet points.

Other recommendations

If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please list them here.

Next steps and opportunities

Are there opportunities for future growth of this project, or new areas you have uncovered in the course of this grant that could be fruitful for more exploration (either by yourself, or others)? What ideas or suggestions do you have for future projects based on the work you’ve completed? Please list these as short bullet points.

Part 2: The Grant

Finances

Actual spending

	Budget item	Units	Actual cost per unit	Total cost	Notes
1	WLM 1st Prize	1	200 $	200 $
2	WLM 2nd Prize	1	150 $	150 $
3	WLM 3rdPrize	1	100 $	100 $
4	Workshops for new volunteer	2	150 $	300 $	One done in Erbil & the other in Baghdad
5	Logistics: (Transportation to Sulaimaniya -2 ways-)	1	50 $	100 $	For doing the WEP presentation at the American University in Sulaimaniya
6	Logistics: (WEP roller banners-Arabic & Kurdish-)	2	75 $	150 $
7	Logistics: (Stationary for Baghdad workshop)	1	28 $	28 $
8	Advertising (Online Ads)	1	27 $	27$	For the WLM competition
	Total			1055 $

Remaining funds

Yes (1990 USD) If WLM Iraq rapid grant got accepted, then will pull out 700 USD & return the rest to WMF bank account.

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadmin wikimedia.org, according to the guidelines here?

Please answer yes or no. If no, include an explanation.

Confirmation of project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement? Yes

Is your project completed? Yes

Grantee reflection

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on what this project has meant to you, or how the experience of being a grantee has gone overall. Is there something that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed, or that you’ll do differently going forward as a result of the Project Grant experience? Please share it here!

Grants:Project/Sarmad Yaseen/Initialization project for Iraq user group/Final

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