Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Annual Grant for the Wikimedians of UAE User Group/Final Report
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Part 1: Understanding your work
[edit]Per the recent update on the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy process, Wikimedia Affiliates that are General Support Fund grantees will fulfill their affiliate reporting requirements through their final or yearly grantee report.
If you are a Wikimedia Affiliate, you will use this form for your affiliate reporting and to address the affiliate health criteria. You do not need to submit a separate report to AffCom. Follow the guidance in the green boxes to report on how you met the corresponding affiliate health criteria.
If you are not a Wikimedia Affiliate, aligning your responses with the affiliate criteria is optional and not required.
1. Please share to what extent your programs, approaches, and strategies contributed to addressing the challenges you shared in your proposal. If they did not contribute as you believed they would, please share what obstacles you faced and what, if anything, you learned from them? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 1.) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 1.1 (Goal delivery). Describe how you actively delivered on mission goals, e.g. content creation.
Our programs and strategies contributed significantly to addressing community growth, multilingual engagement, and regional collaboration challenges.
In the UAE, we implemented a mix of competitions, Wiki AE Club sessions, community meetups, university workshops (in the UAE and KSA), and participation in key cultural and knowledge events such as Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival, Nayyaliah, ICA, TTT, and Reading for Pleasure initiatives. Regionally, we expanded our reach across the GCC through activities such as Jahzeen workshops, Jeddah University training, From Their Righteous Words, Arabian Gulf on Wikidata, Let’s Celebrate Our Gulf, Wiki Loves Earth Oman, and the Knowledge Game Workshop at EAFoL 2025.
One key challenge was heavy traffic in the UAE, which limited in-person participation. This led us to prioritize online activities, which proved effective, while still supporting motivated community members who organized in-person sessions such as TTT. The Wiki AE Club successfully engaged both Wikimedians and non-Wikimedians through four sessions (two Arabic, two English), featuring six non-Wikimedian guest speakers and an average of 12–15 non-Wikimedian attendees per session. A new community member co-organized the program, contributing to leadership development.
Targeted initiatives such as 1Lib1Ref successfully engaged new communities, particularly librarians, through two focused sessions. Our Emirati Women’s Day campaign was multilingual and conducted in six languages, supporting content diversity. We also maintained monthly newsletters to ensure consistent communication, community engagement, and participation.
A key learning was that Wiki Loves Monuments is not sustainable in the UAE due to the lack of Freedom of Panorama. While we may continue Wiki Loves Earth through partnerships with local photographers, we will not organize WLM in future cycles, allowing us to focus on more context-appropriate and sustainable programs.
2. Is there a plan to build on the key successes you had? If yes, please describe the plan and if no, please share the limitations to do so. For instance, did the activities lead to any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future? (required)
Yes. We plan to continue organizing multilingual campaigns, with increased focus on languages beyond Arabic. We will also strengthen communication and community engagement efforts and work on forming a Board of Trustees and developing bylaws to support long-term governance and sustainability of the User Group.
3. Please provide a link to reports that detail the activities that took place in the last year. This can include an annual report, Meta pages, and websites. If there are no links available, briefly describe the implemented activities and programs below or upload any files. (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 3.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.1 (Affiliate health & resilience), 4.1 (Internal engagement), 4.2 (Community connection), and 4.3 (Partnerships and collaboration):
- Describe your activities engaging new users, new members for your decision-making body(ies), and developing leaders and organizers (2.1).
- Describe your activities creating or hosting spaces to encourage greater collaboration and engagement among your members (4.1).
- Describe how you engage with the contributing community that you serve and/or support (4.2).
- Describe your partnerships with other affiliates or with non-Wikimedia entities (4.3).
4. Are you interested in sharing what you achieved or learned this year with the wider community through different peer learning programs (e.g. Let's Connect program, Diff)? (optional)
5. Did you collect feedback from your community or target groups on how the activities implemented impacted them? If yes, please attach/provide information on the results (e.g. community surveys, stories, impact booklets/reports, interviews with partner institutions, etc). Did you collect other impact-specific data? (required)
For affiliates, the response to Question 5. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criteria 4.1 (Internal Engagement), 4.2 (Community Connection), or 4.3 (Partnerships & collaboration), where applicable.
Yes. We collect feedback after each activity through surveys. The feedback helps us assess impact, participant satisfaction, and areas for improvement, and informs the planning of future activities.
6. During the fund period, did your efforts do any of the following? (required):
For affiliates, the response to Question 6. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criterion 2.2 (Diversity balance).
- 6.1 Bring in participants from the following groups: women, young people, underrepresented geographical regions (ESEAP, LATAM, SSA, MENA, SA)
- 6.2 Develop content about the following underrepresented topics or groups of people: women, speakers of minority languages, underrepresented geographical regions (ESEAP, LATAM, SSA, MENA, SA)
- 6.3 Support the retention of: Editors, Organizers, Partnerships
7. What, if any, effective tactics or approaches can you share that worked well when dealing with the programs under points 6.1-6.3 that you selected? (optional)
.
8. If you developed partnerships, which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors (optional):
N/A
Part 2: Metrics
[edit]| Metrics name | Target | Result | Comments and tools used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | N/A | 320 | |
| Number of all editors | N/A | 248 | |
| Number of new editors | N/A | 50 | |
| Number of retained editors | N/A | 15 | |
| Number of all organizers | 6 | ||
| Number of new organizers | 2 |
| Wikimedia project | Target - Number of created pages | Target - Number of improved pages | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 1000 | 500 | 2138 | 202 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 1000 | 1370 | ||
| Wikidata | 500 | 1095 | ||
| Wiktionary | ||||
| Wikisource | 1 | 65 | ||
| Wikimedia Incubator | ||||
| Translatewiki | ||||
| MediaWiki | ||||
| Wikiquote | 2000 | 600 | ||
| Wikivoyage | ||||
| Wikibooks | ||||
| Wikiversity | ||||
| Wikinews | ||||
| Wikispecies | ||||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
Tool used and comments (optional):
11. Did you set other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required): No
11.1. Other Metrics.
In your application, you outlined some other open metrics that you would like to measure. Please fill out the achieved results for each of the open metrics you defined.
| Other Metrics name | Metrics Description | Target | Result | Tools and comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community Building and Outreach | WikiAE Mentorship Program | 10 | ||
| Education and Digital Literacy | Training and internship program | 30 | ||
Part 3: Skill Development / Capacity Building
[edit]12. Reflecting on your programmatic (external) and organizational (internal) work, did your grant support you to undergo any skill development that made a difference to your success? If yes, what skill was developed, and how did it lead to success? (e.g. received coaching on public speaking, attended training on nonviolent communication, hosted professional development conversations on leadership, learned and used a new tool for project management, etc.)? Can you share any materials? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 12.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.2 (Diversity balance) and 3.1 (Diverse, Skilled, and Accountable Leadership):
- Describe actions taken to prioritize gender balance in affiliate leadership, as well as any areas of diversity relevant to your affiliate's context (2.2).
- Describe the management, financial, or other leadership skills of your affiliate leaders. If you have a succession plan, please include it here (3.1).
- Describe any training or skill development (as outlined in the question above) (3.1).
- Incorporate into the annual report a disclosure of conflict of interests (if any) from the leadership (3.1).
No. Due to limited budget allocation, the grant did not support a dedicated skill development or training plan. However, affiliate leaders continued to develop skills through hands-on experience in program implementation, community coordination, and partnership management while delivering the funded activities.(2.2)
- We maintain balanced representation in our affiliate leadership and actively ensure a safe, inclusive space for all genders to participate and take on organizing roles. Our activities and leadership opportunities are open to everyone, and we intentionally create environments where participants feel comfortable contributing, leading, and decision-making regardless of gender. In our local context, we also prioritize linguistic and cultural diversity by organizing multilingual activities and engaging contributors from different nationalities across the UAE and the GCC region.
(3.1)
- Affiliate leaders have strong experience in community management, program planning, partnerships, reporting, and grant management. This includes budgeting, financial tracking, activity coordination, and compliance with WMF requirements. Leadership responsibilities are shared to avoid dependency on a single individual. While a formal succession plan is still in development, we actively involve community members in organizing roles and decision-making processes to build a pipeline of future leaders.
- Affiliate leaders develop their skills through hands-on experience in organizing events, managing budgets, coordinating with partners, and reporting to WMF. We also encourage participation in Wikimedia learning programs, peer-to-peer mentoring, and regional collaboration activities, which strengthen leadership, facilitation, and project management skills.
- At the time of reporting, no conflicts of interest were identified among the affiliate leadership. Any potential conflicts are expected to be disclosed transparently and addressed in line with Wikimedia movement policies.
13. What is one capacity/skill area that you would like to focus on for the next year? And how do you plan to achieve this capacity? (required)
We would like to strengthen our capacity in partnerships and collaboration design for Wikimedia projects. To achieve this, we plan to take Asaf’s course on partnerships and Wikimedia projects on Wiki Learn and apply the learning directly to building more strategic, sustainable partnerships with cultural and educational institutions.
14. If you have additional information or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. Use the space below to upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your report.
For affiliates, also use this section (Question 14) to fulfill the Affiliate Health Criteria requirements.
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for affiliate governance, including affiliate leadership and membership with a breakdown of the demographics; how elections are conducted; how conflicts of interest are declared; and how decisions are made and communicated (2.2, 2.3, 3.1).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for activities incorporating, promoting awareness about, or enforcing the Universal Code of Conduct in your affiliate's activities (3.3).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for internal membership engagement, such as notes from your regular meetings and how you communicate to or involve your membership (4.1).
Decisions are discussed collaboratively with active members, communicated through community channels, and leadership roles are disclosed publicly. Conflicts of interest are declared transparently when applicable. Formal bylaws and a Board of Trustees structure are currently in development to further strengthen governance and succession planning.
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]For affiliates, also use this section (Part 4: Financial reporting) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 3.2 (Financial & Legal Compliance).
| Description | Planned / received budget for this category (AED) | Amount spent (AED) |
|---|---|---|
| Personnel costs | 6000 | 22038 |
| Operational costs | 20000 | 29291.7 |
| Programmatic costs | 26000 | 44168.3 |
| Total General Support Fund | 95497.99 | 95498 |
| Other revenue | ||
| Remaining funds from General Support Fund | N/A |
15. Please state the total amount spent from this fund in your local currency. (required)
95498 AED
16. Please provide an overview of the amount spent from this fund in the following budget categories in your local currency. (required)
- Operational costs: 29291.7 AED
- Programmatic costs: 44168.3 AED
- Staff and contractor costs: 22038 AED
17. Did you have any other revenue sources (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): No
- 17.1. Provide the total amount received from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): AED
- 17.2. Provide the total amount spent from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): AED
18. Provide a financial report document which will provide the details of funds received and spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
18.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
N/A
19. Do you have any unspent funds from this funding?: No
20. Final confirmations (required)
- 20.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement? You must be in compliance with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement. In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the Wikimedia Foundation mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
- Yes
- 20.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
- Yes
- 20.3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
- Yes
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