Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedians of Kuwait User Group grant 2025/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, approaches, and strategies in 2025 contributed significantly to addressing the key challenges outlined in our proposal, particularly content gaps in Arabic Wikimedia projects, limited local participation, and the need for sustainable community capacity building.
Through a diversified portfolio of edit-a-thons, competitions, and thematic campaigns, we successfully expanded content and regional representation across multiple Wikimedia projects. In total, 14,612 contributions were achieved across Arabic Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikiquote, and other language Wikipedias. Targeted initiatives such as Sharing Kuwait with the World, Kuwaiti Women Editing Competition, Gulf Loves Sports, and Let’s Celebrate Our Gulf directly addressed underrepresented topics related to Kuwait, the Gulf region, women, culture, heritage, and sports.
Our approach combined content production with structured training and mentorship. Workshops on Arabic Wikipedia editing, Wikisource, Wikidata, ISA Tool, and thematic photography campaigns helped newcomers build skills while contributing meaningfully. Training programs reached more than 170 participants across workshops and courses.
Strategic collaborations with regional and international Wikimedia affiliates (UAE, Iraq, Iran, Ghana, Sudan, and others), as well as external partners such as the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, enabled us to overcome capacity limitations and broaden outreach. Joint projects increased visibility, shared expertise, and allowed us to implement large-scale initiatives with modest budgets.
Despite these successes, we faced several challenges. Sustaining long-term editor engagement beyond competitions remained difficult, especially for volunteers balancing other commitments. Some activities relied heavily on a small core group of experienced editors, which occasionally limited scalability. Additionally, fully online formats, while inclusive, sometimes reduced depth of interaction and follow-up with participants.
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)
our future plan focuses on transitioning participants from short-term engagement to long-term contribution. This includes structured mentorship, advanced training sessions (e.g., Wikidata, maintenance tasks, and content quality improvement), and gradually involving active contributors in organizational and leadership roles within the group.
The success of targeted workshops (ISA Tool, Wikisource digitization, Wikidata, and Arabic Wikipedia editing) highlighted the value of skill-based learning. In response, we plan to expand specialized training tracks aligned with community needs, such as content maintenance, translation, data curation, and media documentation. This will help diversify contributor skills and reduce reliance on a small core 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).
Annual report: [1]
2025 Financial Report: [2]
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.
the data not ready now, will be added soon
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, 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)
Short, clearly themed competitions and edit-a-thons
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):
Board members’ outreach, Volunteers from our communities, Partners proactive interest
Part 2: Metrics
[edit]| Metrics name | Target | Result | Comments and tools used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | 100 | 170 | |
| Number of all editors | N/A | 160 | |
| Number of new editors | N/A | 7 | |
| Number of retained editors | N/A | 3 | |
| Number of all organizers | 11 | 11 | |
| Number of new organizers | 2 | 2 |
| Wikimedia project | Target - Number of created pages | Target - Number of improved pages | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 400 | 3682 | 612 | |
| Wikimedia Commons | 800 | 4198 | 4059 | |
| Wikidata | 478 | |||
| Wiktionary | ||||
| Wikisource | 500 | 1378 | ||
| Wikimedia Incubator | ||||
| Translatewiki | ||||
| MediaWiki | ||||
| Wikiquote | 48 | 157 | ||
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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).
Grant-supported workshops and projects enabled organizers and participants to develop practical skills across multiple Wikimedia projects. This included advanced editing skills on Arabic Wikipedia, Wikidata item creation and data modeling, Wikisource digitization workflows, and the use of the ISA Tool for adding multilingual structured captions to media files. These skills led to tangible outcomes, such as 4,059 ISA Tool contributions, 478 new Wikidata items, and 1,378 new Wikisource pages, demonstrating a clear link between skill acquisition and successful content production.
organizers strengthened their abilities to design and deliver online workshops, manage competitions, and mentor newcomers. Leading recurring training sessions (such as the Arabic Wikipedia editor training series and Wikidata workshops) improved facilitation, curriculum design, and participant engagement. These skills helped increase newcomer retention and ensured that activities were accessible to first-time contributors.
Managing more than 20 projects and partnerships during the year required improved skills in coordination, communication, and project planning. Through hands-on experience supported by the grant, organizers developed stronger leadership, time management, and cross-community collaboration skills, particularly when working with regional affiliates and external partners. This contributed to the successful delivery of 28 projects and workshops with a relatively modest total budget.
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 plan to pair experienced contributors with active newcomers from 2025 projects, focusing on skill progression, policy understanding, and confidence-building to support long-term participation.
In addition to technical skills, we will introduce sessions on community coordination, project planning, conflict resolution, and Wikimedia governance to prepare contributors for organizer and facilitator roles.
Active members will be invited to co-organize edit-a-thons, lead workshops, or manage specific project components, allowing them to gain hands-on leadership experience in a supportive environment.
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).
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 (KWD) | Amount spent (KWD) |
|---|---|---|
| Personnel costs | 0 | 0 |
| Operational costs | 0 | 696 |
| Programmatic costs | 4534 | 3786 |
| Total General Support Fund | 4534 | 4482 |
| 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)
4482 KWD
16. Please provide an overview of the amount spent from this fund in the following budget categories in your local currency. (required)
- Operational costs: 696 KWD
- Programmatic costs: 3786 KWD
- Staff and contractor costs: 0 KWD
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): KWD
- 17.2. Provide the total amount spent from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): KWD
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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