Some brief notes about the MENA trip can be found here: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Education_Program/MENATrip //Abbas.
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:39:14 -0800 From: bnewstead@wikimedia.org To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] MENA Education Program?
Hi Katie, Just to build on Moushira's response to tackle your questions a bit further.
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 5:26 AM, aude aude.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Erik, Sue, Frank, et al,
Can you please say more about the plans for a Middle East education program? (yes I have read notes from the recent trip on outreach wiki)
What is the timeframe? Who is going to run it? Will you establish a "trust" there? Where will the office be?
We are planning a pilot in Cairo, but have not yet firmed up the details. Frank, Annie and Moushira will spend a week in Cairo in December to investigate the opportunity further and see when it would make sense to run a small pilot. We are hoping for February, but want to make sure the conditions are right for success.
If the program is to be duplicated, I certainly hope there are not the same issues with quality, as has happened in Pune. What lessons have you learned and what will you do differently?
We do not plan on duplicating the Pune experience. For one, we want to do a much smaller pilot. We also want to dig into questions regarding copyright and student writing ability in Arabic before we start the pilot. Nitika has captured a series of lessons on the pilot [1] and we are doing further detailed evaluation work to ensure we mine the pilot fully.
Knowing that there is quite a backlog, last time I checked, with pending changes on Arabic Wikipedia, I am very concerned for the ability of volunteers there to handle a massive influx of new content.
This is a concern we share...and we discussed this with the community members in Doha as Moushira mentioned. No easy solutions here and we'll need to innovate.
I am also concerned if you setup a trust in, say Egypt, that will put a damper on any efforts to form a chapter, which I know has been discussed.
We do plan on setting up a regional entity to support our program work in the region. It is premature as to the actual structure. I really don't see this as being a damper on the formation of a chapter, but we don't really have any evidence either way.
If done carefully and well, I would be very delighted to see outreach programs be a success for Arabic Wikipedia, and hope that will be the case.
This is exactly the intention of the work in Arabic and was the spirit we all came out of our Doha convening with. We are all united in this goal...recognizing that it will take a lot of effort by a lot of people to truly reach the full potential of Arabic Wikipedia!
Cheers, Katie
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[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Educati...
Best, Barry
-- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation
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