Movement Charter/June Conversations/Arabic

This is a work plan to facilitate the conversation with the Arabic community

Sunday (June 20): Using this page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Overview/ar, start posting some definitions about the movement charter. Post using the different channels, which have a good number of Arab followers, in Arabic. Follow up on the comments and reply to questions.

Monday – Thursday (June 21-24): Start a conversation about the need to form a drafting committee for the charter. This should be in multiple channels, including: • Telegram Group (Bachounda) • Facebook Group (Ravan) • Meta page and Village Pump (Mervat)

The objective of the conversation is to gather in-depth, diverse, quality feedback to support the next steps in the creation of the Movement Charter drafting committee. Ask the following questions: • What composition should the committee have in terms of movement roles, gender, regions, affiliations and other diversity factors? • What is the best process to select the committee members to form a competent and diverse team? • How much dedication is it reasonable to expect from committee members, in terms of hours per week and months of work? Should the initial members commit for the whole duration of the project or should renewals be expected?

Please use the following page which includes the translation.https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Updates/June_15,_2021/ar

Tuesday (June 22): Announce the registration to the Global Discussion which will be conducted on June 26-27.

Thursday (June 24): Call for participation in a video call to be conducted on Saturday. Make announcement and prepare for everything.

The three of us need to meet (Friday?) to prepare for this video meeting.

Report

The discussions with the Arabic community about the drafting committee were done on two social media channels, facebook group and telegram group. The invitation added to the village pump didn't attract any attention.

However, the discussions in the facebook page entended beyond the movement charter, as one user expressed his objection to how representation of communities is being limited by initiating many councils and such; he thought that such committees and efforts is nothing but a waste of time and attracts the communities focus to non-practical things and that will not bring any true diversity to the system of the foundation. This shifted the discussions a bit in one of the posts. In summary, some people asked about the charter itself; they thought it would be clearer if they know what the content of the charter will be and that leads to a better thinking and decisions about the drafting committee. Another thought came from an active admin, who suggested that we should invite people who are currently active in applying the policies to apply to the drafting committee; in addition, the draft must be reviewed by the community for feedback. A newcommer suggested that volunteers should be chosen based on their educational degrees and expericnes they have.

An experienced participants advised that the fist step to form the committee is to open it for the interested people to nominate themselves for the committee, then the community should either choose them by direct voting (majority) and the foundation can them assign other members to fill any gaps in the required experiences. It’s important as well to engage whoever was active in the prior strategy conversations, by encouraging them to nominate themselves for such committees.

Another experienced participant suggested that initiatives like the charter should be built from the ground up, and all the different types of communities should be involved properly. As a MENA community if we don’t participate effectively in drafting the charter then it will be forced on us from above.

Sunday June 27: Global Video call. The Arabic presentation in the call was satisfying, 10 of 70 participants and sometimes the number increased. Some participants provided good feedback, and explained their thoughts thouroughly. The participants expressed their happiness about the design and facilitation of the sessions as a whole and were happy that communication in Arabic was welcomed and that broke one important barrier to participation, which is "language". Direct interperation good that it attracted non-experienced users to connect and listen. However, a participant or two complained that the time allocated for discussions was not sufficient. A question was raised in one of the channels, was "why not to vote "elections" in two phases, the first is to elect members locally, and then globaly". The participant was advised to post this question on the meta discussions when the report in posted next week or remind us when the next round of consultations starts.