SUD/ Annual Activity Report 2021

Introduction

Reporting period June 2021- May 2022

This the second-year report for the user group of Sudan, the past year was very challenging for the post revolution and this reporting year was even harder to mitigate with the quick rhythm of the change in the political and economic status of Sudan.

Scheduled demonstrations were set leading to locking down most streets and bridges by the government and the flow of movement was impossible most of the time.

Post the COVID-19 pandemic which continues to have significant impacts on the economic, social and political conditions in Sudan. The lockdown and limited economic opportunities, our access to universities which we identify as our main target of the year for training of newcomers.

June 2021

Preparing the Sudanese Content on Wikimedia 2021 project, applying and approval of the grant of 10 KUSD, problems in delivering fund wires due to financial and political regulations

In preparation for the Election, helping the community members make sure they are eligible to vote in the coming elections of the Wikimedia Board of Trustee.

July 2021

Agreement between Wikimedia Foundation and the Open Foundation West Africa as a fiscal sponsor for the project of Sudanese content on Wikimedia 2021

August 2021

Meetings with Open Foundation West Africa to facilitate project, but not delivered the fund yet due to hard currency regulations in Sudan

Listed our community among the volunteers to help in Wikimedia Board Election Joint the

Telegram Group Posted information through the Community Channels.

September 2021

Meeting with the Sudanese user group members to discuss the user group participation in the wikiarabia 2021 Algeria  

October 2021

Attending Wikiarabia Algeria online conference 15-17 October 2021

November 2021

Wikimedia Sudan joining wikiindaba 2021 taking place on 1st to 3rd November

Encouraging the community members to attend the online sessions of the conference.

December 2021

Receiving the fund transfer of the project funds from our fiscal sponsor the OFWA through our user group co-founder Ola Mahadi in Egypt.

Online meeting on 24 December: the meeting was held after receiving the the grant first instalment to facilitate and arrange the project events and discuss the possibilities due to the updates in the country situation

On 28th December 2021 Sudanese team received first instalment through a team member account in Egypt ‘Ola Mahadi”. The total amount of grant received was (2,140,320 SDG (1 EGP = 27.3 SDG exchange rate)

The situation in Sudan is still not stable and the Emergency status still declared, but the team is proposing implementing some of the project activities starting in the third week of January.

January 2022

In-person meeting where held with facilitators, to discuss in details what can be done in the project and start the actual preparation of the activities (facilitation and other contracts, hall selection, etc..) and how to work through the political lock-downs in Sudan

on 12th and 13th January 2022, Fatima  facilitated the 2=days workshop that was held in Nyala city, South Darfur

On22nd January, Edit-a-thon Nyala City, South Darfur was held.

February 2022

Preparation were done for the selection of the participants for Khartoum workshops

Meeting on February 8th with the Sudanese Association for Libraries and information the meeting was at the university of Khartoum, to introduce the community for them and for their participation in the workshop

Two-days workshop was held, plus an extra day for edit-a-thon on the dates of 19th to ,22nd and 23rd of February 2022.

Note: time of the workshop was rescheduled several times due to the demonstrations and the current situation in Sudan

Meetings with the Swedish Embassy to facilitate the wikigap project in March.

March 2022

A 2-Days workshop was held on 1st and 2nd of March, plus an extra day of edit-a-thon on Khartoum.

With the Swedish Embassy Wikigap training workshop was held on 15 and 16 of March, and a workshop on 26th of March, the venue was in Zain Telecommunication building, Khartoum.

Launching celebration ceremony was held in the Ambassador residence in Khartoum. The event was under the theme women in environment and climate change.

April 2022

The group maily was following up on our application to Wiki Love africa 2022 Grant which was very challenging to receive even after succeeding to have a fiscal sponsor from Open Foundation West Africa.

Orientation and preparation for the Wiki challenge on environmental changes led by the arabic community of wikipedia which was a collaborative work of more than two user group.

May 2022

The group participated in Africa Wiki Challenged by organizing online mobilization session followed by in person edit thon. 11 articles were created, and 18 editors joined the challenge.

The group also participated in wiki challenge organized by Wikipedia Arabic Community on Wiki Environment which was mainly focusing on enhancing the Arabic content on issues related to environmental change and global challenges associated to it. Several events on the challenge were orgnized to promote the community to participate in the challenge.

Challenges

The community is still very small and accessing new user within the political and soc-economic status of Sudan post the revolution is very challenging. The community is developing more regular thematic editing sessions to facilitate training of new users. The community was able through funded activities and contracting the training centre which has a computer lab to create an access point to help make access to the internet and enabling environment for editing easier. In our assessment this was better than renting laptops for training sessions.

Even Though Sudan was lifted from the sanction list by the USA, the banking system is still isolated from the global community. Having fiscal sponsor made it possible for the community to access small scale grant,