A group of 20 students participated in the first session of “Wikipedia Ambassadors”, a new program organized by Wikimedia Israel
On December 20th, 2018, a group of 20 high school students convened in a lecture room at Haifa University to attend the first session of the “Wikipedia Ambassadors” program.
The session included an introduction by Bekriah Mawasi, Arabic Education coordinator at WMIL, followed by a videocall with Samir El-Sharabaty, writer at WMF communication deptartment, who joined the event from Cairo. Samir shared his inspirational experience as both a student and an ambassador at campus. The session also included a remarkable guest talk presented by Amir Khatib, journalist and TV host, who talked about Arabic content in various online media platforms. In this talk, students were introduced to the variety of styles in Modern Standard Arabic found online.
The program, which is held for the first time, is designed to motivate participants to contribute to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects on a large scale. As most participants are students who participated in the “Students Write Wikipedia” program previously, the program aims to provide them with advanced tools and resources which enable them to become Wikipedian leaders within their schools, which encourage them to express themselves creatively, to develop critical thinking, to raise their awareness on free knowledge, to acquire new skills that they will use in their educational environment, and to turn them into Wikipedian leaders in their schools where they will assist school staff and colleagues in Wikipedia related activities.
