Education/Newsletter/November 2014/Egyptian Student invites his colleagues at Al-Azhar University to edit Wikipedia

By Samir Elsharbaty (WMF)

 
Abdel-Rahman Elsakka

Snippet: Abdel-Rahman Elsakka, a student at Al-Azhar University invites his fellow students to join Wikipedia Education Program after his successful term in the program.

Abdel-Rahman Elsakka is a student in Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He is major in Turkish language and translation and so he wanted to make use of the language he studies to edit the Arabic Wikipedia by translating articles from the Turkish Wikipedia to its Arabic equivalent. He joined WikiWomen Prize, a contest to edit women-related articles on the Arabic Wikipedia. He enrolled in the Turkish translation course in Ain Shams University to learn the Wikipedia editing basics with our Wikipedia Ambassador there, May Hachem, who invited him to join her course since there were no Wikipedia Courses in his campus last term. In his first weeks on Wikipedia, Abdel-Rahman created 16 articles on the Arabic encyclopedia and developed 6 bigger articles. The articles are listed the summary page of his contributions to the competition (in Arabic).

As a result of his great contribution, Abdel-Rahman was awarded the second place in the WikiWomen prize. Abdel-Rahman is now serving as a Wikipedia ambassador in his campus to help his fellow students edit Wikipedia. Al-Azhar University is one of the first universities in the world, was founded in 970 or 972 A.C. It is the oldest degree granting university in Egypt. Starting a Wikipedia Education Program course there is an asset to the program and is hopefully a start to great contributions coming from this heritage institution thanks to Abdel-Rahman's hard work.

Have a look at Abdel-Rahman's course page on the Arabic Wikipedia.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Egypt here.