Meet our Youth Conference 2025 Delegates
Since its inception in 2021, the Deoband Community Wikimedia has significantly tried to inculcate leadership skills in its community of volunteers, and subsequently celebrated several milestones. 2025 brought us a different joy - two of our young volunteers received full scholarships to attend the Wikimedia Youth Conference, in Prague, from May 16 to 18, 2025. Organised by Wikimedia Czech Republic, the Youth Conference brings together about 80 young Wikimedians from across the globe, with a thought to "create a support network that they can rely on for their long-term efforts and give them the tools to become more involved", and to give them a voice and help them grow and develop their organisational skills. These youngsters will collectively discuss and bring learnings about how Wikimedia projects and activities can be made more accessible to young people, alongside ensuring their growth and retention. It is a proud moment for us, and a huge milestone to celebrate that 2 of these 80 youngsters come from the Deoband Community Wikimedia.
Faiz, a long-time dedicated Wikimedian, who finds solace in fighting vandalism on Wikipedia, and Sana, who co-founded the Wiki Club AMU in May 2024, will be taking our voice, our learnings, our objectives, our successes, and everything else, to an international conference in the European world for the first time. This is for the first time that we have two delegates at an international conference - this becomes a forever memory.
Faiz has been a volunteer with DCW for considerable time, with his focus on content creation and maintenance tasks. He brings with him a very keen understanding of Wikipedia’s technical aspects. He was a member of the now-defunct core organising team of Wiki Club Jamia, and is currently an observer member of the DCW Board. During a student-exchange program, he also established the Wikipedia Club at Woodland Park High School, in Colorado, showcasing his commitment to youth engagement in the movement. Likewise, Sana is an enthusiastic Wikimedian, founder and former lead of the Wiki Club AMU, who primarily has a vision to bring to Muslim women to the open ecosystem. She has consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership skills through her active participation in our events, internal discussions, and her contributions to the growth and sustainability of the Wiki Club AMU. The celebrated Wiki Clicks AMU, an open photography contest that ran in January 2025, was her brainchild!
Dedicated volunteers like Faiz and Sana make DCW sustainable. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to both, and hope that they bring new spirits of learning and dedication from Prague, for continuous growth of the DCW initiatives.