Community Resources and Partnerships/India General Support Project/Indic oral culture on Wikimedia- digitization and dissemination 2025-26

statusDraft

India General Support Project

Indic oral culture on Wikimedia- digitization and dissemination 2025-26

proposed start date2025-07-16

proposed end date2026-07-16

applicant• Amrit Sufi

organization (if applicable)• N/A

give feedback

Universal Code of Conduct

Applicant information

Organization name or Wikimedia Username for individuals. (required): Amrit Sufi

Are you a first-time applicant? (required)

You are applying as a(n). (required): Individual

Are your group or organization legally registered in your country? (required): N/A

Please provide links to the following documents if they are available

These documentation can be provided in your local language(s), no translations required.

Organizational website
Detailed financial reporting and/or audits
Documentation of the governance structure, board list, governance processes
Documentation of the general assembly decision on your plan

Main proposal

1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be a title for the Meta-Wiki page. (required): Indic oral culture on Wikimedia- digitization and dissemination 2025-26
3. Proposed start date. (required): 2025-07-16

4. Proposed end date. (required): 2026-07-16

5. Does your organization or group have an Affiliate or Organizational Annual Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required): Yes; [1]

6. Does your affiliate, organization or group have a Strategic Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required): Yes; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H9H4U7tVR06KxOVZJ2Yers0xpN43dtBsBTGl7k8o9ZA/edit?usp=sharing

7.1. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required): Regional (more than one country in the same continent or region); The project aims to include volunteer participants from South Asia. All the countries aren't predecided yet, however, participation from Nepal is confirmed.

7.2. If your project includes in-person activities, are there any international participants travelling to India for them? (required): Yes
7.2.1. List all countries of participation. (required)

Nepal and any other potential participants from South Asia

7.3. Will the project be transferring funds to any international participants? (required): Yes
7.3.1. List all international participants receiving funding and their countries. (required)

Sanjib Chaudhary from Nepal.

Zubair Torwali from Pakistan.

8. What are your programs, approaches, and strategies? What are the challenges that you are trying to address and how will your strategies support you in addressing these challenges? (required)

The project's strategies are designed to address the challenges of cultural loss, digital divide, and technical barriers by empowering communities, leveraging Wikimedia platforms, and developing innovative tools.

The oral culture of Indic languages carries information about lifestyles, beliefs, and culture. Homogenization and loss of languages is resulting in the loss of these essential forms of knowledge. By encouraging documentation of oral culture like folk songs, tales, medicinal knowledge, oral history, phrases etc., they are made accessible and encourage the growth and sustenance of these.

Interlinking the media files and transcript text to various Wikimedia projects enriches the Wikipedia articles, Wikidata, and creates a digital library of literature and other forms of knowledge on Wikisource previously available only orally. Apart from that, there will be experimentation with creation of two types of list to nudge the type of oral culture documented by volunteer participants: creating a list of highly-read Wikipedia articles without media to inform the audio-visual collection of material, and secondly a list of culturally important topics lacking Wikipedia articles and media made in partnership with an academic advisor.

The oral culture projects so far have assessed the needs regarding language and culture documentation and revitalization as part of a needs assessment research, created a toolkit, online training modules, and brought about output in the form of audio-visuals created, awareness raised, and enriched Wikis. In-person meetups have been organized to encourage community building, knowledge sharing, and discussions about future possibilities in language and culture dissemination in South Asia. Specifically, these efforts have resulted in the engagement of 13 distinct languages with 22 participants during the ongoing project 'Enhancing Indic oral culture on Wikimedia projects' and 9 language communities with 17 participants during the previous experimental 'Indic oral culture project', demonstrating tangible progress in expanding the scope of documented oral traditions.

The applicant has been working on these projects for recognition of the importance of oral culture digitization in order to dismantle postcolonial attitudes towards knowledge. She has been documenting and disseminating her own culture on Wikimedia projects since 2021. She also speaks to the larger public via storytelling and blogging, resulting in recognition by a national and an international newspaper. Spreading awareness and acknowledgement is an integral part of encouraging the preservation and proliferation of oral culture, hence partnership with similarly inclined projects and organizations and spreading awareness on various media channels has been included in the action plans.

Programs, Approaches, and Strategies are listed below:

Comprehensive Training and Capacity Building:

Programs: Online and in-person workshops, mentorship programs, and the creation of training resources. This would be achieved by providing participants with the skills and knowledge needed for oral culture documentation, Wikimedia editing, and knowledge dissemination. These would be achieved by improving training modules and partnering with organizations specializing in language justice and digital documentation. Along with that, providing ongoing support and mentorship would be essential for ensuring ongoing cultural documentation past the project as well.

Community-Driven Content Creation: will be enacted by volunteer participants engaging in fieldwork, audio-visual documentation, and content curation. They will be empowered to document their own cultural heritage. They will be facilitated for planning and preparation for fieldwork, provided logistical and technical support, while also implementing quality control measures.
Wikimedia Integration and Dissemination:the content will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, transcribed on Wikisource, and the content will be integrated into Wikipedia and Wikidata. Thus, Wikimedia platforms will be utilized to make oral culture content accessible to a global audience. The participants will be provided training on Wikimedia editing and content integration. This will happen after developing best practices for content reuse and creating lists of articles that can be improved with media.
Community Building and Collaboration via online forums, in-person meetups, and collaborative projects. The aim is fostering a vibrant and supportive community of citizen archivists. Regular online and offline events will be organized to achieve this goal.
Building partnerships with academic institutions and cultural organizations.
Tool Development and Improvement: in parallel to the project, researching and developing tools for efficient upload and transcription will go on. This will involve collaborating with developers to create user-friendly tools.
Impact Assessment and Knowledge Sharing will be done by conducting community surveys, analyzing content usage, and disseminating project findings.
Evaluating the project's impact and sharing best practices: by preparing and disseminating project reports, creating Diff articles and blogs by participants.

9. What categories are your main programs and related activities under? Please select all that apply. (required)


Category	Yes/No
Education	No
Culture, heritage or GLAM	Yes
Gender and diversity	Yes
Community support and engagement	Yes
Participation in campaigns and contests	Yes
Other	No

Culture, heritage or GLAM

9.2. Select all your programs and activities for Culture, heritage or GLAM. (required): Documenting or incubating languages on Wikimedia projects, Introducing new approaches to underrepresented culture and heritage, e.g. decolonising or reparative work; oral and visual knowledge; outreach to communities of origin, indigenous and first nations self-determination, Supporting institutions to open up their collections, data, metadata, and research; Other programs and activities if any: N/A

Gender and diversity

9.3. Select all your programs and activities for Gender and diversity.: Bringing in women and/or gender diverse participants and editors, Focusing on creating content about women and/or gender diverse groups, including biographies, intersectional topic areas and/or adding images, Focusing on creating content about marginalized (underrepresented) communities and their knowledge, Fomenting female leadership within the movement (either staff, members or boards); Other programs and activities if any: N/A

Community support and engagement

9.4. Select all your programs and activities for Community support and engagement.: On-wiki training of community members, Off-wiki training of community members, Organizing meetups, conferences, and community events, Offering micro-funding and other financial support to community members , Offering non financial support and services to community members (equipment, space, books, etc.); Other programs and activities if any: N/A

Participation in campaigns and contests

9.5. Select all campaigns that apply. (required): Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos; Other programs and activities if any: N/A
10. Please include a link to or upload a timeline (operational calendar) for your programs and activities. (required): [2]

11. Describe your team. (required)

Project lead (paid, full-time): User:Amrit Sufi will manage the project. She has managed four Wikimedia funded projects so far: the Oral Culture Transcription Toolkit, Needs Assessment for the documentation and revitalization of Indic languages using Wikimedia projects, Indic Oral Culture Project, and Enhancing Indic oral culture on Wikimedia projects. She has a background in academia and is a linguist. She also contributes to the visibility of Angika knowledge systems on Wikimedia projects, especially Commons, Wikisource, and Wikidata.

Communications and community coordinator (paid, part-time): User:Yakshitha will be in charge of maintaining efficient communication and engagement with volunteer participants. Assisting with operation of online and in-person events, sharing project updates, and community strengthening will be the tasks of the coordinator. She has been serving as the coordinator for the project 'Enhancing Indic oral culture on Wikimedia projects'.

Logistical support for in-person meetup (short term contract): K N Medini will be responsible for handling accommodation, travel, food, and event venue.

12. Will you be working with any internal (Wikimedia) or external partners? Describe the characteristics of these partnerships and bring a few examples of the most significant partnerships. (required)

Dr Fauzia Farooqui: partnership with a faculty member and scholar of South Asian Studies at Princeton University and the Taaoos Chaman project led by her for building participant networks, sharing collected materials on each other’s websites, offering help with transcription and translation, identifying potential research topics, and supporting training workshops and academic endeavors.

Wikitongues organization: thought partner, enhanced training for participants, advice on training modules and in-person event planning.

Praveen Das (WMF) will provide assistance with various types of partnership possibilities and overall advisory role.

Project advisor: Maari Maitreyi, language justice lead at Whose Knowledge? will serve as an advisor

Whose Knowledge? Organization- events and trainings support as required

13. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select all that apply. (required): Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Identify Topics for Impact, Innovate in Free Knowledge, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt

Metrics

Wikimedia Metrics

14. Please select and fill out Wikimedia Metrics for your proposal. (recommended)

14.1. Number of participants, editors, and organizers.

All metrics provided are optional, please fill them out if they are aligned with your programs and activities.

Participants, editors, and organizers
Metrics name	Target	Description
Number of all participants	N/A	N/A
Number of all editors	25	N/A
Number of new editors	25
Number of retained editors	N/A
Number of all organizers	4	N/A
Number of new organizers	N/A	N/A

14.2. Number of new content contributions to Wikimedia projects. (recommended)

Contributions to Wikimedia projects
Wikimedia project	Created	Edited or improved
Wikipedia	30	90
Wikimedia Commons	350
Wikidata	150	50
Wiktionary
Wikisource	50
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions / Abstract Wikipedia

Description for Wikimedia projects contributions metrics. (optional)

Other Metrics

15. Do you have other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required): Yes


Other Metrics	Description	Target
N/A	Participant feedback for in-person event	N/A
N/A	Participant feedback on overall project experience	N/A
N/A	Metrics of the three communities selected for micro-grants for larger-scale documentation and awareness workshop	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

Budget

16. Will you have any other revenue sources when implementing this proposal (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): No

16.1. List other revenue sources. (required)

N/A

16.2. Approximately how much revenue will you have from other sources in your local currency? (required): N/A

17. Local currency: Indian Rupees (INR)

18. What is the requested amount in Indian Rupees? (required): 2952404 INR

19. Does this proposal include compensation for staff or contractors? (required): Yes

19.1. How many paid staff members and contractors do you plan to cover with this General Support Project? (required): 1 full time staff, 1 part-time staff, and a contractor

19.2. How many FTEs (full-time equivalents) in total will be covered with this General Support Project? (required): 1

19.3. Describe any staff or contractor changes compared to the current year / ongoing General Support Project if any. (required only for returning applicants): inclusion of 1 contractor for logistic support

20. Please provide an overview of your overall budget categories in your local currency. The budget breakdown should include only the amount requested with this General Support Project. (required)


Budget category	Amount in local currency
Staff and contractor costs	100400
Operational costs	116000
Programmatic costs	2952404

21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)

[3]

Additional information

22. In this optional space you can add any other additional information about your proposal or organization that you think can help us when reviewing your proposal. (optional)

By submitting this proposal request you agree with the Institutional Partner Privacy Policy, Application Privacy Statements, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

This is an automatically generated Meta-Wiki page. The page was copied from Fluxx, the web service of Wikimedia Foundation Funds, where the user has submitted their application. Please do not make any changes to this page because all changes will be removed after the next update. Use the discussion page for your feedback. The page was created by CR-FluxxBot.