Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Deepening the impact of Open Knowledge projects for sustainable Knowledge practices across Indian language communities/Yearly Report (2025)
|
|
Part 1: Understanding your work
[edit]Per the recent update on the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy process, Wikimedia Affiliates that are General Support Fund grantees will fulfill their affiliate reporting requirements through their final or yearly grantee report.
If you are a Wikimedia Affiliate, you will use this form for your affiliate reporting and to address the affiliate health criteria. You do not need to submit a separate report to AffCom. Follow the guidance in the green boxes to report on how you met the corresponding affiliate health criteria.
If you are not a Wikimedia Affiliate, aligning your responses with the affiliate criteria is optional and not required.
1. Please share to what extent your programs, approaches, and strategies contributed to addressing the challenges you shared in your proposal. If they did not contribute as you believed they would, please share what obstacles you faced and what, if anything, you learned from them? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 1.) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 1.1 (Goal delivery). Describe how you actively delivered on mission goals, e.g. content creation.
Our Multi-year proposal primarily focused on tackling systemic challenges and the need for systemic changes that could eventually make heavy contributions towards the Indic Wikimedia Ecosystem and Wikimedia movement overall. Our focus is to adapt to the evolving landscape of open knowledge and the Indic Language space. This challenge has multiple faces:
Need for sustainable networks/pathways connecting external experts and communities to Wikimedia: Rather than treating partnerships with communities outside the Wikimedia movement as transactional, the proposal focused on building sustainable, network-based engagement that could support community growth, address content gaps, and enable new community formation.
During Year 1, this approach contributed through early network-building efforts such as BahuBhasa 2025 and the Himalayan Open Knowledge Network. These initiatives helped establish relationships and trust with external experts, cultural practitioners, and institutions, laying the groundwork for longer-term engagement. The Himalayan Open Knowledge Network, developed in collaboration with Prof. Aniket Alam, offered a working model for locally rooted, non-hierarchical knowledge networks. Through BahuBhasa 2025, we brought together over 60 language practitioners from 30+ Indian languages and supported initial engagement with open knowledge practices. We plan to explore the opportunity of the Network evolving into multiple projects and communities.
Long-standing request to contribute to the Wikimedia infrastructure that supports Indic and Global Majority Communities: Rather than focusing on short-term technical interventions, we recognised the need to address long-standing infrastructural gaps affecting Indic and Global Majority communities. We proposed strengthening technical capacity by supporting contributors, maintainers, and developers who can respond to multilingual, low-resource, and context-specific needs, to enable sustained improvements to Wikimedia infrastructure.
Year 1 contributions in this area were foundational, with Road to Wiki and WikiClub Tech integrated into the team’s core work, alongside efforts such as contributing to build Wikisource Reader Application and the Indic Wikimedia Community Insights Dashboard. In the year 2, we will focus on 1) continuing to build a Stable, Multigenerational Pipeline of Technical Contributors for Wikimedia’s Future Infrastructure through WikiClub Tech. 2) Build an infrastructure that supports the contributions from Indic and Global Majority Communities. WikiClub Tech community will be leveraged for this. 3) Contribute to Wikimedia Policy conversations about the future of Wikimedia Technology.
Participation gaps for women, non-binary, and low-resource language communities: The proposal recognised persistent participation gaps for women, non-binary contributors, and low-resource language communities, shaped by structural, linguistic, and capacity-related constraints. To address these barriers, the proposal emphasised targeted capacity-building, leadership development, and inclusive community support mechanisms aimed at enabling more equitable and sustained participation.
The Open Knowledge Initiatives team continues to contribute toward bridging the gender gap in leadership through initiatives such as the She Leads Bootcamp and by facilitating broader conversations on gender and leadership through She Leads Circle calls. Concerning low-resource languages, BahuBhasa 2025 saw participation from practitioners representing more than 30 Indian languages, the majority of which were low-resource languages, several of which don’t even have representation in Wikimedia Communities. The team will continue its efforts to ensure that this diversity is reflected in the projects undertaken as part of the BahuBhasa Network, and subsequently within the Wikimedia projects.
Need for evidence-based planning and ecosystem-level coordination: Gaps in systematic research, shared learning, and coordination across communities, institutions, and partners, which limited strategic decision-making and long-term sustainability. To address this, we prioritised research, evaluation, and conversations to inform more coordinated and effective planning.
During Year 1, we initiated several research projects, mapping studies, and convenings to gather insights for informed planning. We commissioned the Train the Trainer Programme: An Evaluation Study, which was completed by Amrit Sufi, and conducted a mapping study titled “Mapping Activities of Indian Wikimedia Communities and Identifying Gaps for Future Support (2022–2025)”. The Roundtable on Advancing Open and Sustainable Knowledge Networks convened diverse open-knowledge stakeholders to examine how knowledge is created, accessed, and governed, with a focus on inclusive, multilingual digital knowledge systems. BahuBhasa 2025 brought together a wide range of Indian-language stakeholders to explore challenges, opportunities, and collaborative pathways for shaping a multilingual digital future.
The Open Knowledge Initiatives team is consolidating these research outputs and insights, while continuing related research to inform future planning.
Organisational Reintegration
Year 1 saw some unforeseen difficulties in the implementation of the work plan, owing to a regulatory challenge at the Centre for Internet and Society, which restricted access to grant funds for a significant period of time. The Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme was integrated with the Raj Reddy Centre for Technology and Society (RCTS) at IIIT Hyderabad in May 2025 and resulted in the formation of the “Open Knowledge Initiatives” Programme. Approximately six months were spent on reintegration and transition, including relocation and internal process alignment, which affected the pace at which some programs could be implemented at full depth and scale.
While core programmatic work continued, this period highlighted the importance of institutional stability and adaptable planning. Although the transition affected program timelines, the integration has emerged as a positive long-term milestone. With over a decade of experience supporting the Indian Wikimedia movement, the team now operates within an institutional environment that is actively engaged in Indian language technologies and the Wikimedia ecosystem. This strengthened institutional context positions the initiative to contribute more sustainably and effectively to Open Knowledge in India over the coming years.
2. Is there a plan to build on the key successes you had? If yes, please describe the plan and if no, please share the limitations to do so. For instance, did the activities lead to any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future? (required)
Yes. There are two ways our early successes in Year 1 are going inform our future activities: 1) Successful projects and programs directly informing our upcoming plans and building on these encouraging results; 2) Learning and establishing patterns where strong growth and expansion of programs can happen in Year 2, giving way for consolidation and sustainability further.
The work undertaken during Year 1 has directly informed plans to build on key successes, while also helping clarify priorities, sequencing, and areas that require sustained, multi-year investment.
- Several Year 1 initiatives demonstrated strong potential and are being taken forward in more structured ways. WikiClub Tech and Road to Wiki, which evolved from pilot efforts into a scalable contributor pipeline, have now been integrated into the team’s core programmatic work. Building on their success in engaging students and mentoring new technical contributors, the focus is shifting toward deeper, problem-solving contributions aligned with Wikimedia community needs, particularly for Wikisource and MediaWiki-related infrastructure.
- Early network-building efforts, such as BahuBhasa 2025 and the Himalayan Open Knowledge Network, surfaced the value of interest-based, regionally grounded engagement. One of the key ideas behind Bahu Bhasa Network building is to support continued interaction through learning spaces, thematic discussions, and small collaborative efforts, allowing participants to explore engagement with open knowledge and Wikimedia in ways aligned with their local language work. While this network is still at an early stage, BahuBhasa 2025 clarified how such networks can function as entry points for longer-term engagement, leadership emergence, and the gradual development of new projects or communities.
- Investments in research and evaluation, including the Train-the-Trainer Evaluation Study, community mapping, and thematic convenings, generated insights that are now guiding clearer prioritisation of activities. Findings and recommendations we receive from these activities have reinforced the need to rethink capacity-building models and align programs more closely with community readiness and ecosystem realities.
Apart from this, we would also continue exploring our approaches and recalibrating them to build new programs.
3. Please provide a link to reports that detail the activities that took place in the last year. This can include an annual report, Meta pages, and websites. If there are no links available, briefly describe the implemented activities and programs below or upload any files. (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 3.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.1 (Affiliate health & resilience), 4.1 (Internal engagement), 4.2 (Community connection), and 4.3 (Partnerships and collaboration):
- Describe your activities engaging new users, new members for your decision-making body(ies), and developing leaders and organizers (2.1).
- Describe your activities creating or hosting spaces to encourage greater collaboration and engagement among your members (4.1).
- Describe how you engage with the contributing community that you serve and/or support (4.2).
- Describe your partnerships with other affiliates or with non-Wikimedia entities (4.3).
OKI's Annual Activity Report for 2025: [1]
4. Are you interested in sharing what you achieved or learned this year with the wider community through different peer learning programs (e.g. Let's Connect program, Diff)? (optional)
We are very interested in taking part in peer learning programs and sharing our learnings. We would like to do that through various platforms and forms. This includes Peer learning programs like Let’s Connect and Diff, but also other means like Formal and informal knowledge sharing in Wikimedia Conferences, Sharing in regional and thematic Wikimedia Community Calls, building close collaborations with other Global Wikimedia Communities. We would also plan to create Learning resources to be shared with the community members and affiliates.
5. Did you collect feedback from your community or target groups on how the activities implemented impacted them? If yes, please attach/provide information on the results (e.g. community surveys, stories, impact booklets/reports, interviews with partner institutions, etc). Did you collect other impact-specific data? (required)
For affiliates, the response to Question 5. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criteria 4.1 (Internal Engagement), 4.2 (Community Connection), or 4.3 (Partnerships & collaboration), where applicable.
Yes, we collected feedback from the communities and target groups we worked with. Please find some of them in the following:
- Feedback, reflections, and collaboration ideas we collected from Bahu Bhasa Network: [2]
- User Research Report: MediaWiki First-Time User Experience (FTUE) for Developers: [3]
6. During the fund period, did your efforts do any of the following? (required):
For affiliates, the response to Question 6. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criterion 2.2 (Diversity balance).
- 6.1 Bring in participants from the following groups: women, young people, speakers of minority languages, underrepresented geographical regions (ESEAP, LATAM, SSA, MENA, SA)
- 6.2 Develop content about the following underrepresented topics or groups of people: women, speakers of minority languages, underrepresented geographical regions (ESEAP, LATAM, SSA, MENA, SA)
- 6.3 Support the retention of: Editors, Organizers, Partnerships, other
7. What, if any, effective tactics or approaches can you share that worked well when dealing with the programs under points 6.1-6.3 that you selected? (optional)
- Improving participation among women and minority language contributors requires intentional and sustained approaches, rather than generic outreach. Tactics that worked well included targeted outreach, designing programs in consultation with participants, creating safer and more supportive learning spaces, and offering opportunities for participants to take on leadership and organising roles. Safety and inclusion are essential and key aspects of this effort.
- Similarly, retaining educators, partners, and new organisers benefited from moving away from transactional and extractive engagement models. Approaches that focused on long-term, mutually beneficial relationships, such as network-building, shared learning, and aligning Wikimedia participation with partners’ own goals, proved more effective. Supporting networks that overlap with Wikimedia objectives while also serving broader community or institutional interests helped strengthen trust and continuity.
8. If you developed partnerships, which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors (optional):
Permanent staff outreach, Volunteers from our communities, Partners proactive interest
Part 2: Metrics for Year 1
[edit]- In case of stalls in Bookfairs and FOSS events, we did not count each person who spoke to us, but counted people who took an action of registering for follow-up activities or downloading the Wikisource reader application we were promoting.
- This includes outreach in colleges for the WikiClub Tech initiative and the Road to Wiki Kick-off events that OKI organised.
| Wikimedia Metrics | Target (Year 1) | Results (Year 1) | Comments and tools used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | 550 | 1840 | |
| Number of all editors | 170 | 434 | - The number of all editors is not unique; we calculated the number activity-wise separately and computed the total number. The numbers of New and Retained editors are unique.
|
| Number of new editors | N/A | 261 | |
| Number of retained editors | N/A | 72 | |
| Number of all organizers | 65 | 72 | Manually counted for each program. |
| Number of new organizers | N/A | 45 |
| Wikimedia project | Target - Number of created pages (Year 1) | Target - Number of improved pages (Year 1) | Result - Number of created pages (Year 1) | Result - Number of improved pages (Year 1) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 500 | 750 | 115 | 532 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 10000 | 1356 | ||
| Wikidata | 9000 | |||
| Wiktionary | ||||
| Wikisource | 10000 | 662 | ||
| Wikimedia Incubator | 200 | 300 | ||
| Translatewiki | ||||
| MediaWiki | ||||
| Wikiquote | ||||
| Wikivoyage | ||||
| Wikibooks | ||||
| Wikiversity | ||||
| Wikinews | ||||
| Wikispecies | ||||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
Tool used and comments (optional):
We were unable to meet several metric targets, including this one, due to the significant time and effort devoted to organisational relocation and programme restructuring during Q2 and Q3. Most of the above metrics are attributable to the work done in Q4, as the team regained momentum and began leveraging synergies within IIIT Hyderabad. We plan to build on this progress in Years 2 and 3 to meet our planned goals and expectations.
11. Did you set other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required): Yes
11.1. Other Metrics.
In your application, you outlined some other open metrics that you would like to measure. Please fill out the achieved results for each of the open metrics you defined.
| Other Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Learning insights and Stakeholder mappings |
|
8 | 4 | As noted earlier, performance against this metric was affected by the same organisational and programmatic transitions during Q2 and Q3. Consequently, progress on this indicator largely reflects work undertaken in Q4, after the team regained momentum and began leveraging synergies within IIIT Hyderabad. We intend to build on this renewed pace in Years 2 and 3 to achieve the planned targets. | Four major reports were published by the OKI team in 2025:
|
| Number of collaborative projects / activities organized | This metric tracks the number of collaborative projects through our community collaboration program | 25 | 8 | The OKI team had to pause the community collaborations program toward the end of Q1 and was unable to restart it immediately after the reintegration into IIIT Hyderabad, as we were exploring operational and programmatic changes with respect to this program following this transition. During this period, we continued to collaborate with communities such as Tamil, Telugu, and MediaWiki Developers to understand and calibrate how the new processes would function. | Manually calculated |
| Technical Infrastructure: Development and maintenance | This number includes the count of updates and maintenance releases for existing tools, as well as the count of prototypes/tools developed and deployed. The target for prototypes/tools developed and deployed will be one, with updates and maintenance covering the remaining count. | 7 | 10 | This number includes the count of updates and maintenance releases for existing tools, as well as the count of prototypes/tools developed and deployed. The target for prototypes/tools developed and deployed will be one, with updates and maintenance covering the remaining count. | WikiClub Tech Technical infrastructure development was tracked here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m7d3A3Or_BngvtlXpuHci1ZK_T9uz4D5j_XLlt6SyQg/edit?tab=t.p2tlcv8mtg1m
The rest of the infrastructure development includes:
|
| Number of External experts actively engaged | External experts such as linguists, technologists, nonprofit leaders, and community builders, who were initially involved through CIS-A2K's events and activities, have engaged in various roles, from mentors to participants—in Wikimedia-related projects initiated by CIS-A2K or by Wikimedians. | 25 | 28 | OKI team collaborated with multiple experts during Year 1 | Manually calculated/tracked |
| Participation of Women and non-binary genders in CIS-A2K's events (in %) | CIS-A2K strives to improve gender balance in Wikimedia participation and contributions. This metric reflects one of our initiatives to ensure ongoing efforts toward achieving this goal. | 40 | 35 | Some programs did not collect self-identified gender data from participants, so those activities were excluded from this calculation. As a result, this figure is an approximation that indicates overall trends rather than an exact value.
Gender-focused initiatives, such as the SheLeads Bootcamp, which had a predominantly women-led participant and organizer base, contributed positively to this percentage. In contrast, several other events were observed to be less gender-balanced. |
N/A |
Part 3: Skill Development / Capacity Building
[edit]12. Reflecting on your programmatic (external) and organizational (internal) work, did your grant support you to undergo any skill development that made a difference to your success? If yes, what skill was developed, and how did it lead to success? (e.g. received coaching on public speaking, attended training on nonviolent communication, hosted professional development conversations on leadership, learned and used a new tool for project management, etc.)? Can you share any materials? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 12.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.2 (Diversity balance) and 3.1 (Diverse, Skilled, and Accountable Leadership):
- Describe actions taken to prioritize gender balance in affiliate leadership, as well as any areas of diversity relevant to your affiliate's context (2.2).
- Describe the management, financial, or other leadership skills of your affiliate leaders. If you have a succession plan, please include it here (3.1).
- Describe any training or skill development (as outlined in the question above) (3.1).
- Incorporate into the annual report a disclosure of conflict of interests (if any) from the leadership (3.1).
This was a year of transition and learning for the A2K team. The A2K programme, supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, was housed at the Centre for Internet and Society from 2012-2025. Following the strategic integration of the A2K programme with the RCTS, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, the programme was restructured as the Open Knowledge Initiatives (OKI) team, but with a continuing mandate to support Indic Language Wikimedia communities and the wider open knowledge movement. As a result, the team faced challenges both at a programmatic and personal level in terms of transition to a much larger, educational and research institution from a non-profit, but also in welcoming new team members, and now thinking of a broader, diversified mandate of work.
At the programmatic level, engagement with an educational and research institution like IIIT-H has been both challenging and rewarding; the team has forged strong collaborations with research centres like LTRC and HSRC, and explored synergies with work on Indian languages and community-based knowledge creation efforts. This has also led to awareness-building and the opening up of new avenues of collaboration for team members in terms of learning about broader research, technological development, and ethical modes of language documentation. At a programmatic and organisational level, understanding and adapting to the financial systems and workflow of a large, state educational institution has been a steep learning curve. However, now the team has arrived at streamlined procedures for grant administration and management, and hopes to continue building on the process to support programmatic work.
13. What is one capacity/skill area that you would like to focus on for the next year? And how do you plan to achieve this capacity? (required)
Given that the OKI team now has access to a wider network of collaborators and potentially diversified areas of engagement within the Wikimedia and larger open knowledge eco-system, we would like to continue developing capacity in the areas of network-building and fundraising from external sources. Within the Wikimedia eco-system itself, the team is already in conversation with the WMF Partnerships team, exploring avenues for collaboration with other partners in the region, and exploring areas of work such as media and gender justice, which would also contribute to the Wikimedia projects. We are also exploring a potential collaboration with Wikimedia Brasil, on technology development with a focus on unique challenges faced by the global majority regions and languages.
In addition to this, the team has also set up good collaborations with research centres at the IIIT-Hyderabad, such as the Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC), to organise Bahu Bhasa 2025, and a partnership with the Human Sciences Research Centre (HSRC) on the Himalayan Open Knowledge Network project. Both these partnerships have potential for long-term investment in terms of capacity-building, outreach and joint fundraising from external sources. The team has also been building conversations with individual academics, resource persons and subject experts working on Indian languages, translation, machine learning and community knowledge, to see how they may be engaged with Wikimedia projects. Similarly, the team continues to maintain a strong connection with the non-profit sector, to engage and stay updated on key developments related to open knowledge and digital commons. The most recent includes a collaboration with Design Beku and APC on a workshop on Indigenous languages and Small Language Models(SLMS).
14. If you have additional information or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. Use the space below to upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your report.
For affiliates, also use this section (Question 14) to fulfill the Affiliate Health Criteria requirements.
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for affiliate governance, including affiliate leadership and membership with a breakdown of the demographics; how elections are conducted; how conflicts of interest are declared; and how decisions are made and communicated (2.2, 2.3, 3.1).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for activities incorporating, promoting awareness about, or enforcing the Universal Code of Conduct in your affiliate's activities (3.3).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for internal membership engagement, such as notes from your regular meetings and how you communicate to or involve your membership (4.1).
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]For affiliates, also use this section (Part 4: Financial reporting) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 3.2 (Financial & Legal Compliance).
| Description | Amount spent (INR) |
|---|---|
| Personnel costs | 7781200 |
| Operational costs | 3362659 |
| Programmatic costs | 4529038 |
| Total (Year 1) | 15672897 |
| Other revenue | |
| Remaining funds (Year 1) | 4503056 |
15. Please state the total amount spent from this fund in your local currency. (required)
15672897 INR
16. Please provide an overview of the amount spent from this fund in the following budget categories in your local currency. (required)
- Operational costs: 3362659 INR
- Programmatic costs: 4529038 INR
- Staff and contractor costs: 7781200 INR
17. Did you have any other revenue sources (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): No
- 17.1. Provide the total amount received from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): INR
- 17.2. Provide the total amount spent from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): INR
18. Provide a financial report document which will provide the details of funds received and spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BzwOfYJqQEaG7rXWM1Y-lfTf-534JYsRoWpS4X0NPyw/edit?usp=sharing
18.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
N/A
19. Do you have any unspent funds from this funding?: Yes
- 19.1. Please list the amount of unspent funds in your local currency. (required)
- 4503056
- 19.2. Explain why you did not use the amount. (required)
- As mentioned earlier, the team had spent significant time on institutional relocation and reintegration during 2025, particularly the majority of Q2 and Q3. This had implications for programmatic work and spending.
- 19.3. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
- A. Propose to use the underspent funds within this Fund period with PO approval
- 19.4. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
- We sought and obtained permission to extend the utilisation period for Year 1 grant funds until March 2026, with audited financial utilisation to be submitted by the end of March. In addition to the above-mentioned reason, the delayed trench for year 2 also contributed to making this request. We will continue to utilise this amount for the purposes stated in the proposal in the purview of our workplan.
20. Final confirmations (required)
- 20.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement? You must be in compliance with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement. In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the Wikimedia Foundation mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
- Yes
- 20.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
- Yes
- 20.3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
- 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 report. 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.