Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wiki Loves Folklore Bangladesh 2025 (ID: 22828556)/Final Report

Wiki Loves Folklore Bangladesh 2025

Rapid Fund Final Report

Report Status: Under review

Due date: 30 June 2025

Funding program: Rapid Fund

Report type: Final

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General information

Applicant username: Ifteebd10
Organization name: N/A
Amount awarded: 2776.7
Amount spent: 2821.18 USD, 340311

Part 1: Project and impact

1. Describe the implemented activities and results achieved. Additionally, share which approaches were most effective in supporting you to achieve the results. (required)

We divided the entire project into manageable phases and applied professional project management techniques. Drawing on our prior experience with organizing national campaigns, we followed a waterfall model to ensure structured and efficient execution.

One of the public project management documents were the gannt chart which was later modified slightly according to the project needs.

Visual identity design: The visual branding team prepared the brand identity within mid-November 2024 that was uploaded in December. The project portfolio was also prepared in December and uploaded in January. The participants' guide was also prepared in the same timeframe and later uploaded shortly before the campaign starts. We have prepared visual assets for wlfbd till 2029. According to industry standards (as referenced in this Ofspace blog), such a full-fledged visual rebranding effort from a team, with a professionally crafted logo and brand system, would typically cost between $15,000 and $50,000 USD. The visual materials created a unique and sustainable mental image for our target audience. The design was supported by Project Shoili, one of the sister projects of Project Korikath. This is unprecedented in the Wikimedia Movement.

COT selection: We launched open volunteer call for Wiki Loves Folklore Bangladesh 2025 COT with the goal of bringing experienced organizers into the Wikimedia ecosystem. The announcement was shared among interested individuals through our long-term organizational partners. We initially planned to recruit only 8 volunteers and anticipated no more than 50 expressions of interest. We received an overwhelming response; over 320 people applied, nearly half of whom were female. This unexpectedly high engagement made the selection process quite challenging, ultimately leading us to expand the team size. The final organizing team comprised 19 members. The remaining 300+ applicants were invited to join our closed community group, where we plan to involve them in future projects.

Partnerships and outreach: We leveraged our nationwide network to secure high-impact partnerships for WLFBD25. JagoNews24, one of the most popular online news portals in the country, joined us as our media partner. Kishor Alo, the teen-focused supplement of the country’s largest newspaper, with over 5 million daily readers, partnered with us as our magazine partner. Additionally, three prominent university photography clubs—CUETPS (Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology), BUPPS (Bangladesh University of Professionals), and EUVAC (Eastern University), joined as campaign partners, each bringing thousands of active members. These partners played a significant role in spreading the message of WLFBD25 to their respective audiences. They also hosted workshops tailored to their communities, including a special session organized by Kishor Alo at their headquarters in the capital of the country. Our social media campaigns alone reached over 445,000 people - excluding the additional reach gained through our partners, which is significantly higher than our social media outreach.

The Campaign: The campaign was conducted according to the predefined schedule. We utilized CentralNotice banners and mass messaging, but the reach achieved through our large-scale partners far exceeded our expectations. The audience we engaged through these partners significantly outnumbered our initial target, resulting in an exceptionally large and impactful campaign by any measure. During the campaign, we also observed the International Mother Language Day with the active help of the WLFBD25 COT. 12 wikimedians with 12 different mother languages sent us lines of folk songs in their mother language that mention "mother". Our graphics team collected their handwriting and published it on our socials. We utilized the ongoing submissions to create posters like this, this and this amidst the campaign. The inclusion of the images as promotional materials boosted up the morale of the participants and added a new dimension to our campaign. We organized six photowalks and two phototours during the campaign, which our team members conducted alongside participants - many of whom were attending a Wikimedia event for the first time. These in-person activities strengthened the sustainability of the national movement and deepened the bonds within our Korikath community. Photowalks are typically short, several-hour photo explorations covering a few kilometers. In contrast, phototours are multi-day trips involving overnight stays and longer distances. The two phototours we conducted were approximately 120 km and 250 km away from the capital, respectively.

Post-Campaign Activities: We completed the jury process within just one month, which was particularly challenging as we received over 15,800 images, three times our initial expectation. The jury consisted of three members: one from Bangladesh and two international experts, ensuring a balanced and less biased evaluation process. The prize-giving ceremony was held on May 2 at Senapragan, one of the most secure and prestigious venues in the country, maintained by the military. We issued an open call for attendees, which remained open until all available spots were filled. The event was attended by Wikimedians, professional photographers, and potential partners. We aimed to transform the ceremony into a mini-conference and designed the program accordingly, hosting three sessions that highlighted different facets of our movement. Attendees received specially designed goodies, chosen for their lightweight and practical everyday use. The images from the ceremony can be found here.

2. Documentation of your impact. Please use space below to share links that help tell your story, impact, and evaluation. (required)

Share links to:

Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project
Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions
Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access.

You can also share links to:

Important social media posts
Surveys and their results
Infographics and sound files
Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects

Most of the details are included in Q1. Here are some of the visual documentations.

The WLFBD25 landing page is being showed in the big display during the workshop at the Kishor Alo HQ
WLFBD25 COT member delivering speech to the Kishor Alo audience
The audience enjoying and asking questions in the Kishor Alo workshop

The female subteam of the WLFBD25 COT
A portion of the participants during the prize giving ceremony
COT preparing to welcome the guests
One of the speakers delivering speech
Goodies for the participants

Speech by Raida on "Open Knowledge and Photography"
Speech by Iftee on "Intro to Wiki Loves Folklore"
Speech by Wasiul on "Intro to Project Korikath"

Additionally, share the materials and resources that you used in the implementation of your project. (required)

For example:

Training materials and guides
Presentations and slides
Work processes and plans
Any other materials your team has created or adapted and can be shared with others

Inluded in Q1 together in detail. Most of our public branding resources can be found here

The deck used by Raida during the prize giving
The deck used by Iftee during the prize giving
The deck used by Wasi during the prize giving

3. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with this Rapid Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals. Required. Select one option per question. (required)

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups	Strongly agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community	Strongly agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups	Neither agree nor disagree
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors	Strongly agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	Strongly agree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement	Strongly agree
F. Other (optional)	We measured both the retention rate and newcomer inclusion rate, an approach not previously applied in any other WLX campaign. Further details about our methodology, visualizations, and impact will be included in our upcoming comprehensive PDF report. For instance, in WLFBD25, we retained 10.08% of participants from WLFBD24 and 3.6% from WLEBD24. In comparison, the average retention rate in Bangladesh stands at 1.9%, with an interquartile range (IQR) of 0 to 4.7%, which can be considered a standard benchmark for WLX campaigns in any country. For additional context, India reports an average retention rate of 3.9% with an IQR of 0 to 6%, while Nigeria shows 5.9% with an IQR of 0 to 8.7%. Germany leads globally with an average retention rate of 17.6% and an IQR of 3.9 to 29.9%. The Newcomer Inclusion Rate (NIR) offers insight into the effectiveness of outreach efforts, while the Retention Rate (RR) reflects how well the Commons community in the country in question is growing through WLX campaigns. A high NIR combined with a low RR indicates that although many new participants are joining, they are not staying - signaling that the community isn't growing sustainably and that organizers may need to adopt more professional practices. Conversely, a low NIR with a high RR suggests that outreach is ineffective, and the community may be becoming stagnant or even monopolized. Low NIR and low RR together indicate the absence of an active Commons community. Ideally, both high NIR and high RR point to a healthy, dynamic, and expanding Commons community within the country.

Part 2: Learning

4. In your application, you outlined some learning questions. What did you learn from these learning questions when you implemented your project? How do you hope to use this learnings in the future? You can recall these learning questions below. (required)

You can recall these learning questions below: In the last wlfbd iteration in 2024, we reached the milestone of 5831 images (2251% rise from the previous year), 118 total participants (231% rise), 83 newly registered users (218% rise), 70k+ reach to the target audience through the onwiki landing page and social media campaigns; the whole event was arranged with zero budget and the involved population was consisted of mostly amateur photographers. Our target community - the photographers showed overwhelming response to the previous iteration of the campaign despite knowing the fact that there weren't any local prizes for the lack of funds. Statistics available on the previous year’s landing page: https://w.wiki/8yr3

This year, we plan to put more focus on quality participation than quantity. The growth rate in the target metrics won’t be more than 15% from the 2024 iteration, but the core photography community of the country will be reached. We’ll focus more on partnerships as that ensures a sustainable future for the open source media contributor community like us. Last year, despite having a strong personal network in the extracurricular photography clubs in the country, we weren’t able to secure any. We did make attempts to form partnerships with three photography clubs in the next wlebd2024 but we failed to utilize the full potential of those partnerships for the lack of funds.

From this contest we hope to learn:

What are places where most of the professional photographers are connected to and how to form partnerships with those entities? How can such partnerships benefit our program both qualitatively and quantitatively?
What are the thoughts of the Bangladeshi professional photographers about donating media files to wikimedia commons and the wider open source ecosystem? What are the motivating factors and how can those factors be amplified and utilized?
What are the best methods to reach most of the amateur photographers (who haven’t yet started photography as a profession) in a systematic way? How can we make our outreach process less sparse and more focused for hobbyist photographers?
What are the thoughts of Bangladeshi hobbyist photographers about open source media file donation? What are the motivating factors and how can they be amplified and utilized?

We conducted a small qualitative study involving an undisclosed number of professional and amateur photographers. Using inductive qualitative coding and thematic analysis, we explored their perspectives. Due to confidentiality, the interview transcripts are not transferable. A brief summary of the findings is presented below:

Professional Photographers: These individuals are typically connected to both online photography groups and formal photography institutions.
1. Online Groups: Partnerships are often based on audience reach. Some marketing agencies specialize in quantifying this reach and determining corresponding partnership values. Groups usually have millions of members, and their images usually get wide media coverage.
2. Photography Institutions: These organizations prioritize intellectual and strategic benefits in partnerships. To collaborate with them, a strong reputation within the photography community and demonstrable real-life impact are essential. Such institutions usually can help in a qualitative way, by increasing our reputation or by training our participants.
Photography is an expensive hobby, and photographers in developing countries often face financial challenges. Unlike their counterparts in the developed world, they are generally underpaid—yet they must invest the same or even greater amounts in equipment due to tariffs and taxes on imported gear. As a result, philanthropic contributions like donating images to open platforms are not typically appealing, since it means forgoing potential income. Two factors tend to motivate these photographers: 1. Attractive prize money 2. Significant exposure. The second can be effectively offered through Wikimedia, thanks to the viral nature of the CC BY-SA license, which ensures wide and sustained reuse. Offering generous prizes and emphasizing the long-term visibility and reuse potential through CC BY-SA can strongly encourage participation.
Photography academies and dedicated online groups are effective channels for reaching amateur photographers. While the partnership strategies for engaging these amateur platforms are similar to those used with professional ones, the amateur photography landscape tends to be less demanding and more welcoming to collaboration.
Bangladeshi hobbyist photographers are generally very open to donating their images. Several factors motivate them: attractive prize money, the opportunity to be part of a broader ecosystem like the open knowledge movement, public recognition, and prospects for long-term skill development. We are integrating participants into our organized Korikath circle- an excellent way to keep them engaged and motivated. The viral nature of the CC BY-SA license already helps ensure recognition for their contributions. Community-curated spaces like Quality Images (QI) and Featured Pictures (FP) provide structured and gradual learning opportunities, which we systematically introduce to them.

5. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities? This can include both positive and negative situations. What did you learn from those experiences? (required)

Strategic partnerships exceeded expectations, as reflected in the number of submissions we received.
The overwhelming interest posed challenges—particularly when over 320 people applied to volunteer as organizers for WLFBD25. The Wikimedia movement currently lacks the infrastructure to effectively accommodate and engage such a large number of new contributors.
The user experience (UX) of the Wikimedia ecosystem is a significant barrier. We lost many potential high-quality submissions from professional photographers due to the complex and time-consuming upload process.
The video submission process was particularly frustrating. Creating a video is already an energy-intensive task, and Wikimedia Commons added further challenges with its complex licensing requirements, file format restrictions, and user-unfriendly upload interface - none of which are suited for video content. Our team was well-prepared with technical support assets, including drones, DSLRs, gimbals, and microphones, to assist participants interested in video submissions. These efforts were significantly hindered by the limitations of Wikimedia Commons itself. We have since discussed the issue with our tech team (Project Koushol) and plan to explore potential solutions moving forward.

6. What is your plan to share your project learnings and results with other community members? If you have already done it, describe how. (required)

This reporting template/system lacks the openness and flexibility needed to widely share our key learnings. With support from our technical team (Project Koushol), we conducted extensive data work that requires a more open and adaptable format to present effectively. To address this, we plan to prepare a comprehensive report book (PDF) that includes results from our data analysis and visualizations. This report will present the WLX ecosystem in a simplified, digestible format and reflect our standing within it.

We intend to publish blogs, including on Diff, to share our insights with the broader community. We’re also training 30+ organizers from the Korikath community on project management based on this experience, preparing them to lead even larger campaigns in the future.

Part 3: Metrics

7. Wikimedia Metrics results. (required)

In your application, you set some Wikimedia targets in numbers (Wikimedia metrics). In this section, you will describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used.

	Target	Results	Comments and tools used
Number of participants	130	139	https://ptools.toolforge.org/uploadersincat.php?category=Images+from+Wiki+Loves+Folklore+2025+in+Bangladesh
Number of editors	15	15	The Korikath team consisted of over a hundred of members maintained the project pages, maintained the categories, nominated for FP and QI, and added images to the relevant pages.
Number of organizers	10	19	https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Folklore_2025_in_Bangladesh/Team

Wikimedia project	Target	Result - Number of created pages	Result - Number of improved pages
Wikipedia
Wikimedia Commons	5000	15830	15830
Wikidata
Wiktionary
Wikisource
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia

8. Other Metrics results.

In your proposal, you could also set Other Metrics targets. Please describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used if you set Other Metrics in your application.

Other Metrics name	Target	Result	Tools and comments
Partnerships	5	5	We partnered with Kishor Alo, one of the most popular teen magazine in the country, which is circulated as a supplementary publication with the nation’s most widely read newspaper, with a daily readership of over five million. A dedicated workshop was also organized at the Kishor Alo headquarters with participation from its readers. We collaborated with JagoNews24, one of the most-read online news outlets in Bangladesh, ensuring significant media reach. Three large university photography clubs joined the campaign, each with over a thousand active members, helping us disseminate information widely within their respective communities. [partners for the campaign.]
Photographer retention number after 6 months of the program	20	20	Yet to be measured (After six months)
Media file usage on wikimedia project pages	200	8	We arranged the prize giving ceremony on May 2. The reporting is taking place on May 31; we just finished sending the certificates, goodies, and prize money via bank transfer or courier a couple of days ago. The onwiki utilization process usually follows the prize giving ceremony and takes at least one more month. https://glamtools.toolforge.org/glamorous.php
Quality images	50	29	Like the previous metric, it takes at least one more month to nominate and make QI or FPs after the prize giving ceremony. This is more time consuming since the wikimedia commons community is involved in the evaluation process. We are confident that WLFBD25 will have at least 200 QIs if we get more time to nominate and document. 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Quality_images_from_Wiki_Loves_Folklore_2025_in_Bangladesh 2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Featured_pictures_from_Wiki_Loves_Folklore_2025_in_Bangladesh

9. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? (required)

Yes

9.1. Please state what difficulties you had. How do you hope to overcome these challenges in the future? Do you have any recommendations for the Foundation to support you in addressing these challenges? (required)

The tools ecosystem within the movement is not well-maintained. Many tools are scattered across different platforms, lacking coordination and centralization, which makes them difficult to utilize effectively. As a result, we did not rely heavily on the existing tools. Instead, we focused on going beyond the standard metrics and aimed to measure our impact through more meaningful indicators, such as Retention Rate. Our technical team provided valuable support in this area, using their expertise to help us develop a deeper understanding of our outcomes. Moving forward, we plan to strengthen our tech team further to enhance our capacity for data-driven project evaluation.

Part 4: Financial reporting

10. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency. (required)

340311

11. Please state the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)

2821.18

12. Report the funds spent in the currency of your fund. (required)

Provide the link to the financial report https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mQXjBdL4HVg0IL5o-1GlU_EcwC401Zxf/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101797833992732483221&rtpof=true&sd=true

12.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)

The challenges we faced throughout the project required us to make notable adjustments to our financial planning. Initially, we had planned to recruit only eight members for the Core Organizing Team (COT). However, the overwhelming response of over 320 applications led us to expand the team to 19 members, all of whom remained committed and active until the project’s conclusion. Our original budget allocated a stipend of 2,000 BDT (approximately 16 USD) per COT member. The expanded team size forced us to scale back in other areas to stay within budget. The volatile political climate, inflation, global tariff issues, and import bottlenecks significantly affected our financial flexibility. The admin and finance subteam had to constantly adapt to these changing circumstances. While our expenses slightly exceeded the initial budget, team members generously covered the excess costs through personal donations - both financial and in the form of unpaid work hours. Additionally, many untracked expenses were quietly borne by the team. To maximize efficiency, we looked for opportunities to combine efforts. For example, we transformed our Core Organizing Team meetings into productive meetups. Among the six COT meetings we held, one was combined with our celebration of Wikipedia’s birthday. This event brought together Wikimedians, open knowledge and development practitioners, climate activists, photographers, and young students. It also carried forward the legacy of our previous year’s Wikipedia Birthday celebration (Read this diff!).

Part of the WLFBD25 COT working the day before the prize-giving. We worked over nine hours straight to finalize preparations for both the meetup and the event.
Team and meetup participants with the Wikipedia birthday cake.
The cake!
And the celebration!

13. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

No

13.1. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

N/A

13.2. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

N/A

13.3. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

N/A

14.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

Yes

14.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

Yes

14.3. 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

15. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. (optional)

Organizing WLFBD24, WLEBD24, and WLFBD25 has been a cumulative learning journey for our entire Korikath community. Each WLX campaign builds upon the last, contributing valuable insights that shape the next. Our experience has shown that, since the target audiences for most WLX campaigns significantly overlap, elements like branding, outreach, partnerships, and community engagement cannot be treated in isolation; they are deeply interconnected. We plan to publish a more comprehensive and visually engaging report in PDF format, which can be appended to this report at a later stage.

From organization to reporting, we operated with unprecedented efficiency. For instance, we published the campaign results within just one month, while some national WLX campaigns take two to three months or more to announce theirs. We are submitting our final grant report exactly two months after the campaign ended, making us one of the earliest teams to do so.

Review notes

Review notes from Program Officer:

N/A

Applicant's response to the review feedback.

N/A