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Grants:Project/MSIG/Building the Language Diversity Hub/Report

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Movement Strategy Implementation Grant Report
Accepted


Please review the notes below before submitting your report.

Your draft implementation plan document should address the following questions clearly:

  • What movement strategy initiative or goal are you addressing?
  • What activities will you be doing to address that initiative?
  • What do you expect will happen as a result of your activities? How do those outcomes address the movement strategy initiative?
  • How will you measure or evaluate your activities? What tools or methods will you use to evaluate your activities?

To create a draft implementation plan, we recommend the use of a logic model, which will help you and your team think about goals, activities, outcomes, and other factors in an organized way. Please refer the following resources to develop a logic model:



Outcomes

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Please respond to the following questions below:

Where have you published your draft plan? Share the link to it here:

What Movement Strategy initiative is this draft plan supporting?

  • ...

What activities have you completed to produce this draft plan?

1. Mentorship and Consultation Calls

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  • We facilitated one-on-one mentorship and consulting sessions through expert calls, providing tailored guidance to community members and volunteers. These were complemented by a series of capacity-building workshops that engaged both individuals and communities through regular community calls and consultations with experienced and seasoned Wikimedians.

2. Community Engagement Calls

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From November 2024, we collaborated with the Wikimedia Language Localization and Product team to organize language community meetings. These meetings brought together editors and technical contributors who are involved in creating content or managing technical aspects across different communities. It also served as an avenue to discuss language-specific updates and challenges as well as working together to find possible solutions. Below is information about the language community quarterly meetups we organized.

Language community meetings:

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  • Date: Friday, May 30th, 2025

Moderator(s): User:Oscar ., User:SSethi (WMF) Link to recording: Not available yet Meeting notes: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/language-community-meeting-may-2025

  • Date: Friday, Feb 28th, 202

Moderator(s): User:Oscar . User:SSethi (WMF) Link to recording: Link to the recording on Google Drive Meeting notes: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/language-community-meeting-feb-2025 (slides)

  • Date: Friday, Nov 29th, 2025

Moderator(s): User:Oscar ., User:SSethi (WMF) Recording: https://wikimedia.zoom.us/rec/share/-j8xd5Avgx2m2-ZfiVRFyCZtgFL-HDNGGKlNsbwQLwTocNsw5ZsGSJhFDA5-lHRp.sc1CRy3BnUCRv06- (Passcode: bx7&G8KU) Notes: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/language-community-meeting-nov-2024

3. Support System

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Support for Emerging Communities

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  • We identified the Rana Tharu language as an indigenous language during the Global Voices Summit 2025 and curated an incubator for them, helped them set up a community, and also provided them with some training on how to translate the most-used MediaWiki statement on TranslateWiki. We extended advisory and strategic support to the Waali language community and then provided support for them to secure funding for their Wiki Loves Folklore campaign.

We also met the Wikimedia Ugandan communities to assist them in merging the Runyankore and Rukiga Wikipedia using the case study model of the Akan and Twi Wikipedia in Ghana.

Language Revitalization Support

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To support underrepresented linguistic communities, we deployed a range of language revitalization tools, including Incubator Fast Track resources. These tools helped upskill contributors from emerging communities. Success stories shared during community calls and outreach sessions have informed our commitment to scaling this model further.

WikiFunction Workshop

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  • We hosted a specialized workshop on WikiFunctions, engaging approximately 33 Wikimedians across eight languages: Dagbani, Gurene, Dagaare, Kusaal, Twi, Ghanaian Pidgin, Hausa, and Tyap. The session aimed to build functional literacy and capacity among contributors working at the intersection of language and technology.

Localization and Terminology Support

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  • We provided direct support to the Dagbani community in translating technical terms into the local language, helping bridge the gap between technology and indigenous knowledge systems.

Governance

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  • As part of our ongoing efforts in building a strong governance structure for the language diversity hub, we worked to identify individuals and stakeholders who are capable of running the activities of the language diversity hub.

The governance structure consists of the team members, the steering committee, and the stakeholders. We’re confident this new model not only offers a more accurate representation of the movement but also enables dynamic interaction with their different stakeholders.

The steering committee works similarly to a board of trustees with 5 members accompanied by non-voting members. See more from this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1meXBghTMPrw6wL__5fP9up51WiEgxvZ7DTU2eDgyrzU/edit?usp=sharing

Collaboration and Stakeholder Coordination

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In partnership with the Wikimedia Language team, we co-organized inclusive community calls for both emerging and existing language communities. We also coordinated support efforts with various affiliates and communities, including:

  1. Dagbani Wikimedians User Group
  2. Tyap Wikimedia Community
  3. Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda
  4. Rana Tharu Language Community

Additionally, we met with Wikitongues to explore operational support opportunities for global language preservation efforts. We also initiated stakeholder discussions to define roles and responsibilities in future collaborations.

Conference Representation

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Our team participated in and presented at various high-impact conferences, including: Celtic Knot Conference 2024: The Language Diversity Hub hosted a virtual community at the 2024 Celtic Knot.

  1. Wiki Indaba 2024: The Language Diversity Hub funded Sadik Shahadu to present a session at Wiki Indaba 2024 in Johannesburg titled "Updates from the Language Diversity Hub". The session was presented to introduce African Wikimedians to the Language Diversity Hub as well as provide updates and activities of the hub.
  2. Wikimania 2024: The Wikimania offered scholarship committee offered a full scholarship to Sadik Shahadu to participate in Wikimania 2024 in Katowice. Sadik, together with Elwin Huaman, Hugo Lopez, Nur Fahmia, Kristen Tcherneshoff, Ramzy Muliawan, Jon Harald Søby, and user:mayawtowid participated in a roundtable discussion on the topic: 'Supporting minority languages and Wikimedia's global community'. Together with Eva Martin (WMDE), Nicole Ebber (WMDE) and Nanour, Sadik also participated in a roundtable discussion on the topic 'Looking into the future of affiliate gatherings: what comes after the Wikimedia Summit?'.
  3. Global Voices Summit: From December 6-7, members of the language diversity hub team participated in the 2024 edition of the Global Voices Summit in Kathmandu, Nepal. An international gathering on digital media, knowledge and activism from a Global Majority perspective
  1. Africa Languages Conference: Sadik Shahadu presented a session at the African Languages virtual conference 2025 hosted by the University of Portharcourt from February 22–28, 2025, titled 'Increasing Language Diversity on Wikimedia Projects'. The session introduced participants to Wikimedia and the Language Diversity Hub.

These events provided platforms for storytelling, partnership building, and the amplification of community-led innovations.

In which community channels have you announced your draft plan?

  • ...

Finances

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Grant funds spent

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Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

  • The majority of the expenses were invested in facilitators' working hours. Additional funds supported specialized mentoring, the redesign of the LDH visual identity, and domain maintenance. Resources were also allocated for travel to key conferences to showcase the Hub’s work, while coordinating a multilingual conference was strategically deferred to 2026.

Remaining funds

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Do you have any remaining grant funds?

USD 1500.00

Anything else

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Anything else you want to share about your project?

Below are links to diff posts and articles from our community engagement and conference participation:

  1. From Lunchtime Conversation to the Launch of the Rana Tharu Wikipedia Project: An Inspiring Story from the Global Voices Summit 2024 in Nepal
  2. Exploring Wikimedia Collaboration on Language Preservation: Highlights from the 2024 Global Voices Summit in Nepal
  3. Creating words for the future – The first Language Diversity Hub consultation call

Fostering Language Diversity: Insights from the Mercator Language Conference 2024

  • Find below the MediaWiki documentation of our activities

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Language_and_Product_Localization/Community_meetings

Report accepted

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Thanks for submitting the report. As communicated over email the remaining fund will be used in the current grant proposal of Language Diversity Hub. -SPatnaik (WMF) (talk) 01:23, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Adding url to the current grant Grants:Programs/Hub Fund/Language Diversity Hub — Year 2 Pilot -- JTud (WMF), Grants Administrator (talk) 00:01, 18 October 2025 (UTC)