Grants:Project/MSIG/Wikitongues Accelerator II/Report

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:

Overview of logic models on Meta-wiki
Example logic models for reference for other movement activities (such as partnerships and edit-a-thons)
Blank logic model template on Google Drive

Outcomes

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?
This draft plan focuses on supporting Recommendation 8, Initiative 37: Bridging content gaps. By facilitating mother-tongue Wikimedia contributions in under-resourced languages, we measurably improve linguistic representation in the Wikimedia movement and by extension, we expand cultural and historical knowledge across the full spectrum of Wikimedia projects. (When contributing in their own languages, Wikimedians are more likely to add local geographical, historical, or ecological knowledge in the form of oral histories on Commons, articles on Wikipedia, or other related contributions.) Moreover, given the intersectional role that language plays in our collective cultural life, this plan impacts other Movement Strategy Initiatives; in order of relevance:

Recommendation 8, Initiative 38: Content initiatives in underrepresented communities — Language extinction is a consequence of economic exclusion, political oppression, or violence; endangered and under-resourced communities are, by definition, underrepresented. Supporting content initiatives in their languages supports their inclusion.
Recommendation 4, Initiative: 25 Regional & thematic hubs — Hubs, especially regional hubs, often cover linguistically diverse areas with endangered and under-resourced language communities; supporting content initiatives in these languages has the potential to activate new Wikimedians and hub contributors. Beyond that, Wikitongues has served as fiscal sponsor for the nascent Language Diversity Hub, and will participate in the hub’s steering committee during its next stage of development.
Recommendation 1, Initiative: 2 Funding for underrepresented communities — The Wikitongues fellowship, described in our draft plan, gives endangered and under-resourced language communities direct funding.
Recommendation 2, Initiative: 9 Methodology to improve the Wikimedia platform UX research, design, testing, and community engagement — By supporting new Wikimedians, this draft plan expands user testing for Wikimedia tools and platforms, especially in the incubator, and surfaces more data about soft UX; “what it’s like” to contribute to Wikimedia. In the process, we identified recurring challenges that we will outline below.

Our plan also supports Recommendation 2, Initiative 11: Resources for newcomers, because we distilled the experiences of Wikitongues Fellows into a freely accessible toolkit for adding your language to Wikimedia or, put another way, contributing to Wikimedia in your mother tongue.

What activities have you completed to produce this draft plan?
7,000 languages are spoken or signed today, but 3,000 languages could disappear in a generation, erasing centuries of cultural, historical, and ecological knowledge. Language extinction is not inevitable: people lose their languages to economic exclusion, political oppression, and violence. With the right resources, anyone can learn, teach, and re-introduce their language back to daily life, through a social process known as language revitalization.

To prevent language extinction, Wikitongues invests in language activists, accelerates language revitalization, and defends multilingualism worldwide. Since 2021, our Language Revitalization Fellowship has helped over 60 endangered language speakers launch mother-tongue education programs in their communities. In annual cycles, we help cohorts of up to 20 fellows identify and implement their communities’ language needs, supplementing their work with funding and volunteer labor. Within that context, we maintain a special track for language activists whose revitalization projects center mother-tongue contributions to Wikimedia: for example, building new language editions of Wikipedia or adding mother-tongue media to Commons.

In 2024, we launched the second Wikimedia cohort of the Wikitongues Fellowship with 10 new Wikimedians, each representing 10 unique language communities and eight countries. As with every year, we chose fellows through an open application process, selecting for strategic thinkers, urgently needed revitalization projects, and the potential for broad community impact. We worked with each fellow to identify their community’s language and Wikimedia needs, develop a measurable plan to meet those needs, and gave them technical and Wikimedia process training.

Bivuti (Chakma language, Bangladesh): Bivuti created the Chakma Wikipedia in the incubator and added 109 articles: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/ccp
Edy (Jakaltek language, Guatemala): Edy built a Jakaltek dictionary in Wiktionary, with 312 entries to date: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wt/jac
Elwin (Puno Quechua, Peru): Elwin added 1,300 Puno Quechua Lexemes to Wikidata, documenting his work on Diff: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/10/22/saving-the-voices-of-puno-quechua-a-lingualibre-success-story/
Franca (Ekpeye language, Nigeria): Franca is building an Ekpeye language Wikipedia in the Incubator and adding cultural knowledge to the Wikimedia Commons, recording the Eta Festival and creating oral documentaries. So far, she has added 418 content resources to the Wikimedia Commons, and 12 articles to Ekpeye test Wikipedia: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ekpeye_Language_and_Culture_Resources; https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/ekp.
Jacques (Kihunde language, D.R. Congo): Jacques is building a Kihunde language Wikipedia. So far, he and a team of 12 editors have published 47 articles: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/hke. Sadly, Jacques’ progress has been stymied by the 2025 Goma Offensive; were it not for this conflict, Kihunde Wikipedia would be larger.
Nixon (Kikôngo language, D.R. Congo): Nixon has been working to expand the community around Kikôngo Wikipedia. He and his team grew the article count from 1,100 to 1,497 in 2024: kg.wikipedia.org.
Omorodion (Edo language, Nigeria): Omoridon launched the Edo Language Wikipedia in the incubator and organized capacity-building sessions to train Edo Language speakers to contribute to this Wikipedia, as part of wider efforts to revitalize the language. It now has 34 articles: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/bin. (Read more on Diff.)
Stephen (Ga language, Ghana): With the collaboration from the Wikimedia User Group in Ghana, Stephen led the contribution of 1,044 articles to the Gaa Wikipedia in the Incubator: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gaa/Baafa_oti.
Zubair (Torwali language, Pakistan): Zubair set out to grow the language’s visibility through Wikipedia. So far, he has added 8 articles in the Torwali Wikipedia, and spent much of the year in the field, collecting his community’s cultural knowledge in preparation for more articles to be added: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/trw/Main_Page.
Fiona (Gamilaraay, Australia) - Fiona contributes to the Gamilaraay language revitalization movement, and spent much of the year with her community determining the best way to incorporate their language into Wikipedia. Fiona struggled with stable internet connection, but touched base recently; we will have more information about her progress soon.

In parallel to the Wikitongues Fellowship, the Wikitongues User Group (which includes volunteers as well as our fellows) supported more multilingual contributions to the Wikimedia movement, as well as contributions about language diversity in major languages. Our Wiki Loves Mother Tongue campaign elicited 3,330 new articles on Wikipedia, 7,100 edits to existing Wikipedia articles, and 209 uploads to Commons; throughout the year, our User Group created 5,860 new Wikipedia articles, made 14,100 edits to existing Wikipedia articles, and uploaded 1,250 media resources to Commons. Wikitongues volunteers also made significant contributions to Wikidata.

In which community channels have you announced your draft plan?

We produced this draft plan (logic model) as part of this grant report, so we have yet to circulate it. We will publish it on Meta and distribute it through our User Group channels; we published our strategic plan earlier this year, sharing with our mailing list and social media subscribers.
The activities that contributed to the development of this draft plan, namely our fellowship and user group activities, were highlighted on Diff, Wikitongues social media, and our newsletter.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

Budget overview
Description	Planned / received budget for this category (USD)	Amount spent (USD)
Personnel costs: Wikitongues staff whose work was central to implementing this program	28,000	28,000
Operational costs	0	0
Programmatic costs: funding/reimbursements for fellows' project costs	12,000	12,000
Total General Support Fund	30,000	30,000
Other revenue	341,114	218,207
Remaining funds from General Support Fund		N/A

Please note that Wikitongues served as the fiscal sponsor for two grants in 2024. These grants totaled $66,465. Therefore, even though our 12-month revenue was $371,114, only $304,649 represents funds for our organization.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?
No

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

We observed three major challenges to mother-tongue Wikimedia contribution over the course of our work last year:

Technical complexities: the Incubator can be difficult for new Wikimedians to navigate, requiring longer training times than Wikipedia itself.
Lack of Internet access: two of the participants had Internet blackout periods due to instabilities in their countries. One fellow conducted work in a rural area, which meant they were out of reach for long periods of time.
Safety Concerns: two fellows were at risk due to in-country conflicts.