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

Endorsement from NikosLikomitros (talk)

This is a wonderful project to promote engagement on Wikimedia projects by youth, as well encouraging the increase of quality open source content in Commons from South Asia. NikosLikomitros (talk) 18:35, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Strong Support - Wiki Loves Folklore in Bangladesh is bridging content gap. Good luck for another year of successful implementation. With love from Philippines, Maffeth.opiana (talk) 11:03, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Sensible project

Given my own experience in grant-management for DCW, I find this proposal well-found and nicely articulated. The budget is also nicely proposed. However, It would have been better if the usernames of the organising team were blue-linked, than just added in plain wiki-text. However, that does not conflict with the importance of supporting documentation projects like this. All the best! _signed, Aafi ^(talk) 09:13, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Your grant application has been approved

Hello @Ifteebd10,

Congratulations! Your grant application has been approved in the amount of BDT 327,054 from 1 February to 31 March 2025.

Observations/ Recommendations / Notes

Below, you will find the consolidated feedback and observations from the review team (i.e. SA regional funds committee and programme officer). Do take time to read and respond (i.e. provide more details) to the sharing(s) as necessary. Note: The review team may not have the same lived experience or understanding of the local context as you/your team. Hence, providing further insights will be very helpful in building on our collective wisdom and shared learnings.

• Related to question 8/ describe your team: * While there is an assignment of roles, there can be more clarity on the past experience of the implementation team. This includes wikimedia journey, past experience in event organisation and/or working with local communities, grant or project management experience. Tools that we use: global account; recent contributions. Please feel free to use other tools.

• Related to your proposed budget, what type of awards/ prizes are you considering for your campaign? Could you provide examples (i.e. gift cards/ vouchers etc)? As this is the first time you are accessing resourcing for your campaigns, please work closely with your programme officer and reach out if your need support in reallocating your project budget etc.

• Referencing question 17/ what do you hope to learn. The learning questions are clear and targeted to the project. Please do set aside time reflect and document these learnings in your final report (i.e. part 2) and include relevant reflections on understanding and exploring partnerships for your campaigns. On metrics (question 20), could you provide more details on how you will be assessing quality of image? And whether there are plans to explore how to re-use the images contributed through the campaign in other wikiprojects?

• In addition, here are key comments captured from the review team:
  • Merit of idea: Good to hear that they want to collaborate with Government authorities as well. Simultaneously with this activity if Wikipedians will create good articles based on the culture of Bangladesh it will be a good supportive work which will increase the impact of this activity.
  • Feedback on community notification: Unable to spot. They should provide links instead of description.

We know even the best thought through plans may change

In the event that there are changes to your implementation schedule, you can reach out to request for a grant extension (i.e. extend end date). Similarly, if there is a surplus budget or changes to your planned budget, you can reach out to me about reallocation (via email and on this talkpage). There is also the option to have the unspent funds deducted against a future grant. More details here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Return_unused_funds_to_WMF

Additional resources which may be useful

• The reporting requirements and templates for the grant can be found here. All reports are to be completed and submitted via Fluxx.
• Timelines for reporting can be found in your grant agreement or on Fluxx.
• Instructions for post award: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Processing/Grantee_Portal/Post_award
• Documenting project expenses: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Documenting_project_expenses

We thank you for your participation in the application process and hope to continue to journey with you as you embark on this project. Let’s continue having regular conversations over the course of your project implementation. Please let me know if you require support in any way or would like to share your experiences with a wider community through the Let's Connect Programme or on South Asia Open Community Calls.

Thank you.

Regards,

Jacqueline on behalf of the South Asia Regional Funds Committee JChen (WMF) (talk) 03:02, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Response to the questions and clarification requests

Hello @User:JChen (WMF), thanks for the approval as well as the questions. We are happy to receive such a detailed and well crafted feedback which isn't very usual for the rapid proposals. I am addressing all the questions and clarification requests below.

You have mainly five questions or clarification requests.

1. Background of the team members
2. Type of award
3. Report
4. Article creation
5. Community notification links

Background of the team members

Our team reviewed past grant applications and noticed that they typically don’t include comprehensive backgrounds on the organizing team members. I’ve provided detailed profiles of each team member below. I have deliberately skipped the username of some of the team members due to safety reasons. We carefully select our team members based on their extensive experience and only after conducting a thorough background check.

As outlined in my grant proposal, a secondary layer of over 25 organizers will support us in this project. Currently, South Asia has two Organizer Lab-certified organizers, and both will assist the primary organizing team as part of this second tier

• Mrb Rafi (User:Mrb Rafi) - Chief Organizer: Rafi is a certified trainer of the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program. He is also an outreach trainer and volunteer project manager. In the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom (RWiC) ToT training in 2021, Rafi developed skills to design and manage a full length project, including budgeting, evaluation, and all core project management needs. He has personally trained over a thousand new Wikimedians in Bangladesh. Rafi served as Project Lead for Wiki Loves Folklore 2024 in Bangladesh and Wiki Loves Earth 2024 in Bangladesh, and was a jury member in Wiki Loves Food 2024 in the Philippines. He also contributed as a team member for Wiki Loves Earth 2024 in the Philippines. He is a tech team member of Wiki Loves Folklore international. Rafi is part of the founding team for Wiki for Minorities and a core team member of Wikivibrance. He is the founder of NDEC WERT and currently serves as the Strategic Lead for Project Korikath. Additionally, he provides strategic advice to ECWOs in India, Greece, and the Philippines. Rafi’s extensive involvement spans numerous Wikimedia and non-Wikimedia projects, with the above being some of his most notable and relevant contributions.
• Iftee (User:Ifteebd10) - Grant manager: I am the former director of legal and advocacy of NDEC WERT. I have experience in identifying and managing threats to volunteer team members, along with addressing related legal implications. I have led several projects with NDEC WERT and served in the Movement Charter Ambassador Program. Beyond Wikimedia, I am a Patrol Leader in my scout group, participating in both national and international scouting camps, including online and in-person jamborees. In addition, I was the Team Leader of my region’s Red Crescent sub-district team, where I coordinated COVID-19 vaccination efforts with local civil administration, health department and law enforcement from the Red Crescent's end. I have organized large-scale events, including Bangladesh’s largest English Carnival and the National Earth and Space Summit, each attracting thousands of participants. I led the donation campaign and donor relations in the aforementioned national level carnivals where I had to manage thousands of USD worth donations. I am also actively involved in national Olympiad teams for linguistics and earth sciences.
• Tanvir Anjum Adib - Documentation and on-wiki support: Adib has served as the former executive committee member of Notre Dame Recitation Club. He is an active onwiki editor with 160 thousand edits with 138 attached wikimedia accounts. He has led several onwiki editathons and other wikimedia programs in the last six years.
• Tahsin Tasnim Talha - Branding and Visual lead: Talha has served as the president of IT and Graphics for Notre Dame English Club. He is a freelance graphics designer in his professional role. In his role with Project Shoili, he has overseen several design initiatives, responding to requests from communities worldwide to support their visual and branding needs.
• Ahnaf Tahmid Manan (User:Ahnaf Tahmid Manan) - Branding and visual associate: He has also served as the president of IT and Graphics for Notre Dame English Club. He has previously made logos and posters for at least 7 wikimedia entities including recognized affiliates from his volunteer designer role of Project Shoili. He was also the graphics and branding lead of Wiki Loves Folklore 2024 in Bangladesh and Wiki Loves Earth 2024 in Bangladesh.
• A.R Tawfique Hasan (User:Icarus005)- Community Support and partnership lead: Tawfique is one of the organizers of Project Korikath. He currently serves as the Senior Content Researcher and National Publication Lead at Science Bee, a Diana award winner online science awareness and science communication organization. Tawfique is also a Senior Academic Member of Ongko, guiding youth in preparation for international math and physics olympiads. Additionally, he is a Junior Executive in the Publications Department at the Bangladesh Space Research Society and contributes as a content writer for White Origins, a Bengali science magazine. His extensive experience in communications and public relations made him the ideal choice for our Community Support and Partnership Lead role.

Other questions

• Type of award: The prize money will be provided through direct bank transfer, with Kiwix managing the process. User: Mrb Rafi has previously assisted Kiwix in distributing prize funds for contests such as Wiki Loves Folklore and Feminism and Folklore. These previous field experience has given us a solid understanding of the process, which we have tested multiple times. If Kiwix encounters any issues with sending the funds, we are fully prepared to support them. We'll also give dummy big cheques, printed certificates, goodie packs, and photo frames to the winners during the prize giving ceremony.
• Report: We've done reporting numerous times previously. Read NDEC Wikimedia Bootcamp 2023 report diffs (1, 2, 3) and Wikicred grant report. Since our organizing team includes experienced organizers from Project Korikath and NDEC WERT, we have more than enough capacity to write a comprehensive grant report. Our second-tier team includes organizers with backgrounds in finance and accounting who will assist in maintaining our finance sheets. Regarding quality images, we'll not evaluate them. There is an established process of peer reviewing "Quality Images" by the wikimedia commons community - I would request to read this. If you're asking about finding the local winner, we'll have an independent jury board as we had for WLEBD24.
• Article creation: This is beyond the scope of our project. To prevent burnout, we’ll avoid any potential for scope creep, ensuring that our team’s efforts remain focused. We deeply value our volunteers' contributions and are committed to maintaining clear project boundaries. If needed, we can later support organizers of existing article-focused campaigns, like Asian Month, by providing a curated list of articles related to Bangladeshi folklore. However, our project is solely centered on collecting and managing media files from this campaign. Project Korikath will help us measure the impact of these contributions. For example, media files contributed by Project Korikath have amassed nearly 300 million global views, averaging 5-6 million views monthly. We will utilize all relevant techniques and tools employed by Project Korikath to track and maximize impact.
• Community notification links: As we mentioned in the main proposal, we have studied over 60 wiki loves proposals. Very few of them had onwiki community notification links and they weren't asked about it in the feedback. We thought direct community notification links aren't mandatory. We did notify our relevant and target community and here are the links: commons village pump, korikath mailing list, facebook group of Bangladeshi photographers.

Thanks a lot again for the comprehensive feedback as well as the approval. Thanks to User:NikosLikomitros, User:Maffeth.opiana and User:Aafi for your kind endorsement. We hope to arrange a successful campaign this year and share the learnings with the whole wikimediaverse. --Ifteebd10 (talk) 17:03, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Extension of reporting timeline

Hello @Ifteebd10

Thank you for your email and also for sharing updates on your event. Congratulations on the completion of your project. Your request for an extension has been approved. The submission date of your final report (via Fluxx) has been adjusted to 30 June 2025. Thank you.

Regards, Jacqueline JChen (WMF) (talk) 07:00, 15 May 2025 (UTC)