IIITH-OKI/Advanced Train The Trainer 2025/Report

The Advanced Train the Trainer (ATTT) 2025 program brought together experienced Wikimedians from across India to strengthen leadership, collaboration, and programmatic skills within the Wikimedia movement. Building on the foundation of previous Train the Trainer (TTT) initiatives, this advanced edition focused on deepening participants’ understanding of strategic planning, community sustainability, evaluation frameworks, and partnership development. Through interactive sessions, hands-on exercises, and reflective discussions, ATTT 2025 aimed to empower community leaders to design and implement impactful, data-driven, and inclusive programs that contribute to the larger vision of knowledge equity and movement growth. A diverse group of speakers and resource persons were invited to the program to ensure a variety of perspectives and provide participants with a broader understanding of the movement and its evolving landscape.

Program Schedule sessions report

Day 0

Day 0 was designed to uphold Wikimedia’s tradition of creating a friendly and inclusive space where participants could connect informally and ease into the program. The aim was to set a positive and collaborative tone for the days ahead.

The day largely focused on interactive and fun activities that encouraged networking and team bonding. In one activity, participants were given a map of India and asked to write the names of Wikimedians they knew from different states. The participant who covered the most states was announced as the winner, a lighthearted way to celebrate the diversity of the Wikimedia community across India.

The introduction session was also designed with a twist: instead of introducing themselves, participants picked another attendee, and others guessed their Wikimedia username and shared a fun fact about them. This creative approach sparked laughter and strengthened connections among participants.

Later in the evening, during dinner conversations, participants engaged in informal discussions around funding and community support, raising questions to Praveen Das from the Wikimedia Foundation and Tanveer Hasan from the OKI team. These spontaneous interactions helped set the stage for deeper conversations in the following days.

Mapping wikimedians in India Map activity at ATTT 2025 - Day 0 images 18 22 02 524000
ATTT 2025 - Day 0 images 18 09 33 257000
Icebreaker session during ATTT 2025 19 33 07 720000

Day 1

Session 1: Opening Note by Prof. Vasu

Prof. Vasu delivered an inspiring opening address that highlighted the importance of aligning the Open Knowledge Initiatives (OKI) Team’s vision with the broader Wikimedia Movement. He emphasised the need for collaborative, impact-driven efforts and a shared vision of knowledge equity. This session effectively framed the training within the larger mission of community building and knowledge equity, setting a purposeful and collaborative tone for the rest of the program.

Session 2: Designing for Success - Pavan Santosh (OKI)

This session focused on redefining what “success” means within community programs- moving beyond traditional quantitative metrics to a more holistic understanding of impact. Key Success Indicators Identified:

Strengthening community bonds
Effective utilisation of available resources
Fostering innovative ideas
Identifying and mentoring emerging leaders
Building sustainable collaborations

The discussion encouraged participants to shift from output-based to outcome-based thinking, a mindset essential for long-term program sustainability. The session also underlined the importance of identifying new leaders and nurturing collaborations built on mutual respect and shared goals.

Session 3: Future of Commons - "Commons Belongs to Everyone" - Sneha (OKI) This thought-provoking session explored how the creation, sharing, and access to free knowledge are evolving in response to:

Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Shifts in internet usage patterns
The influence of major tech corporations
Growing challenges to the openness and freedom of knowledge

Key Discussion Points:

Wikimedia’s evolving role in the digital knowledge commons
The role of Wikimedia Future Labs and innovation-driven initiatives
The impact of technological change on accessibility and openness

Participants discussed strategies to safeguard the future of open knowledge and the need for adaptive approaches within the Wikimedia movement. The session served as a timely reminder that the future of free knowledge is not guaranteed - it requires continuous innovation, advocacy, and collaboration to remain relevant and accessible.

Session 4: Project Life Cycle (Evaluation Approach) - Satdeep Gill

This session introduced the 3C Framework for project evaluation, emphasising a balanced approach to measuring impact: 3C Framework:

Content: Quality and quantity of knowledge created
Contributors: Active participation and community engagement
Consumers: Accessibility and readership of content

Participants engaged in a hands-on exercise to identify Wikimedia projects and map their impact across the 3C dimensions. The activity encouraged systematic thinking about the project life cycle and measurable outcomes. Several insightful questions emerged during the session, reflecting genuine curiosity about partnerships, outreach, and audience engagement, such as:

What role can partnerships play in supporting community activities?
How can we improve awareness of Wikimedia projects?
Are there strategies to amplify community efforts and visibility?
What do we know about younger readers and their engagement patterns?

Advance TTT Day 1 session 2
Images clicked during ATTT 2025 Day One 17 02 21 307000
Images clicked during ATTT 2025 Day One 17 01 23 070000

Session 5: Building Indicators (Data Evaluation) - Krishna Chaitanya This session built upon the earlier discussion on project evaluation, delving deeper into metrics and indicators to assess program effectiveness. Core Metrics Framework (3C):

Content: Measuring quality, coverage, and growth of knowledge
Contributors: Tracking retention, diversity, and engagement
Consumers: Understanding readership patterns and user needs

By maintaining continuity with the earlier Project Life Cycle session, this segment provided participants with concrete tools and frameworks for evaluating impact. The reinforcement of the 3C model across sessions strengthened conceptual understanding and practical application.

Overall, Day 1 established a conceptual foundation for the training. Through thought-provoking sessions and participatory discussions, participants explored how to design, evaluate, and sustain community programs with impact, adaptability, and inclusivity at their core.

Session 6: Understanding India Community Funds: A Collaborative Conversation - Praveen Das This conversation was initially planned for Day 0 but was rescheduled to Day 1, as the earlier discussion took a different direction due to participants’ questions and reflections. The session, led by Praveen Das from the Wikimedia Foundation, focused on understanding the current state of Indian Wikimedia communities, their funding needs, and visions for sustainable growth.

Praveen initiated the dialogue to help participants reflect on where they stand, what projects are underway, and how funding can best support their long-term goals. The discussion also linked directly to the upcoming sessions over the next two days, encouraging participants to think strategically about the role of funds in achieving impact.

A key highlight of the session was exploring the evolution from FCRA grants to a partnership-based funding framework in India. Participants were encouraged to consider how Indian resources can better serve communities through shared learning, transparency, and sustainable collaboration.

The discussion was structured around four thematic areas:

Sustainability and Continuity
- How can projects be sustained beyond initial funding?
- What makes a project self-sustaining, and what barriers exist?
Support from WMF & OKI
- Examples of successful collaborations and factors behind them
- Expectations for enhanced support and partnership from WMF and OKI
Funding Process & Impact
- Feedback on the funding process and application challenges
- Suggestions for simplifying forms and strengthening proposals
- Reflections on evaluating project outcomes and identifying support needs
Future Growth
- Strategies to bring new editors and contributors into the movement
- Training or workshops needed to build capacity and expand communities
- The role of existing leaders in mentoring new contributors

This session successfully bridged the gap between funding mechanisms and community aspirations, encouraging a shared vision of sustainability, partnership, and long-term impact within the Wikimedia ecosystem in India.

Day 2

Project Design Track

Session 1: Why Project Design Matters - Soni Wadhwa

The participants attempted an activity around comparing digital projects they are most familiar with. Soni went on to introduce the Sindhi Halchal Archive, a project dedicated to advertising contained in Sindhi books and magazines published in post-Independence India. She highlighted the questions that guide her in designing the project.

Session 2: Project Design Skills for Wikimedia Volunteers - Ravishankar Ravishankar shared his experience of working with Project Tiger and others to inspire thoughts around conceptualising new projects. He is someone who has worked with one cohort of an individual community, but he is also someone who has worked with large-scale communities across the linguistic breadth of India. The takeaways from his session included:

Whatever we do should be reproducible.
We should conceptualise projects in ways that have low barriers to entry so that it’s simple enough for anyone to join and not depend on experience to contribute.
Wikimedians contribute to Wikis out of a sense of pride, affinity, and incentives and prizes.
One must aspire to develop a community spirit rather than a competitive spirit among the contributors. The goal behind a good project is collective success rather than individual credit.
Zero-budget projects require creativity. Not everything needs to have fancy budgets and grant support. There are other kinds of things to offer, such as in-kind support through venues and so on.
Maximise online participation, nurture the community, and organise rallies to enthuse the community.
Avoid blind repetition and embrace novel ideas and innovation, and know when to pivot or quit.
A design project requires one to think about designing for absence. One must remove oneself from the project to be able to see if it is really doable.
Try working with an unfamiliar community challenge. If you are working in Telugu, try to design for Tamil. It helps provide a sense of design and structure.
Put yourself in a zero-funding constraint. Eliminate expenses.
For critical review and improvement, identify potential points of failure, recognise weaknesses and list down five negative points of your own programme.
The four points to keep in mind are: scalability, innovation, inclusivity, and sustainability.
Design with intent, grown with community.
At a larger level, policy changes are required. For instance, 20% of the scholarships in Wikimedia should go to the new contributors.
Reach out to Wikimedia leadership for information and advice regarding grants. There are very few applications for grants coming from South Asia. We do need better platforms and processes for applying for grants.

Session 3: Outside Wikimedia Deep Dive - Tanveer Hasan In his session, Tanveer Hasan explained the philosophy of thinking from the perspective of design and choice. Signal became an important platform because everyone was designing a platform for popularity. But Signal went for the objective of safety. Their funding model was based on values, and not on the question of scale. Other projects, such as Ocean Clean Up and Charity: Water, think of pain points as triggers for design and think of different possibilities, such as using GPS for tracking consumption of water. Wikimedians should no longer just improvise but think about innovating. The United Nations has called Wikimedia a digital good, which gives the community even more space to experiment and think bigger.

Session 4: Reconnect - Kalpana Ramesh Kalpana Ramesh shared her Project Reconnect to talk about how to design for difficulty. Her project is an example of sustainability, and architecture was a challenge for her design studio. It sought to reclaim or rebuild the stairwells in Hyderabad, rescuing them from ruins and the condition of being laid to waste. In the process, she brought together conservation architects, Milaap funding, data, design, barter ideas, government, public, and even socio-religious discourses to bring the wells alive. Today, they are mini centres of cultural activities.

Session 5: Open Knowledge and the Himalayas - Aniket Alam Aniket Alam shared Wiki Loves Himalayas as a project, highlighting that he thought of the project as a user as well as a researcher. The project was designed to open up ways for the mountains to speak for themselves. The project allows for anyone to contribute about anything, from attire to festivals. It allows the Himalayas to be seen as archives in themselves. His vision for the project is that it should become a wild plant that grows organically. This is an ongoing project where two workshops with two separate groups have already happened.

Session 6: Project Design Framework - Sailesh Patnaik In his session, Patanik talked about the what, how, and why of projects. He highlighted the differences between projects, programmes, and portfolios in terms of scale. Project design frameworks he discussed are:

5 phases of the lifecycle: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closure

Needs assessment

SWOT analysis
Problem analysis tree: the root cause, the problem, and the effect/impact
Stakeholder analysis: who can make or break the project
Power interest grid: a grid of what power and interest different stakeholders have
RACI matrix: responsible, accountable, consulted, informed
Fishbone analysis
Logic models: from input to output and outcomes via the theory of change
Problem to objective tree: root cause as activities, problems as objectives, effects as impact statements
SMART goals
Bloom’s taxonomy

Session 7: Tools and Techniques for Project Implementation - Satdeep Gill

Satdeep Gill demonstrated the various tools available in Campaign Events Extension, Content Translation, and Tool Hub (which has more than 900 tools). Specific tools discussed include Collaboration List, Invitation List, and Topic-Based List. Participants tried different tools and interacted with Gill regarding their usage.

Session 8: Queering the Design- Sayed Raza Hussain Zaidi This session was oriented towards sensitising participants towards exclusion, biases, and stereotypes that are ingrained in ways of articulating information and citation in different kinds of projects. He shared examples of practices ingrained in the Aadhar and medical discourses.

Evaluation, Impact and Data Storytelling

Session 1: Why Evaluation Matters - Sneha

The day began with an interactive session discussing the ‘what and why’ questions about project evaluation, before getting into how to design them. The key objectives for this session included:

Identifying motivations for project evaluation- why before the how
Unpacking some key terms, namely outputs, outcomes and impact
Understanding the ethics and politics of evaluation
Learning from examples of large-scale project evaluation exercises

This was an interesting session as it helped organisers also understand the participants' approach towards project evaluation, strategies they were familiar with, and discuss examples from other sectors, such as public distribution systems and education. Participants were also cognisant of the need for both qualitative and quantitative metrics for evaluation and assessing the short and long-term impact of their work for not just for the immediate projects but also for the larger language communities. An important point of debate here was also the relevance of evaluation for fundraising, and the politics and challenges of doing so in the context of volunteer and development work in the Global South, which already has limited resources.

Sessions 2 & 3: Building Evaluation Frameworks - Manavpreet Kaur

In the following 2 sessions, participants learnt some of the core aspects of what comprises a project evaluation framework, and how to go about building one. The presentation followed an interactive exercise where participants set out to identify and develop the following for specific project ideas:

Goals & Outcomes
Theory of Change / Logic Model
Indicators
Data Collection
Using Findings

Participants also worked on identifying indicators of success, using the SMART framework, namely, to find indicators that are SMART, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. The exercise was challenging, specifically in terms of speculating the change produced by their work over the change, and future projections related to outcomes. The relevance of different kinds of methods and the advantage of using mixed methods approaches to collecting data for the evaluation of outcomes and change were also discussed.

Session 4: Visual Storytelling Workshop: Tools & Techniques - Saumya Naidu

The post-lunch session began with an exciting and interactive session on visual storytelling, where participants learnt the basics of how to create an engaging impact story based on their learnings from the evaluation. The session also includes multiple rounds of group activity, first without the use of any technology, to identify what components of their story they want to share and how best to do so across different formats. The restrictions on using digital devices proved to be particularly challenging for some participants, who were then encouraged to think creatively and work collaboratively on storytelling techniques. The final group exercise produced very interesting presentations of visual stories; for example, a WikiLoves Museums Campaign announcement, a project on medicinal tree-mapping and an informative reel for first-time travellers to Hyderabad. The workshop also included a primer on basic design principles and communication concepts.

Session 4: Turning Setbacks into Insights - Manavpreet Kaur The last session for the day again comprised an interactive exercise, where participants worked on three case studies related to various challenges or problems with running Wikimedia projects. Across three rounds, they noted observations, insights and recommendations for solutions, basically trying to identify how setbacks and failure can also offer space for learning. This was an interesting and challenging exercise, which provoked much discussion.

Key learnings from the evaluation track included:

The need to unpack and delve more into technical concepts such as outputs, outcomes and impact, theory of change, etc., as many participants are not familiar with them.
The need to look at the importance of evaluation not only from the perspective of immediate projects and further fundraising, but also long-term impact on the growth and sustenance of Wikimedia projects and language communities, and the larger digital knowledge commons.
The importance of communication and storytelling in being able to convey impact to a wider audience, and how participants could develop these skills
The importance of learning from setbacks in projects, and where evaluation frameworks must account for capturing such learnings.

Day 3

Session 1: The Evaluator’s Toolkit: Practical tools for data collection & analysis - Krishna Chaitanya Velaga

Krishna Chaitanya demonstrated the use of LLMs for generating SQL queries. He showed different iterations of working with a question through prompting techniques with the Quarry platform. This highly practical session equipped participants with technical skills for data-driven program management. The session combined demonstration with hands-on practice, allowing participants to immediately apply concepts. During the session, the speaker touched upon topics like:

Understanding and evaluating projects using specific data points
Creating charts and visualisations in Superset (a data visualisation tool)
Hands-on training for data collection and analysis techniques with some examples

Session 2: Hands-on Activity - Putting learnings into practice - Saumya Naidu Facilitators: Praveen, Sailesh, Kasyap, Ankit, Nivas

Participants were divided into different groups, and they were asked to develop an idea for a project and present their projects holistically from idea to funds to storytelling to evaluation. Different groups presented their ideas after brainstorming within the groups.

This was a session where the participants were divided into groups and were asked to apply what they had learned during the past 2 days of sessions to create a program. There were 5 concepts presented:

Wiki at Home

The campaign focused on documenting household items
Brings wiki editing into everyday life contexts

Madam Admin

Addresses the representation of women as administrators in different Indic language projects
Tackles gender diversity in leadership roles

Missing Wide Reader Base

Addresses declining editor numbers linked to narrow reader engagement
Focuses on expanding audience reach to sustain contributor base

Few to All

Evolution from the knowledge movement to the people movement
Emphasises inclusivity and broadening participation

Bridging Knowledge Through Wiki Connect

Intergenerational engagement project targeting youth and senior citizens
Uses social media campaigns to raise awareness
Conducts workshops for closer engagement with Wiki projects

It was focused on seeing participants effectively utilising the tools, techniques, and methods taught during ATTT. This showed the training was effective, and the people learned the methods and then used them. The different types of projects also showed creative thinking about community engagement.

Session 3: FOSS in Digital Knowledge Commons - Sai Rahul Poruri This talk was a part of the Future of the Commons series organised by OKI. The invited speaker spoke of different ways in which free and open source software works. He explained how ubiquitous it is and shared various projects operating on FOSS. Interactions with the audience involved questions on myths around FOSS, synergy between Wikimedia projects and FOSS, especially MediaWiki, and the gender agendas that the two communities share. This session contextualised Wikimedia within the broader open source movement. Some of the topics covered were:

Introduction to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
Evolution of the internet and role of open source
Open source software usage in daily life
Why FOSS matters for digital commons
Goal alignment between FOSS and Wikimedia movements

This session was placed as it broadened participants' understanding of the ecosystem in which Wikimedia operates and highlighted natural alliances with the FOSS community.

Session 4: Feedback and Closing Reflections - Soni Wadhwa The feedback received from the participants was largely positive. Different participants noted the sessions they liked the most and suggested a better time management system for future iterations. They found quite a few resource persons to be very inspiring. It turned out to be a humorous session, ending a three-day journey on a lighter note.

Gallery

Prof. Vasudeva Verma delivering expert insights at the inaugural session of ATTT 2025
Sneha presents her insights on the Future of Commons at ATTT 2005
ATTT 2025 Day 1 IMAGES 16 36 42 864000
Coffee, conversation and collaboration - ATTT 2025
Advanced Train The Trainer Day2 2025 14 22 28 361000