Translations:বাংলা উইকিমৈত্রী/7/en

Historically known as Bengal or Bongo, the history, tradition, culture and language of the people of the present state of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal are the same, but unfortunately they have been separated by an international border drawn by the colonial powers for almost 75 years. Yet for more than a decade and a half, volunteers from Bangladesh and West Bengal have been working together to build wikimedia projects in different languages spoken in the two regions, including Bengali. Recognized as the national language of Bangladesh and one of the official languages of various parts of India, including West Bengal, Bengali is considered as the fifth most spoken mother tongue in the world due to being the mother tongue of 300 million people. Volunteers from the Wikimedia community came together to form the Wikimedia Bangladesh Chapter and the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group in 2017 to further organize their projects. Wikimedia Bangladesh is currently the only Wikimedia chapter in South Asia. These two cross-border communities have organized various online and offline projects together at different times, including the international conference celebrated on the tenth founding anniversary of the Bangla Wikipedia in 2015. Every year at Wikimania, the two Bengali communities meet together for the Bangla Wikimedia to discuss ways to work more closely together.