Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/Wikimedia SAARC Conference 2026

Feedback on the Proposal for Wikimedia SAARC Conference 2026

Hi Biplab, Bijay and Pankaj,

Thank you for submitting the proposal for the Wikimedia SAARC Conference 2026. I appreciate the effort put into designing a regional event that aims to bring together Wikimedia communities across South Asia. Below are my observations and recommendations, incorporating feedback from my colleagues.

Relevance, Objectives, and Target Group

The proposal is highly relevant given the growing need for regional collaboration within the Wikimedia movement in South Asia. The last SAARC conference was held in 2019 in Bangalore, and since then, there have been limited opportunities for SAARC Wikimedians to convene in a dedicated setting.

Nepal presents a strategic and neutral location, making it easier for participants from SAARC countries to attend—especially given the FCRA restrictions in India, which limit the distribution of external funding and impact participation from non-Indian communities at WikiConference India (WCI).

While the main objectives of the proposal are in line with fostering regional collaboration, some key concerns remain:

1. Overlapping scope with WCI 2025 – Several objectives of this proposal mirror those of WCI 2025. Given that WCI is happening less than a year before SAARC 2026, how will this event distinguish itself and ensure it provides value beyond WCI?
2. Lack of demonstrated regional engagement – The applicant group has not been consistently engaged in existing South Asian Wikimedia forums (e.g., South Asia Calls, Telegram groups).
3. Long-term impact and sustainability – The proposal does not clearly outline how the outcomes of this event will be sustained beyond the conference itself.

Event Organizers’ Capacity and Experience

The Maithili Wikimedians have demonstrated strong engagement at the community level, particularly in Nepal. Some key individuals in the organizing team were  (are) involved in WCI 2023 and WCI 2025, which provides valuable experience.

However, this would be their first time organizing an event of this scale, and there are capacity concerns:

• The Maithili Wikimedians UG has primarily focused on programmatic activities and has not previously hosted a large-scale regional conference.
• The group’s past involvement in regional coordination efforts has been limited, and there are concerns regarding reporting and compliance—for example, the reports for their previous grant-funded projects are still pending submission.

To strengthen their ability to organize such an event, we strongly recommend:

1. Gaining experience through smaller-scale events before leading a regional conference (e.g., hosting a Nepal Wikimedia Conference with support from experienced Indian affiliates).
2. Shadowing the WCI 2025 organizing team to learn from their event planning process. WCI has allocated a couple of regional scholarships, and this could be a valuable opportunity for Maithili Wikimedians to build event management skills.
3. Collaborating with more experienced event organizers from the region to help with logistics and program development.

Concerns Regarding Financial and Administrative Readiness

A major concern is the fiscal sponsorship and financial management of the event. The Maithili User Group is a registered charity in Nepal, but further scrutiny is needed to determine if it has the necessary legal and financial structures to receive and manage a grant of this size (163,462.81 USD).

Additionally:

• The event’s long-term financial impact and sustainability plan are unclear.
• The proposal does not provide sufficient details on the fiscal sponsor from Nepal.
• Given past concerns regarding reporting diligence, additional financial oversight measures may be required.

Recommendation

At this time, we will not fund this proposal in its current form. Instead, I strongly suggest:

1. Focusing on capacity-building efforts first, such as:
   • Hosting a Nepal Wikimedia Conference with support from Indian affiliates.
   • Participating in WCI 2025 as organizers, not just attendees, to gain hands-on event management experience.
2. Developing a clearer engagement plan for regional cooperation beyond the event itself. This should include:
   • More active participation in South Asia Calls and Wikimedia SAARC discussions.
   • Identifying clearer differentiations between WCI 2025 and SAARC 2026 to ensure the event serves a distinct purpose.
3. Strengthening financial and administrative structures before handling a budget of this scale.
4. Onboarding experienced collaborators from the region to support logistical and programmatic aspects.

If these steps are taken, a SAARC conference could be a valuable and impactful regional gathering in the future. However, at this stage, a more gradual and structured approach is needed to build the necessary capacity and ensure success. Given these concerns, I strongly recommend withdrawing the proposal. However, if you decide to proceed with the submission as it stands, please note that it is unlikely to be approved. In case you would like to work on the proposal, please resubmit your proposal by March 3 (the proposal is open to be edited on Fluxx).

My colleagues and I, we would be happy to join a call to help the Maithili Wikimedians with alternative capacity-building opportunities, such as rapid grants and peer learning.

Best regards,

--Cornelius Kibelka (WMF) (talk to me) 01:00, 20 February 2025 (UTC) (with valuable input from my colleagues)

Hi Cornelius & colleagues,

Thank you for suggesting the detailed observations regarding the proposed Wikimedia SAARC Conference 2026. We acknowledge the observations and recommendations, and would like to address them to reach a balanced understanding.

Relevance, Objectives, and Target Group

The observation that Nepal is a strategic and neutral location is accurate. Irrespective of the FCRA restrictions in India, the net positive here is the ability of all SAARC countries to participate in the conference without any VISA and geopolitical challenges, making the SAARC conference proposition unique in itself.

Three key concerns have been highlighted and they are addressed below sequentially:

1. Overlapping scope with WCI 2025 - We respectfully disagree that overlapping scope should be a concern. A proposal from the same region with historically overlapping capacity building, community building, resource distribution, and leadership concerns will always be built upon similar thematic elements and contain overlapping challenges. That being said, the proposed SAARC conference has five distinct features in its favour.
a. The SAARC conference is a wider regional and thematic project conference; WCI 2025 is India-focussed.
b. The SAARC conference will have equitable participation from every active wiki project. Project participation has more weightage than community participation. The SAARC region has 34 active language Wikipedia projects and 48 other Wikimedia projects, including Wikisource (13), Wiktionary (24), and Wikibooks (11), which makes it 82 overall.
c. Wikimedians from all SAARC countries will be able to participate; a few SAARC countries will be left out in WCI 2025 due to visa and geopolitical challenges.
d. With equitable project-based participation, our vision is to make the SAARC conference a fully equipped and inclusive space.
e. A data validated need for the SAARC conference to happen in Nepal exists, as evidenced by the detailed community survey report (refer to next point for details).

2. Lack of demonstrated regional engagement - The fact that the Maithili Wikimedians User Group had reached out to 429 South Asian Wikimedians and received 96 community survey responses should be the valid and trusted demonstration of regional engagement. The outreach and the resultant survey responses would not have been possible if the group did not have strong regional engagement.

For additional demonstration of regional engagement, please refer to these representative images (image 1, image 2, image 3) and hundreds more with the applicant group on Wikimedia Commons from various past events. In October 2023, we started the Inter-Community Wiki Meetup event for broader collaboration with the SAARC affiliates. The applicant group is present on relevant South Asia related Telegram groups. In the February 2025 South Asia community engagement call, the community has been updated about the proposed conference and they will continue to be as and when the preparations begin.

Note: The survey response split is 78 Yes’ + 15 Maybe’s + 2 No’s + 1 proposed a different location. It works out to 96.87% response in favour of the proposed SAARC conference in Nepal.

3. Long term impact and sustainability - Apart from alignment with the Movement Strategy initiatives, the proposed SAARC conference will inspire cross-border collaboration and young leadership in its true sense and widely celebrate Wikipedia's 25th birthday, signifying the movement's remarkable growth over the last quarter-century, particularly within the Global South, where it has become a vital source of knowledge and empowerment.

Event Organizers’ Capacity and Experience

We appreciate your acknowledgement of our strong community engagement, and we understand the concern regarding our capacity to organise a large-scale regional conference. As per the recommendation to host a regional conference in Nepal first before taking on a bigger conference, we would like to inform you that the Maithili Wikimedians has successfully organised a large-scale event within Nepal.

The executive profile of all the Maithili Wikimedians user group members are available here.

Collaboration with South Asian community
Furthermore, during and after the submission of the conference proposal, we continued to strengthen our team. As of writing this, the team has six members who have direct experience from WCI 2023 and 2025. They are:

• Rachit Sharma - He works with the Wikimedia Foundation Movement Communications team.
  
• Jinoy Tom Jacob - Wikimedia volunteer and event organizer of Wikimedians of Kerala User Group. He successfully contributed as a program team member for Wikimania 2024, finance, scholarship, learning & evaluation team member for WikiConference India 2023, and response team member for Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India).
  
• Shabab Mustafa - Shabab is a founding member and current president of Wikimedia Bangladesh. He is involved in organizing various Wikimedia events in Bangladesh. He was a COT member of Bangla WikiConference 2024 and part of the Wikiconference India program committee.
  
• Chinmayee Mishra - She is a member of the Odia Wikimedians User Group and part of the Wikimedia movement since 2015. She was one of the organizer for the Wiki Women Camp 2023, a member of the program committee of WikiConference India 2023, and a core organizing team member of WikiConference India 2025.
  
• Suyash Dwivedi - Suyash is currently serving as a Vice-Chair of the Affiliations Committee, and Chair of CPUG. He is also a founder member of the Hindi Wikimedians User Group. He was a Core organizing team member of the WikiConference India 2023 & upcoming 2025, he helped in organizing the Hindi Wikipedia Conference 2017 & Sammelan 2018.
  
• Chitraparna Sinha - She was a part of the core organising team of WikiConference India 2023 and the Wiki Women Camp 2023 as communications and strategy lead, and is a professional communications and marketing specialist.
  

These individuals bring their professional and volunteer experience and expertise to support, partner, and collaborate with the Maithili Wikimedians group in all aspects of the proposed SAARC conference.

We have addressed the concerns regarding reporting and compliance in the next section.

Concerns Regarding Financial and Administrative Readiness

Regarding the pending financial reports, we are resolving the outstanding reports, as conveyed in the ongoing Fluxx conversion.

Going forward, we are implementing a robust financial reporting and compliance process to ensure that future concerns over the proposed SAARC conference do not arise. To that effect, we have Chartered Accountants on our panel, and they have vetted the budget proposal already.

Though the organization is capable of managing the financial compliance and reporting of the grant, the grant proposal itself includes a provision for oversight by an independent auditor regarding legal and financial compliance.

Furthermore, the Maithili Wikimedians [DAO Saptari Registration No. 1943/2080/81] is a registered non-profit organization in Nepal, affiliated with the Social Welfare Council [SWC Affiliation No. 55798] of Nepal and has received a tax exemption certificate from the Inland Revenue Department of Nepal.

The organisation conducts its statutory audit annually and is in the process of renewing its tax exempt status. This legal status enables the organisation to receive grants of any amount without any cap.

The required documents for the grant application were shared via Fluxx. If anything else is required, please let us know. We would like to reiterate that we do not need a fiscal sponsor.

Recommendations

Most of the suggested recommendations have been met (as mentioned below), and what remains, if any, will be clarified in the grant proposal revision.

✅We have successfully organised a large-scale event - Wikicamp Nepal 2018 within Nepal.
✅We understand the value of hands-on experience and our team members who have helped organise WCI 23 and the upcoming WCI 25 bring that experience.
✅We have outlined the clear distinctive factors for SAARC 2026.
✅Our community engagement survey and decade-long volunteer contributions demonstrate our regional engagement. We will continue to build on this.
✅We fulfill the legal requirement as a registered non-profit organisation in Nepal and holding tax exempt status that does not need any fiscal sponsor.
✅We have onboarded experienced collaborators.

Thank you for the time and consideration. We will resubmit the revised proposal by 3 March 2025.

Warm regards,
Biplab Anand (Talk) 05:36, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
On behalf of the SAARC 2026 conference proponent team.

Decision on the Wikimedia SAARC Conference 2026 proposal

Dear Biplab, Pankaj, and Bijay,

Thank you for your explanation and the response to my previous message.

After careful consideration based on your proposal to host the Wikimedia SAARC Conference 2026 and our discussion, the Conference Committee has decided not to approve it at this time. While I understand this must be disappointing, sharing some of the observations and recommendations below.

One of the main factors in the committees is the close connection between WikiConference India and a potential SAARC Conference. Given the current uncertainties surrounding WikiConference India (due to the recently rejected FCRA license for CIS), the committee believes it would be best to focus on resolving that situation before considering funding for an additional large conference in the region.

The committee also encourages you all to further strengthen regional collaboration and host more smaller events before scaling up to the proposed event. This could be achieved through smaller gatherings (for eg: local, regional, ~50 participants) and by continuing to build and foster partnerships among affiliates in the region. Such an approach aligns with the Maithili Wikimedians’ track record in event organization and grant management. Establishing a solid foundation for regional collaboration would help create a clearer rationale, stronger case and need for a future SAARC Conference.

The committee appreciates your efforts and dedication to growing the Wikimedia movement in the region and encourages the Maithili Wikimedians to build further on regional engagement in the coming months, and to consider reapplying in the next funding round with a more structured approach.

Best regards,--Cornelius Kibelka (WMF) (talk to me) 15:59, 19 March 2025 (UTC)