A year of conversations, campaigns and collaborations: Wikimedians of Kerala in 2025

by , A Wikimedia volunteer hailing from Thrissur, the capital city of festivals of Kerala, India, and
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From the backwaters of Kerala to conference halls in Nairobi, Bali and San Francisco, 2025 was a year that showed what a passionate community can accomplish when guided by a shared belief in free and open knowledge. We documented festivals, trained students and community members, contributed to national and international campaigns, and kept our community growing through every single month of the year.

This is our story – the story of Wikimedians of Kerala User Group from last year – told through numbers, names and the quiet work of people who believe that knowledge belongs to everyone.

Last year, we continued our monthly community calls, outreach programmes, events and campaigns from 2024, while also undertaking new initiatives. We connected with hundreds of individuals, ranging from the general public to high-profile stakeholders and spoke about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects both within Kerala and beyond. This reflection blog post looks back at the activities that shaped our year.

Holding the community together through Community Calls

Throughout 2025, the user group met every month on online community calls, with participation consistently ranging from around a dozen to nearly twenty members per call. These meetings became a shared space to share ideas, coordinate upcoming events, respond to technical and non-technical issues and keep members connected across projects and beyond.

Early in the year, we used the calls to discuss the upcoming events, follow up on WikiConference Kerala 2024 and start shaping our bid to bring Wikimania to India. As the months went by we discussed various topics, including annual plan drafting, organising datathons, documentation activities and strengthening vandalism response processes on Malayalam Wikipedia. Through these discussions, the calls played a key role in sustaining engagement, collaboration, and collective decision-making among community members throughout the year.

Campaigns that documented culture, nature and open knowledge

Much of our most visible work in 2025 happened through campaigns, structured and thematic efforts to fill gaps in open knowledge and bring our cultural and natural richness into Wikimedia projects for the world to discover. Across Wikimedia projects, the user group supported and coordinated several activites including:

Alongside these, we engaged in documenting local festivals of cultural importance and ran initiatives like Wiki Loves Village on Wikimedia Commons and the Malayalam Wikipedia as a part of our multi-year campaign focused on documenting villages across Wikimedia projects.

📖 Want the full picture? Read our detailed activities in our 2024-25 Annual Report on Meta-Wiki.

Growing technical capacity and new tools

Open knowledge needs open technology. In 2025 we made a deliberate investment in building technical capacity among the next generation of contributors with the support of the community. We have engaged in technical projects – building tools, improving workflows and developing solutions that support and strengthen the Wikimedia ecosystem and support the wider free knowledge movement.

At the Wikisource Community Meetup organised by the user group in Kerala, contributors, partners and open knowledge enthusiasts from across India gathered to share ideas, plan future work and collaborate more closely as a community. Alongside the conversations, participants also spent time exploring ways to build and improve tools that support Malayalam and Tamil Wikisource projects.

In Kerala the user group has organised two Wikimedia Technical Workshops in 2025 for Enginnering college students. Through these workshops we introduced around 100 students to the Wikimedia technical ecosystem, who worked on tasks from fixing issues to prototyping new tools, with the support of the user group members.

Our User group members have attended Wikimedia Hackathon 2025 in Istanbul and Wikimania Hackathon 2025 in Nairobi where they worked on different tasks – fixing bugs, contributing to existing tools and prototyping new ones and came home with both new learnings and new friendships across the global Wikimedia movement.

Conferences, meetups and representing our community in the movement

Members of Wikimedians of Kerala were present in many regional and global spaces throughout the year. Community members attended the WikiCredCon 2025 in San Francisco, Wikisource Conference 2025 in Bali, Wikimania 2025 in Nairobi, and FOSS events IndiaFOSS 2025, often participating in sessions to introduce people to Wikimedia projects as well as exploring collaborations. Representing a regional community on a global stage is never just about visibility. It’s about ensuring that voices from Kerala, from India, from the Global South are part of the conversations that shape the future of open knowledge.

We also continued strengthening regional collaborations through a series of Wikivoyage workshops. Community members organised series of workshops, creating spaces for contributors to learn how to document travel knowledge on Wikimedia projects. These sessions were followed by photowalks and workshops across different parts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu where participants explored local places together while improving Wikivoyage content through shared learning and hands-on contributions.

We joined the State of the Map Kerala 2025 conference and hosted a Wikidata Workshop and Birthday Celebration – bringing together the open mapping and open knowledge communities in one room. The event introduced participants to Wikidata’s role in the Wikimedia ecosystem and celebrated the project’s anniversary with the local OpenStreetMap community. It was a reminder that open knowledge and open maps are natural allies.

At the end of the year, the fourth Annual General Body Meeting of UG took place in Thrissur, Kerala. The AGM served as a space to review ongoing campaigns, align on our annual plan for 2026 and start preparing for the 25th birthday of Wikipedia and WikiConference India 2026.

Group photo taken during Wikimedians of Kerala User Group AGM 2025

Looking ahead from 2025

We’re proud of what we built together in 2025 and excited to carry this momentum forward into 2026. Over the year, our community took part in activities ranging from documenting local knowledge, learning from each other, trying out new ideas and strengthening our connections. Along the way, we added meaningful content across Wikimedia projects while growing our skills, confidence and collaboration as a community.

In 2026, the group aims to further deepen its work by strengthening technical training and tools, while continuing to support broader initiatives such as WikiConference India. We warmly invite you to read the full month‑by‑month newsletter and to take part in our upcoming activities.

If you’re reading this as part of the global Wikimedia community – thank you for being part of the same project we are. We’d love to collaborate, exchange ideas and learn from each other. And if haven’t joined us yet; there has never been a better time to get involved.

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