Dear colleagues in Bangladesh, (I apologize for not being able to write this in Bangla. I encourage you to translate this into Bangla if necessary!)
I work for the Wikimedia Foundation, and one of my roles is to run the Wikimedia Grants program. Like other new chapters, Wikimedia Bangladesh is encouraged to apply for a "start-up" grant to help fund some activities for the first year or two of its existence. Instructions for submitting a grant are available here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index [1] However, some Wikimedia money is already in Bangladesh and is *available for your use* -- it was granted to Messrs. Nasir Khan and Tanvir Rahman to support their attendance at the WikiConference India event late last year. For technical reasons, there is an amount of money left over from those two travel grants, and instead of asking Nasir and Tanvir to wire the money back to the Foundation (wasting some of our donor funds on commissions and banking fees), we have decided to award the remaining funds to Wikimedia Bangladesh, as an _advance_ on its first start-up grant (which Wikimedia Bangladesh is yet to request). The money itself is with Nasir and Tanvir, and as soon as Wikimedia Bangladesh has its own bank account, they will deposit the remaining funds there. The total amount was *67221.5* BDT, of which 17698.5 are with Nasir and 49,523 are with Tanvir. The funds are available for any mission-aligned[2] use Wikimedia Bangladesh would like to put it to, and it is up to Wikimedia Bangladesh's board (executive committee) and members to plan and approve the specific uses. We do require a *public* report about how that money ends up getting used. We recommend starting a page on the Meta-wiki as a sub-page of Wikimedia Bangladesh's page[3], and tracking the use of the money there. Eventually, when WMBD submits a start-up grant request, we can roll this report into that start-up grant's eventual report. So far, Tanvir tells me he has spent 5,500 BDT toward the Chittagong Unconference, so please record that (including _what_, exactly, those 5500 BDT paid for) expense on this public page. I look forward to seeing more activity (the Chittagong Unconference sounds like a success!) from Wikimedia Bangladesh, and would love to help in any way I can. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions, about the Wikimedia Grants program or otherwise. Cheers, Asaf Bartov, WMF Grants Team [1] Incidentally, you are welcome to help make that page more accessible to fellow Bangla speakers by clicking the "Translate this page" link near the top of that page, and translating the instructions into Bangla. [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Bangladesh -- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>
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