---
layout: default
title: "Wikimedia Foundation Awards Grant to Centre for Internet and Society to Expand Access to Knowledge in India"
description: "A 2012 Wikimedia Blog announcement detailing the Wikimedia Foundation's two-year grant to the Centre for Internet and Society, establishing what would become the CIS-A2K programme."
categories: [Centre for Internet and Society, Centre for Internet and Society in the media, CIS-A2K]
date: 2012-08-01
authors: ["Barry Newstead"]
source: "Wikimedia Blog"
permalink: /cis/wikimedia-foundation-grant-cis-a2k/
created: 2026-07-29
---

**Wikimedia Foundation Awards Grant to Centre for Internet and Society to Expand Access to Knowledge in India** is an announcement published on the Wikimedia Blog, the Wikimedia Foundation's official blog at the time, on 1 August 2012. The post confirmed a two-year grant to the [Centre for Internet and Society](/) (CIS), then led by [Sunil Abraham](/sunil/) as Executive Director, to expand its Access to Knowledge programme and grow Wikimedia's Indic language projects across India. This announcement marked the formal beginning of what became known as CIS-A2K, one of CIS's longest-running and most substantial institutional partnerships.

## Contents

1. [Article Details](#article-details)
2. [Full Text](#full-text)
3. [Context and Background](#context-and-background)
4. [External Link](#external-link)

## Article Details

<dl class="media-details">
  <dt>📰 Published in:</dt>
  <dd><em>Wikimedia Blog</em> (migrated to Diff)</dd>

  <dt>📅 Date:</dt>
  <dd>1 August 2012</dd>

  <dt>👤 Author:</dt>
  <dd>Barry Newstead, Chief Global Development Officer</dd>

  <dt>📄 Type:</dt>
  <dd>Official announcement</dd>

  <dt>🔗 Wikimedia Link:</dt>
  <dd>
    <a class="btn" href="https://diff.wikimedia.org/2012/08/01/wikimedia-foundation-awards-grant-to-centre-for-internet-and-society-to-expand-access-to-knowledge-in-india/">
      Read Online
    </a>
  </dd>
</dl>

## Full Text

<div class="highlighted-text" id="fulltext">

<p>We are pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant to the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore to expand their Access to Knowledge program in India. The grant enables CIS, an established institution with valuable relationships and capabilities, to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand upon Wikimedia's Indic language free knowledge projects, including Wikipedia in Indic languages. In addition, the grant aims to generate improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia's English projects and wider distribution of Wikimedia's free knowledge within India.</p>

<p>CIS is a leading research organization in India working on Internet policy and has undertaken policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, and Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. We are delighted that, in CIS, Wikimedia Foundation has not only found an independent, non-profit grantee but also an organisation that knows our community well and shares the same values as Wikimedia and the free and open source software community.</p>

<p>The grant will be for two years. The first year's grant will be for a total of INR 11,000,000 ($200,000 USD) subject to final budget review. The second year will be for a similar amount plus inflation, subject to a budget review in May 2013. The CIS Access to Knowledge program team will be based in Delhi and will have five staff. CIS has indicated an interest in hiring Indian program consultants who have been advising the Wikimedia Foundation and will conduct a search for a program director.</p>

<p>CIS will build upon the existing projects in India. There are a number of positive initiatives including community growth partnerships in several Indic languages, support for a new Malayalam education program, a GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) partnership at the Crafts Museum – New Delhi, new Wikiclubs at the British Council, ongoing efforts to leverage social media, and a dramatic increase in blog coverage of the Indian community's work. There are also exciting developments on mobile that will be announced soon.</p>

<p>The Wikimedia Foundation looks forward to collaborating with CIS as they move forward to expand their Access to Knowledge program to incorporate work on one of the world's leading free knowledge resources.</p>

<p>— Barry Newstead, Chief Global Development Officer</p>

</div>

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## Context and Background

This announcement matters to CIS's history because it marked the point where the organisation moved from being a research and policy body into an active operational partner within a global movement. Sunil Abraham, then CIS's Executive Director, was overseeing an institution that had built its reputation on internet policy research for government ministries; this grant asked CIS to take on a very different kind of work, building and sustaining a volunteer-facing programme across multiple Indian languages.

The programme areas named in the announcement, Indic language growth, GLAM partnerships, education initiatives in schools, and early mobile access work, went on to define CIS-A2K for years afterward. Many of these threads, particularly the Indic-language editor growth work, became CIS-A2K's core identity well beyond this initial two-year grant period.

The Wikimedia Foundation's language in the announcement is also worth noting on its own terms. Describing CIS as an organisation that "knows our community well and shares the same values" was a deliberate signal that this was not a conventional grantor-grantee relationship, but one built on an existing familiarity with how Wikimedia's volunteer community actually worked. That framing helped CIS operate with a degree of trust and access within the movement that a newer or purely research-focused organisation might not have had.

## External Link

- [Read on Diff (Wikimedia Foundation)](https://diff.wikimedia.org/2012/08/01/wikimedia-foundation-awards-grant-to-centre-for-internet-and-society-to-expand-access-to-knowledge-in-india/)

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