Wasi is a Wikimedian and photographer from Bangladesh. He is currently a second-year undergraduate student studying Finance and Banking at Bangladesh University of Professionals. As the project lead of “Project Korikath,” he coordinates various open knowledge initiatives across Bangladesh and beyond. Previously, he and his team worked on digitizing endangered languages spoken by Indigenous communities such as the Chakma, Marma, and Garo. His expertise lies in digitizing and documenting cultures, folklore, and languages.
Chak is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by approximately 4,000 people in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Due to the absence of a written script, the language is at risk of being lost as younger generations shift toward dominant regional languages. Wasi’s project aims to document and preserve Chak by creating a structured lexical database and recording the community’s oral traditions. The project will record and document at least 1,000 Chak words using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to ensure accurate representation. These words will be integrated into Wiktionary, with ongoing collaboration with the Wikidata community to explore methods for incorporating lexemes from unwritten languages.
Wikitongues Fellows are bold, community-rooted leaders driving the future of their languages. Through a year-long accelerator, they receive funding, hands-on technical training, and strategic mentorship to launch and scale projects in documentation, education, lexicography, media, and Wikimedia platforms. Each Fellow joins a global cohort of language activists who share tools, experiments, and hard-won lessons, transforming local initiatives into sustainable movements. The result is practical, community-owned work that keeps languages spoken, taught, recorded, and alive for generations.
