SIL LEAD Wins a New Grand Challenge!

SIL LEAD is delighted to announce our selection as a winner of All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development’s (ACR GCD) Begin With Books prize. The challenge was to create cost-effective, accessible children’s books in languages that children use and understand. We proposed to bring expertise and our innovative Bloom software to a country that is new for SIL LEAD as an organization*—Mali!  Our project will be called LiNEM—Livres numériques pour nos enfants au Mali (Digital Books for Our Children in Mali)."

With the funding from All Children Reading, SIL LEAD will work with the people of Mali to create 420 books for three marginalized language communities.** The first two are Soninke and Sénoufo. Although both languages are officially recognized by the Malian government and form large language communities,*** neither is widely used in formal education. Few books exist in Soninke and Sénoufo, and, of those, very few are suitable for children.

The third language community is the Deaf population of Mali. Learning resources are very limited for the Deaf community in Mali, and people with disabilities are highly marginalized. This makes it very difficult for people with severe hearing difficulties to be part of the wider community. Our books will help Deaf children to be able to read books in the language they know best while also gaining exposure to spoken languages in written form.

In addition, children in each of these three language communities will begin to have access to wonderful new stories—in many cases, stories that have never before been available in written form in the languages they use in their own homes.

Take a moment to imagine your own life without books. No Dr. Seuss, no Where the Wild Things Are. No Nancy Drew, nor Hobbits in holes, nor (gasp!) Harry Potter Quidditch matches. For those of us who grew up loving the written word, a life without books is almost unthinkable! But as sad as it might be to contemplate the loss of a particularly beloved story, it is impossible to imagine all the ways in which books and stories are woven into every aspect of our lives.

For many of the people of Mali, the idea of a world filled with books and stories in their own language is just as incomprehensible, and we know from experience that the books we will help them to create will transform their lives and communities.

As SIL LEAD Associate Director Christof Weber has so aptly put it,

“I am who I am in large part because my mother taught me to read and write. I grew up seeing her dedicate her life to help others develop the resources and abilities to teach reading and writing in underserved languages.  I have witnessed firsthand how people who are able to read and write in their own language are empowered and how they gain a newfound pride in the languages they speak.”

SIL LEAD has both ongoing and completed projects all over the world (click HERE to view our interactive project map), but the need is still enormous. We’re excited for the opportunity this award will provide for us to step into a new country—to learn from the enormous cultural and linguistic richness that the people of Mali have to offer, and to offer in return our help as they grow in their ability to write and publish their own stories in their own languages.

SIL LEAD has been a winner of two previous All Children Reading Grand Challenge prizes: The Enabling Writers Prize and Book Boost: Access for All Challenge. These collaborations with ACR GCD have allowed us to further develop the Bloom book-making software that will be used by Soninke and Sénoufo writers and by members of the Malian Deaf Community to produce a total of 420 adapted and new books. We’ve seen real, tangible results all over the world through the effective use of this software coupled with the technical expertise of our linguists and literacy experts and the knowledge and passion of local community members. We’re excited to have the opportunity to bring those same practices and abilities to three underserved linguistic communities in Mali.

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* Although this will be SIL LEAD’s first time working in Mali, we will be drawing on the long-term experience and expertise of SIL Mali in working with these language groups. They will be our champions on the ground.

** These 420 books will be available on the Global Digital Library website.

*** The Ethnologue estimates that there are nearly 1.3 million Soninke speakers and over 700 thousand Sénoufo (Mamara) speakers in Mali.