Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from all of us at SIL LEAD!

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Despite the challenges we’ve faced, there’s still a great deal of good work going on around the globe. We’re grateful for all we’ve been privileged to be a part of, and grateful for the role that many of you have played in that. 

We love lists, so here’s a list of all the people we’re grateful for today:

  • Though most of our revenue comes from funders like USAID or UNICEF, we are also very grateful for the donations we have received to support our Community-based Language Development grants program and our pro bono work. 

  • We are grateful for the organizations and companies that subcontract SIL LEAD to gain access to the expertise of our amazing consultants. 

  • Though travel has come to a standstill and much of their work has gone virtual, the contributions of our wonderful consultants continue to be vital. 

  • We are grateful for those our consultants train, coach, and work with. 

  • We are grateful for our staff. Though we haven’t been able to meet in person for nearly two years, we believe we are more tight-knit and effective than ever. 

  • We are grateful for the members of our Board of Directors. 

  • And we are grateful for you - whoever you are - for coming here to keep updated on our work!

We’re also grateful for the many projects we’ve been involved with this past year. To name a few: 

  • In 2021 we completed two five-year projects, one in Afghanistan and the other in Senegal. We are grateful to Creative Associates and Chemonics, respectively, for allowing us to be part of their teams on these projects. 

  • We continue to support a project in the Philippines led by RTI International, a project in Somalia led by Creative Associates, and the Begin with Books project in Mali - which is funded by an award from All Children Reading. 

  • We started a new UNICEF-funded project in the Philippines to develop storybooks for children in nine minority languages and to create a national training module that will help others do the same. We also started supporting a project in Papua New Guinea led by Save the Children, to develop and share accessible Bloom Reader books.

  • One of the things we were able to do late this year as part of our pro bono work was to create a bookshelf on Bloomlibrary.org and upload to it more than 300 books that were written in Dari and Pashto during our time on the Afghanistan project. Our hope is that these books will be a resource and encouragement to Afghans still living in Afghanistan, and to those who are now refugees. We hope as well to translate these books into English in 2022 as a small way to help Afghan refugees, especially children, who desire to learn to speak, read, and write English. You can view the books here: https://bloomlibrary.org/Afghan-Children-Read

This year brought a big milestone to celebrate (drumroll, please…):

In 2021, SIL LEAD celebrated its 10th anniversary - an event that, like so many during these days of restriction, came and went without much fanfare. But it has been wonderful to stop and recognize that although we are still a relatively young organization, we’ve learned and grown a lot, and have established a solid reputation in our field. 

We created this short video with the help of some of the people we have worked most closely with over the years. We were so encouraged by the feedback we received and hope that you will find it encouraging as well!

A longer version of this video can be viewed HERE.

With this anniversary came a big change in our organization:

In late May, Paul Frank, who helped found SIL LEAD and served as our Executive Director, passed the baton to Christof Weber. Paul is now serving as SIL International’s Director of Professional Service Engagement, and as part of that role will serve as a Senior Advisor to Chris. 

We are so grateful for Paul’s faithful leadership and for his willingness to continue to support our efforts. Fraser Bennett has taken over the role of Associate Director.  

We also made a video to honor Paul.

So there you have it!

Another wonderful year of service draws to an end, and we are so grateful to you for supporting us and celebrating the work along with us here at SIL LEAD. We firmly believe that all languages matter, and we remain committed to our vision is to see people flourish in community using the languages they value most.