Way back in March of 2020, we announced 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!
And then we did…
Read MoreThat’s a big title right there, and a question with an oversized philosophical pedigree. Especially considering that what we’re going to talk about in this post isn’t philosophy at all… it’s a relatively small literacy program in the Western province of Papua New Guinea (PNG), a country that many people probably couldn’t even circle on a map. Bear with us, though…
Read MoreThe phrase “champagne problems,” recently popularized by the Taylor Swift song of the same name, describes luxury problems that aren’t so bad in the context of everything else going on in the world. So here’s a little “champagne problem”… our efforts and the efforts of our partner, Juarez & Associates in Guatemala to promote the use of the Bloom book-creation software and Bloom Reader have worked spectacularly well, to the point that the team behind the program has had to scramble to manage all the traffic. We are happy to be victims of such success…
Read MoreThere’s a scene in the movie The 5th Element where the villain, played by Gary Oldman, bloviates about how all the evil, destructive things he does are actually good, because they prompt the creation of industry and provide work for countless people. While we disagree strongly with the idea that the good that can come after evil things have happened somehow transmogrifies that evil into good, the fact remains that truly awful things—like a global pandemic, for example—can bring about some positive change…
Read More“Languages without literature… what are those?” you might ask, as you wonder what other glorious insights you might have missed by skipping another (admittedly hectic and overwhelming) conference.
Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered…
Read MoreJoyce Lopez works as the head of the Life Transformation Department at Resources for the Blind Inc. (RBI) in the Philippines. Although her siblings have moved to the United States, she remains in the country of her birth, living with her parents about forty-five minutes (by public transport) from the RBI offices in Manila and working to provide visually impaired students with the opportunity to discover their full potential. Joyce oversees the blind pastors that RBI sends to schools to work with blind children, she writes proposals, and from time to time she speaks as an advocate for the blind. When she’s not at work with RBI, she sometimes teaches computer tutorials for blind students. Joyce is a remarkable, bright young woman.
Joyce is also completely blind, and has been from birth…
Read MoreThey say an artist (or carpenter, or hockey player) is only as good as his or her tools, which is one reason why it’s an exciting time to be involved in education and literacy—the tools just keep getting better and better.
And although we admit we may be a little biased, there is no tool more exciting in this field than Bloom…
Read MoreIt seems like every few weeks now we hear about some exciting new innovation in computer technology—a brand-new application that (at least according to the advertising hype) will upend life as we know it. For the deaf and hearing-impaired of the world, the Live Transcribe app Google rolled out in limited beta on Monday, February the 4th, certainly seems to be just such an earth-shaking new tool.
But is it really…?
Read MoreWe'd love to hear what brings you to our site today!
