The challenge of any creative journey is that there is always a sense in which you are starting without a map. In the country of Uganda, the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) had a policy and commitment to mother tongue instruction. The Uganda MoES understood that a child who can’t understand the language of instruction cannot learn, and that an educated populace is the foundation of a country’s development…
Read More"You have to use the media, the methods, that fit your audience."
The difficulty of providing clear, accessible information about communicable diseases might seem like a problem for white-hatted development workers in foreign countries. But even though it’s primarily an issue for minority language groups, it’s important to remember that medical messaging is a problem that can affect anyone, anywhere…
Read MoreWhile we at SIL LEAD are grateful for many opportunities to serve communities around the world, we hold a special place in our hearts for the organizations we are able to support through our Community Based Language Development (CBLD) program. These are often smaller organizations that might otherwise be overlooked in large scale aid and development initiatives. By supporting the efforts of local citizens who are taking initiative to improve their own communities, SIL LEAD has a fantastic opportunity to make a real difference in a very focused way. One of the first organizations we have partnered with through the CBLD program is Literacy & Development through Partnership (LDP)…
Read MoreImagine for a moment that you’re a small child with a love of books. We may be biased, but we think that makes you pretty much “a small child,” period, because we believe that all children love books! Anyway, imagine we bring you, a small child, into a vast library filled with hundreds or even thousands of brightly colored books.
The colors! The pictures! The beautiful words!
You’ve heard about books. Someone has told you of the worlds these books will open up to you, so you head for the closest shelf and pluck off a promising title with an intriguing cover image of a baby cradling a giant grasshopper. What a mysterious image! …
Read MoreDr. Susan Malone does not like to talk about herself. Not, she says, when “there are too many much more important things to talk about, such as the children in non-dominant language communities who are discriminated against in formal education systems.”
The strength of an organization is always its people, and SIL LEAD’s strength comes from the fact that its staff and associates always seem to insist on shining the spotlight away from themselves and onto the people with whom they work. In a world grown obsessed with the ephemera of fame, it is good to be reminded that everyone has a voice worth hearing, and that all too often some voices are silenced—either intentionally, or by failing to listen…
Read MoreHave you heard that the monarch butterfly population of California is on the brink of collapse?
Even if you’ve never been to California to observe the monarchs, most of us have seen this iconic species on nature shows and in magazines, and have marveled at their seemingly endless numbers. But in the last few decades the population in California has plummeted from well over four million to just over twenty eight thousand, and scientists are predicting that without a dedicated effort toward their preservation, these delicate beauties could disappear from the planet forever….
Read MoreWawerũ Mwangi is a high school teacher who lives and works in Naiyasha, Kenya. He’s a linguist by training and has written numerous high school textbooks, as well as vernacular texts for primary schools and a teacher’s guide in the Kikuyu language, which have been approved by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD).
All this would be quite enough to keep anyone busy, but Mr. Mwangi also loves to write stories…
Read MoreChances are good that if you don’t deal with significant physical disability on a regular basis—whether your own or that of someone you care about—you rarely, if ever, think about all the amazing capabilities that your more normally-abled body affords. This is perfectly understandable. We all live our own lives, and it’s usually only in the face of jarring change or loss that we pause to reflect on what we have, or in some cases had. It can be tempting, then, to view occasional encounters with the disabled as though they somehow exist for us—as though their challenges were nothing more than a reminder of our health…
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