Give a Gift That Keeps on Giving
/DONATIONS ARE NO LONGER BEING ACCEPTED FOR THIS PROJECT.
Thank you to those to those who donated in the past.
The first language we learn to speak gives us roots. It anchors us to a place and provides us with a sense of belonging—a community. It colors how we understand the world, and in many ways defines who we are for the rest of our lives.
What if your language was disappearing—if its very existence was threatened? What if your children were not being taught to read and write in your language, and there was very little written in it for you to try and teach them yourself? Or worse, what if others thought their language was superior and were trying to replace your language with their own?
Wouldn’t you want to do something about it?
SIL LEAD is doing something about it!
And you can join us!
With the help of donors just like you, in 2019 we awarded four grants totaling $37,000 to community-based organizations that promote their threatened languages in a variety of ways. Will you help us fund additional organizations to begin doing the same in 2020?
Our past grantees are already having a major impact.
One organization is developing trilingual dictionaries and local language resource websites for ten languages in India. Another is developing reading materials and carrying out capacity development among three language groups in Myanmar.
An organization in Pakistan is strengthening literacy and identity by creating animated comic books, collecting and documenting poetry, and hosting reading festivals for a language spoken by about a hundred thousand people (yes, even languages that widely-spoken can be threatened!). And in Peru, a community-based organization is producing vernacular reading materials and games and is promoting reading clubs for children, adolescents and young adults in eleven different language groups.
In total, these four grants are helping community-based organizations to protect and promote twenty-five languages!
This year, we have already received more than thirty-five applications from a diverse array of community-based organizations from twenty different countries. They are brimming with great ideas for ways to better the lives of their communities. We are hoping to award six grants totaling up to $60,000 and are counting on your generosity to make this possible.
Our plan is to select the 2020 awardees in January. How many we can select will depend in great measure on what you will give.