SIL LEAD Concludes Operations After 14 Years of Impact

After more than 14 years of exceptional service, SIL LEAD (Language, Education, and Development) formally concluded its operations on September 30, 2025. SIL Global extends its deep gratitude to SIL LEAD for its significant contributions to language communities worldwide—particularly in multilingual education, health localization, technology and innovation, and resource development.

As a nonprofit subsidiary of SIL Global, SIL LEAD brought together people and institutions around shared goals for internationally funded projects. Over its 14 years, SIL LEAD supported more than 20 major development projects in over 30 countries, touching at least 119 languages and partnering with more than 25 organizations. The majority of its work was made possible through funding from USAID, whose investments helped scale literacy and education initiatives to reach even the most remote communities.

Much of SIL LEAD’s work centered on children’s early-grade reading and literacy, empowering local educators and communities to create and use learning materials in the languages children know best. Through these efforts, SIL LEAD and SIL Global together have positively impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of children from Afghanistan to the Philippines, helping them build strong foundations for lifelong learning.

SIL LEAD also had the privilege of collaborating with an extraordinary network of partners and professionals. Notable collaborators included All Children Reading, Chemonics International, Creative Associates International, FHI 360, Juárez & Associates, RTI International, and World Vision—among many others. We are deeply grateful for the partnerships and friendships formed through these collaborations, and for the hundreds of literacy, education, and development professionals from the U.S. and around the world who poured their expertise and passion into helping children learn to read and read to learn in the languages they understand best.

Throughout its history, SIL LEAD made lasting contributions in developing best practices for consultant training, strengthening SIL’s engagement with governments and international agencies, and highlighting the distinctive expertise SIL offers to the global development community.

In light of changing global contexts, SIL Global and SIL LEAD jointly determined that this vital work would be most effectively continued directly within SIL Global. We are deeply appreciative of SIL LEAD’s dedicated staff and leadership, whose efforts have advanced SIL’s learning and enriched its capacity to engage at the international level.

SIL Global looks forward to building on the strong foundation SIL LEAD established as we continue pursuing our shared mission—to serve the world’s language communities and foster human flourishing through language.

This post was written by staff at SIL Global. To view the original post, please click here.