Give to help minority language communities

DONATIONS ARE NO LONGER BEING ACCEPTED FOR THIS PROJECT.

Thank you to those to those who donated in the past.

SIL LEAD is a faith-based nonprofit. Through our network of expert consultants and local partners, SIL LEAD offers extensive capabilities in language, communication and education. You can donate to the SIL LEAD general fund and help to further the work of our staff and consultants.

Invest in a Minority Language Community's Future

Your donations help local community-based organizations around the world pursue their development goals while maintaining and developing their unique language and culture.  SIL LEAD's Community-Based Language Development fund seeks to help fund efforts by these organizations. Click here to donate now and select "Community-Based Language Development" from the drop-down menu.

Literacy and Development through Partnership

Literacy and Development through Partnership (LDP) exists so that children and adults in northern Ghana can learn to read and apply their literacy skills to better their lives. Local trainers from the Dagomba community work together with the public schools in northern Ghana to improve the quality of basic education. LDP works with these Dagomba trainers to provide teacher training in literacy, to develop reading materials, and to advocate for and implement Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education in schools. Currently, 1,500 in-school-children from 47 rural communities in four districts of northern Ghana are benefiting from LDP’s basic education work. Your support for LDP enables children and adults in the Dagomba community to read and to receive basic education, unlocking opportunities to improve the quality of their lives. 

Click here to donate now and select Literacy & Development through Partnership (Ghana) to designate your gift.

Learn about Learning

In belated recognition of International Literacy Day (September 8, 2017), we would like to tell you about SIL LEAD’s involvement in the Ghana Partnership for Education: Learning. Learning is part of the USAID Partnership for Education project. This project supports the early grade reading and literacy improvement activities implemented by the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service. Through this project, the work of SIL LEAD consultants may benefit over one million children and 30,000 teachers in eleven different local languages.

Earlier this year, seven SIL LEAD consultants led a 9-week materials development workshop in Tamale, Ghana. This workshop focused on the development of Kindergarten (KG2) Term 1 and Grade 1 (P1) Term 1 reading instructional materials comparable to materials developed during the Dagbani reading prototype. These materials were developed in 11 official Ghanaian languages and will be used in a national scale-up prototype program. The workshop included 44 mother-tongue authors, eleven illustrators, seven SIL LEAD reading consultants, and five experts from Ghanaian partner organization GILLBT. We are pleased to report that the workshop was very successful and that the materials development goals were accomplished.

Hard at work in Tamale, Ghana

A second 9-week workshop is now underway in Tamale and another will be held in early 2018. During these workshops, SIL LEAD consultants will facilitate the development of the remaining pupil and teacher materials for KG2, P1, and Grade 2 (P2). In addition to scripted lessons, new pupil books (including both decodable and leveled texts and exercises) and supplemental teaching and learning materials will be developed.

In other news related to this project, the first ever Spelling Bee in a local Ghanaian language was held in July. Competitions among 20 schools prior to the Spelling Bee resulted in 77 children qualifying to compete. These top spellers gathered in the town of Yendi and competed in 11 rounds to determine a winner, runner-up, and a third place winner. Prior to the start of this project, Dagbani children could not sound out more than three letters in a minute. During the Spelling Bee they were asked to spell four to eight syllable words. Now that is progress!

To learn more about this project please see:

Dagbani Prototype Brochure
Ghana Learning Brochure

Bloom: Did You Know?

Bloom training workshop in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

SIL International’s innovative Bloom software eases the process of bookmaking so that more people can participate – if you can type on a computer, you can create a book in Bloom.

Bloom users can create an original text or select a template, called a “shell book,” and insert culturally appropriate pictures and local translations of text. The books created can then be saved as a PDF and distributed in printed or electronic form.  It is also possible to use Bloom to create EPUBs and “talking books.”

SIL has been developing and using Bloom since 2011. For the All Children Reading Enabling Writers competition, SIL added features to let Bloom users create decodable texts and leveled readers. Literacy specialists can create “Reader Templates” that help writers create texts for specific languages that are decodable at various stages of learning and conform to leveling guidelines.

SIL International has also created 31 Bloom Training videos.  The videos are narrated in English but subtitles are currently available in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Bangla, English, and Swahili.  For example, Why Bloom is a 10-minute video which explains the role Bloom software can play in aiding literacy development. It also gives an overview of the key features of Bloom.

Click on the screenshot above to watch this video on YouTube. Once the video is playing, click on the gear icon to enable subtitles and/or to change the subtitle language.

Additional videos can be viewed on either Vimeo or YouTube.

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/channels/bloomlibrary/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SILLEADInc

• Bloom has been launched on Internet-connected computers more than 100,000 times in 117 countries, with a high of more than 12,000 times in one month alone.

• Of those 117 countries, Bloom was launched more than 1,000 times in 10 different countries (USA, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Cameroon, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Bangladesh, Nigeria) and more than 300 times in an additional 10 countries (India, Kenya, Mexico, Australia, Senegal, Chad, Nepal, China, Burkina Faso, Mali).

• Bloomlibrary.org currently contains 1,211 books (as of August 29, 2017) and new books are being added all the time. The library currently contains books in 86 languages.

• The USAID-funded Enabling Writers Workshop Program with awardees in Bangladesh, Haiti, Indonesia, Nepal, Nigeria, and the Philippines will result in about 3,000 books being added to Bloomlibrary.org in 15 languages.

SIL LEAD conducts Bloom training workshops as one of the services it offers.  A Bloom training workshop can be held on its own or in combination with a SynPhony training workshop.

SIL LEAD also offers a Bloom Trainer Certification program.

Veteran and aspiring Bloom users are invited to join SIL LEAD's Bloom User Group (BUG) on Facebook.

Please contact us for more information.

Enabling Writers Produce 2,000 Books in Nine Months!

Enabling Writers authors in the Philippines.

SIL LEAD has assisted the Enabling Writers Workshop Program through the provision of Bloom training workshops, Bloom Trainer certification and support, and through the localization of Bloom software and training videos.  It is wonderful to see the amazing progress being made by this program! Please read the following article from our friends at the Global Reading Network, reproduced here with their permission.

Succeeding months ahead of schedule, local authors in five countries working with the Enabling Writers Workshop Program (EW) have created nearly 2,000 different books for children in grades 1, 2 and 3. Written in the language the youngsters hear at home and illustrated with culturally sensitive imagery, the titles are being field tested for use in schools and under review for adoption by the Ministries of Education in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Haiti. Negotiations for a sixth project in Kiswahili/Kenya have been put on pause over budgetary limitations.

Funded by All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD)-a partnership of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), World Vision and the Australian Government - the Enabling Writers Workshop Program supports the Global Book Alliance's goal to transform book development, procurement and distribution to ensure that no child is without books. The objectives of the program are to develop substantial sets of high-quality decodable and leveled books for adoption by ministries of education and use by schools in developing countries, develop sustainability for local capacity to continue creating quality decodable and leveled books beyond the scope of the funded project, and to produce a large set of quality books, using the Bloom book-writing software, for sharing via the Global Digital Library and other online e-book access points.

Participants in the Enabling Writers workshop in Bangladesh display their creations.

Building up Bloom - Meet the Trainers

An interview by Malynda Tamang

Ms. Ruth Munguti has begun the process of becoming one of SIL LEAD's first Certified Bloom Trainers. We would like to introduce her and let her tell you why she is passionate about Bloom training.

Ruth working at the recent Mozambique Bloom training event, which she facilitated.

Ruth: I was born and brought up in Machakos County in the Eastern part of Kenya. Having lost my father at the age of 9, I grew up with normal struggles like many other children. After my secondary education, I came to the city (Nairobi) and worked in the informal sector for three years.  It was during that time that one of my employers identified my talents and paid for me to pursue a diploma in Information Technology and Management. This was a two-year program and it was what opened my doors to formal employment. My first formal job was with the National Museums of Kenya (NMK), where my primary duties were to create and manage Access databases. I was involved in training staff in computer applications and created websites for one of the departments.

After two years with NMK, I got a job with SIL as an Administrative Assistant in the Project Management Office where I continued to use Access database for SIL Africa Area projects. I have worked in this department since 2002 in various capacities and am now the Project Funding Coordinator for SIL Africa Area. Besides my Project Funding role, I work as the Finance Officer for the SIL Advocacy and Alliance Building (AAB) department. I am also involved in mother-tongue materials development. While working with SIL, I completed my Bachelor of Commerce degree in Accounting/Business Administration and Management and an M.A degree in Project Planning and Management.
 

I am married with three children, Imani (9.5 years), Baraka (7 years) and Fadhili (5 years).

Malynda: Why did you want to become certified as a Bloom Trainer?
Ruth: I have a keen interest in technology and capacity building and therefore like taking such opportunities. Having worked with Bloom before, I want to train others to use it, to enable them to produce more books for learners.  I want to take part in giving the learners the tools that will enable them to become more competent.

Malynda: What do you value most about Bloom?
Ruth: Its simplicity and availability to those who would like to make use of it. The books available in Bloom that can be downloaded for children to read as well as to be translated into other languages.

Malynda: What sort of difference do you see Bloom making?
Ruth: There are writers, young and old, who have stories written or memorized. They do not know how to get these stories to a wider audience. Bloom allows them to make these stories into books and gives them the opportunity to publish them to the Bloom Library. They can also print them out for distribution. After a Bloom training workshop that I led in Mozambique, one of the participants said, “Now I can make my own books!”

Malynda: How did the Bloom Trainer Certification process help you?
Ruth: I learned more about Bloom as I went through the certification process. There were certain aspects that I didn’t know, I had the opportunity to ask and get the answers on how to do things I wasn’t familiar with.

Malynda: How do you feel about the Bloom Trainer Certification process?
Ruth: It is important to master our skills before we start training others. When we go out to train, it is necessary to have the answers to the questions that the learners will ask. The certification process really helps equip us for the task.

Malynda: Who do you anticipate training to use Bloom?
Ruth: A number of the staff in AAB are interested in learning Bloom. I would be glad to train any other groups that have an interest in learning Bloom and using it. Bloom has been gaining popularity and it is my hope that more training opportunities will come up.

Malynda: Tell us about some exciting ideas you have about how Bloom can be used in your context.
Ruth: A few years back AAB conducted research in a number of schools in the Eastern Region of Kenya. The purpose was to find out how some Mother Tongue (MT) books were being utilised in the schools. We also wanted to asses the impact on student reading competencies.  We observed that in most of the schools that we visited, the MT books were primarily what was available for the children to practice reading.  There were few other books available, except for curriculum books. Children who had continuous exposure to MT books were gaining fluency in reading. However, most children lacked reading competency. Part of the reason for this was that they did not have enough reading materials to practice reading. Bloom is a resource that can be used in such contexts to allow children and literacy workers to write books, print them, and make them available for reading. Books available in the online Bloom Book Library can also be printed and used by these children. Community authors and literacy workers can also use Bloom to come up with simple multilingual vocabulary books for use in their communities.

Malynda:  Thank you, Ruth.  Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Ruth: I am grateful for the privilege to be part of the Bloom training team. Having gone through the certification process, I look forward to participating in future trainings and to pass on the knowledge to others.  

If you are interested in participating in the Bloom Trainer Certification, contact us at bloom@sil-lead.org. 

Stories

In the paper Learning to Live Together, Margaret Sinclair and Jean Bernard tackle the question,  “What can education systems do to build mind-sets supportive of peace, tolerance, respect for diversity and responsible citizenship.” As part of their approach, they advocate for the use of stories to teach ‘learning to live together’ themes: “There is substantial research to support the impact of carefully crafted, relevant stories on listeners in terms of bringing about associated behavioural change” (p.9).

In Annex 1 of their paper, ‘Some underpinnings of the use of stories,’ they discuss why stories are such vehicles for building important social and emotional skills. They list 5 characteristics of stories:

1. Emotional impact of stories

2. The role of empathy

3. Narrative transportation

4. Neural coupling

5. Making it stick

Stories touch our emotions: “We have moist eyes after a sad film, or sometimes after a happy ending…At night…we dream in stories; that is part of how our brains work.” As we enter into the story, we have the opportunity to see the world through someone else’s eyes and gain empathy for them. As we listen to a story, we are mentally ‘transported’ into the story’s world. We also begin to mentally track together with the teller. Stories that are “simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, [and] emotional” stick with us, as do the messages they teach. (See the paper for references.)

One of SIL International’s most effective teaching narratives is Kande’s Story: How a community can love and care for people affected by AIDS. The book tells the story of a little African girl, Kande, whose parents both die from AIDS, leaving her and her brother orphans. Critical information about HIV and AIDS are embedded in the story line. Stigma, marginalization, and exploitation are depicted, but also how to care for someone with AIDS and ways that a community can come around those who suffer.

At last count, Kande’s Story has been translated into 222 languages. That would place it at 12th on the Wikipedia list of the world’s most translated books! (It would be 4th, on this list and 8th on this one.)

Do you want to translate Kande’s Story into your language? You can find it in the Bloom Book Library. Download Bloom software and Kande’s Story and get to work

Here is our original blog post about Kande’s Story.

Working Under the Shade of a Mango Tree

DONATIONS ARE NO LONGER BEING ACCEPTED FOR THIS PROJECT.

Thank you to those to those who donated in the past.

Last month near Pucallpa, Peru, our partner organization AIDI (Asociación Indígena de Desarrollo Integral) sponsored a Grade 2 primer development workshop with the participation of teams from six minority language communities. Four of the languages are the most spoken indigenous languages in the Peruvian Amazon—Asháninka, Awajún, Shipibo, and Matsigenka.

Map shows where the participants language groups are located in Peru. 

Dr. Patricia Davis led the this four-week long workshop. The workshop was designed to develop Reading Primers for Grade 2 and also provided a short training session on how the primer lessons should be taught. Dr. Davis and her Peruvian assistant, Eva Mamaní, supervised drafting and checked the materials as the authors progressed. In addition to the six language teams, another team finished a textbook for teaching Spanish in Grades 1 and 2. Two additional participants arrived unexpectedly to complete a Kindergarten Workbook in the Shipibo language. Iris and Mercy heard about the workshop and wanted to complete this desperately needed workbook.

Access to books in this area is a challenge that AIDI  has worked earnestly to overcome.AIDI and numerous other indigenous organizations are banding together to petition for the printing of the books and seek new sources of funding. (Until the indigenous organizations began to support the project this year, AIDI had not been successful in finding funding.) In the second week of the workshop, reports of the workshop were broadcast by radio to over 400 Shipibo communities. These broadcasts resulted in requests for books in that language. This was good news given the concerns that the Shipibo workshop participants have about the fate of their language.

Excitement was tangible among the workshop participants, although the work was hard and the weather warm, despite the shade of a large mango tree covering the working space. Dr. Davis wrote that she is grateful for the friendship and loyalty of these capable people. They demonstrated the heart of International Mother Language Day, whose theme this year is “Towards Sustainable Futures through Multilingual Education”.

On its web page dedicated to this day, UNESCO writes, “It is through the mastery of the first language or mother tongue that the basic skills of reading, writing and numeracy are acquired. Local languages, especially minority and indigenous, transmit cultures, values and traditional knowledge, thus playing an important role in promoting sustainable futures.” So this year as we celebrate International Mother Language Day, we reflect on the positive impact multilingual education has for millions of indigenous language speakers around the world. The workshop led by Dr. Davis is a wonderful example of this. We applaud the commitment and hard work of Dr. Davis and the educators from these six minority language groups.

As the participants from this workshop return home, they are anxious to use the books in their schools and to continue promoting mother tongue education. Because of the month spent learning together, they feel they know how to teach better and look forward to passing on to others what they have learned.

SIL LEAD partners with AIDI to provide scholarships to indigenous teachers in the Peruvian Amazon. Through their sponsorship of and participation in the workshop, their knowledge of and commitment to multilingual education was also strengthened.

Smiles, Songs, and Scholarships: Visiting Peru

Thank you for helping SIL LEAD fund scholarships so that indigenous teachers in Peru can earn their teaching certificates so that they may continue teaching students in their mother-tongue languages!

At recess, the children get a bowl of hot milk and quinoa crackers. 

I recently had the opportunity to visit with the leadership of the Asociación Indígena para el Desarollo Integral (AIDI) in Yarinacocha, Peru. SIL LEAD has partnered with AIDI to help provide scholarships to indigenous teachers who are seeking to complete their teaching certificates (títulos). While there I also visited one of the universities and a teaching institute where the scholarship recipients are studying. But the highlight of the visit was having the opportunity to see a couple of the scholarship recipients teaching students in their own language.

Having spent a few years of my youth in Yarinacocha, I was amazed by how much things have changed. Roads that were once dirt are now paved. Land that was once used for grazing cattle is now covered with houses. Sadly, most of what I knew as jungle is now gone. And everywhere I looked, people were talking on cellular phones. But in other ways, things have remained much the same.

One of the constants is that children in the Peruvian amazon are still struggling to get the education they deserve. But, thankfully, there are teachers who are striving to help these children learn. And some of these teachers recognize the importance of helping these children learn in their mother tongues as well as in Spanish.

While in Yarinacocha I witnessed Shipibo and Yine children learning in their mother tongues and in Spanish. While visiting an elementary school, I notice how the children’s eyes brightened and their smiles widened when Jeiser Suarez, the president of AIDI, spoke to them in Shipibo, his mother tongue. Their teacher, Janes Percy Cruz Laulate, also a Shipibo, is a member of AIDI.  The students celebrated our visit by singing a song in Shipibo.

Teacher: Janes Percy Cruz Laulate San José, Ucayali, Perú September 2016

Yine preschools learning to treat headaches with celery leaf paste. 

While at a preschool for Yine children (many Yine have migrated to this area from southeastern Peru), I watched as these precious children were taught in Yine about the medicinal values of plants. After they treated each other (and themselves) to some soothing mashed up celery leaf paste on their foreheads, I became their next patient. Kelly Urquia Sebastian, a Yine who moved to Yarinacocha as a child, is one of their teachers.  She is completing her título, and once done hopes to become an elementary school teacher for Yine children.

I also had the opportunity to meet Iris Mori Cairuna. Iris is one of the newest scholarship recipients. She is already making headway on completing her título. Although Iris graduated from the Universidad Nacional Intercultural de la Amazonia (UNIA), she could not afford the additional costs associated with earning her título. Thanks to the generous donations that SIL LEAD has received in support of this scholarship program, Iris should complete her thesis and earn her título this year. Once she does, she will be able to apply for a full-time position as a bilingual elementary school teacher.

Thanks for helping to make the dream of teaching children in their own language a reality!

**A brief video with pictures related to this post can be viewed here or below.  Please be sure to turn the subtitles on in either English or Spanish if you’d like a bit of an explanation of what you are seeing.