Working Under the Shade of a Mango Tree

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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. 

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.

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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”.

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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

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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. 

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. 

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.

Celebrating Five Years of SIL LEAD

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In May 2011, SIL LEAD was conceived in order to better serve minority language communities through partnerships with international agencies. In 2012, our first project was the USAID Uganda School Health and Reading Program, which will conclude next year. SIL LEAD has carried out 20 other projects, impacting communities in 14 countries and 40 languages.

This report covers SIL LEAD’s first five years and summarizes the projects and work we have done. One exciting development that differed from our normal projects was that SIL LEAD supported SIL International in submitting Bloom software to the All Children Reading: Enabling Writers Prize competition, for which Bloom was chosen as the grand prize winner. SIL LEAD has contributed sociolinguistic, education, and language technology assistance to projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Tanzania.

Please download the report to read about how we have grown as an organization. Included in the report are profiles of those who have contributed their talents to this effort.  

Multilingual Readers, Transition Issues in Multilingual Settings

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In the second issue of Literacy Matters magazine, Dr. Agatha J. van Ginkel’s has published the article “Multilingual Readers, Transition Issues in Multilingual Settings”, which discusses the key role that multilingualism plays in students’ literacy and education in Uganda. Her article presents two important concepts about the relationship between the home language and English.

Dr. van Ginkel presents the interdependence hypothesis as the argument that “in bilingual development, language and literacy skills can be transferred from one language to another.” (van Ginkel, par 3) Uganda has updated its education policy to leave space for both languages in its curriculum. But alongside interdependence, there is the threshold theory, where it has been found that a child must have a foundation in their home language, or mother tongue, that enables the transfer to occur smoothly to a second language. And van Ginkel questions whether the current policies in Uganda are enough to facilitate such transitions. The author also challenges the widely held belief that with language learning earlier is better.

The second concept the article presents is the importance of understanding the difference between conversational language and academic language. van Ginkel explains the different ways that these languages are retained by students and that the research in Uganda would suggest children need five or six more years of their home language at the current rate of learning. Citing Marianne Nikolov’s paper, “An Early Start: Young Learners and Modern Languages in Europe and Beyond” from 2000, van Ginkel explains that without the proper classroom environment that prepares students for introduction to the second language, early introductions can actually do more harm than good.

Given the good progress that has happened with the language policy in Ugandan schools, further research into the impact of bilingualism in early education and strategic improvements to curriculum will bring additional progress towards more beneficial literacy in both home languages and English as a second language.

Article: van Ginkel, Agatha. “Multilingual Readers, Transition Issues in Multilingual Settings.” Language Matters. July 2016. Issue 2. Page 8

http://www.readuganda.ug/

First Four Scholarship Recipients Successful: Peru Update

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DONATIONS ARE NO LONGER BEING ACCEPTED FOR THIS PROJECT.

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

SIL LEAD is pleased to announce that four out of the first six Indigenous Peruvian Teacher Scholarship recipients have successfully completed their thesis requirements. The other two recipients are continuing to make progress on their research and writing. One of them will likely defend his thesis in August. Thank you for supporting this important effort to help keep minority language teachers in their classrooms.

SIL LEAD is also pleased to announce that its local partner, AIDI (Asociación Indígena de Desarollo Integral), has awarded six new scholarships. The awardees—three women and three men—represent the Awajún, Kakataibo, Shipibo-Konibo, and Yora language communities.

SIL LEAD’s Indigenous Peruvian Teacher Scholarship program was established to provide assistance to current and aspiring teachers who have completed four years of undergraduate coursework and who are seeking to complete their undergraduate thesis requirements so that they can receive their títulos (teaching credentials). Until recently, teachers in Peru were permitted to teach without títulos. Recent policy changes, however, now require that teachers obtain títulos in order to remain in the classroom.

The additional time to complete their theses and the significantly higher costs associated with this process make it especially challenging for indigenous teachers to complete these requirements. As a result, many indigenous teachers are losing their teaching positions.

Because SIL LEAD believes that children learn best when they are taught by teachers who speak their community’s language and value their culture, we initiated this pilot program to provide support to up to twenty-four teachers.

Through the generosity of a foundation and twenty-one individual donors, SIL LEAD has raised just over $40,000 (about 70 percent of the total goal). Based on the twelve scholarships already awarded, SIL LEAD is currently able to provide funds for six more scholarships. Read more about the program on the Peru page.

Photo Credit: AIDI

Hiking to the Lhomi

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The Lhomi people live high in the eastern part of Nepal. The name itself describes the people and their history. “Lho”  means “southern” and “-mi”  means “people.” The Lhomi, ancestrally, are Tibetan people that migrated south to this region and now live in isolated villages that cling to the steep mountainsides surrounding the Arun Valley. There are 18 villages which are separated by dramatic terrain. Each village has slightly different traditions and understandings of their traditional festivals. When SIL LEAD consultant, Agatha van Ginkel, recently visited the Lhomi to conduct an evaluation of their adult literacy program, she began by flying from Kathmandu to the furthest village, Chepuwa, in a helicopter and then trekking to the other villages.

According to the Ethnologue, the Lhomi population in Nepal, Tibet, and India is around 15,000. They are recognized by the Nepali government as an indigenous nationality but the education offered in local government schools has been only in Nepali, the national language of Nepal. Lhomi students experience high dropout rates and low attendance because of this language barrier.

However, there are members of the Lhomi community who have started the Nepal Lhomi Society (NELHOS) to promote health education, adult literacy and development, libraries, and mother-tongue based multilingual education preschool programs. Village Youth Associations, mothers’ groups, and village committees, have been instrumental in programs like this that have helped to improve education and literacy among the Lhomi people and will continue to do so in the coming years. Just as they work hard to be self-sustaining, the Lhomi people are working hard to help preserve their language.

Photo Credit: Agatha van Ginkel

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If you can’t understand, how can you learn?

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For decades, the importance of mother tongue education has been recognized.  But establishing a language in education policy for a multi-ethnic country can be very challenging. Dr. Eirini Gouleta, who worked last year with SIL LEAD as a consultant, notes that “Policies seem to be altering back and forth from mother tongue to post-colonial language depending on the political landscape and the popular trends among voters in each situation.”

On International Mother Language Day (#IMLD), UNESCO released a policy paper entitled If you don’t understand, how can you learn?  One of the key messages of this paper was that, “Education policies should recognize the importance of mother tongue learning.” In addition to acknowledging that according to “one estimate, as much as 40% of the global population does not have access to education in a language they speak or understand,” the paper also highlights evidence which demonstrates that, “At least six years of mother tongue instruction is needed to reduce learning gaps for minority language speakers.” 

This policy paper provides an excellent and brief rationale for the need for mother-tongue based multilingual education. The bottom line is that students who are not taught in their mother tongue are severely hampered in their educational attainment. When coupled with the poverty and marginalization experienced by many minority language communities, the lack of mother tongue education not only perpetuates but increases the disadvantages faced by indigenous language communities around the world. 

At SIL LEAD, we are passionate about efforts to help narrow the educational divide faced by minority language communities. We concur with Dr. Gouleta, who believes that it “is critical that solid policies in support of mother tongue [education], the issue of instruction and assessment, and the implications for accurately measuring student learning in the mother tongue be specifically addressed and safeguarded by all actors and stakeholders in education development.”  

We at SIL LEAD are committed to providing highly trained and experienced multilingual education specialists who can help guide and develop multilingual education programs and resources for minority language communities.  We are thankful that we can draw on talented individuals like Dr. Gouleta.

Dr. Eirini Gouleta is Associate Professor of Multicultural Special Education at the University of Macedonia, Greece. 

A study coauthored by Barbara Trudell, who has also served as a consultant with SIL LEAD, is also cited in the policy paper. 

How Children Learn Best

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“Children who start off learning to read and write in their mother tongue do better in school. Literacy programs in mother languages bring learners the self confidence they need to participate in their communities and make informed choices.” — Irina Bokova,  UNESCO Director-General (UNESCO video, Language Matters)

The theme of this year’s International Mother Language Day (February 21, 2016) is Quality Education, Language(s) of Instruction and Learning Outcomes. We join with UNESCO and others to not only celebrate the more than 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, but to reaffirm our commitment to promoting mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE).

We at SIL LEAD believe that children learn best in a language they understand. They become proficient readers more quickly when learning in the language they speak at home than when using a language that is only used in school. Children also learn other subject matters better when they do not have to simultaneously decipher a new language. A strong foundation of reading and learning in the mother tongue even improves acquisition of second language literacy and fluency. All of this contributes to a student's long-term success.

SIL LEAD is committed to doing all that we can to promote mother tongue-based reading and learning. We are currently involved in MTB-MLE programs in Ethiopia, Nepal, and Uganda as well as a number of smaller projects. With the support of private donors, SIL LEAD is also providing scholarships to indigenous teachers in Peru who are on the front lines of teaching children in their mother tongue. And we continue to seek new opportunities where we can contribute further to promoting and developing multilingual education.

Our consultants see first hand the benefits of local teachers being equipped with quality mother tongue classroom materials.

According to Carolyn Adger, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Linguistics and SIL LEAD consultant, “Research shows the value of teaching children to read in their mother tongue. Less recognized is the systemic value of preparing materials for mother tongue literacy.”

Dr. Adger recalls from her time in Uganda last year as an SIL LEAD Consultant that, “a member of the Grade 3 Runyoro Rutooro writing team in Uganda reported that when she finally saw the printed pupil book and teacher guide that her team had produced, she was overwhelmed with pride in what we cherished most: the stories that resulted from their six weeks of enormous work writing instructional materials.” When the teachers are trained on using the materials they produced, and Dr Adger said, "It’s my prayer that they too fall in love with this material."

Dr. Adger goes on to note that, “As a teachers college instructor and administrator, this team member will be preparing teachers and collaborating with colleagues and other speakers of her language for years. Each one who participates in planning, preparing, and using high quality mother tongue materials is a potential link in sustaining the mother tongue literacy network that nurtures learners.”

We are grateful for Dr. Adger and more than 50 other consultants who work with SIL LEAD to help children around the world to learn in their mother tongue.