Celebrating the Begin With Books project with our collaborators in Mali!

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Celebrating the Begin With Books project with our collaborators in Mali!

On May 31, AMALAN (Malian Language Academy) organized a dedication ceremony for the 400+ children's books created by the LiNEMA project (Digital Books for our Children in Mali), also known as Begin with Books (BWB)-Mali.

SIL LEAD was the award winner from All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development for this project and managed the project. SIL International Mali was our technical partner in Mali and working with Malian government counterparts to implement the project. The event was covered by a national TV in Mali…

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Grateful New Beginnings: Change at SIL LEAD

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It is with gratitude for our past and enthusiasm for the future that we announce a shift in key leadership positions here at SIL LEAD.

First, Paul Frank has stepped down as Executive Director; and after a well deserved three month sabbatical will return to SIL LEAD in October as the Senior Advisor. Paul co-founded SIL LEAD and saw it grow to a streamlined organization with global reach. We are grateful for his ten years of service, and grateful that he’ll be remaining with us in an advisory capacity.

Succeeding Paul in the Executive Director position is Christof Weber, who has worked with SIL LEAD since 2014 and served as Associate Director since 2019. 

Fraser Bennett has been promoted to fill the Associate Director position. 

Meanwhile, Catherine Young has been elected to serve as the Chairperson of SIL LEAD's Board of Directors, taking the place of Mark Taylor. Mark served in that position for 10 years as well, and will remain on the board. 

We’re grateful that these leadership changes maintain continuity of purpose, as we remain committed to seeing people flourish in community using the languages they value most.

Blooming in the Time of Covid

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Blooming in the Time of Covid

There’s a scene in the movie The 5th Element where the villain, played by Gary Oldman, bloviates about how all the evil, destructive things he does are actually good, because they prompt the creation of industry and provide work for countless people. While we disagree strongly with the idea that the good that can come after evil things have happened somehow transmogrifies that evil into good, the fact remains that truly awful things—like a global pandemic, for example—can bring about some positive change…

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Language is Culture

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Language is Culture

Language is not math, science, grammar, or even dancing… although it would be difficult to develop and grow in any of those fields without it, because language encompasses them all. It converses with them, with art—with every aspect of human experience—and this conversation affects what language becomes and (if it’s alive and in use) is perpetually becoming.

This means that when you translate a text from one language to another, you’re not just translating a static form of notation into another static form of notation… you’re translating a culture…

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Together We Can

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Together We Can

During the past few weeks, there have been times when it has felt like we’ve all decided to just take a vacation from talking and worrying about Covid-19 as we’ve focused, instead, on the #BlackLivesMatter protests and the history of systemic racism in America.

But as necessary and important as all this soul-searching and activism are, the fact of Covid-19 remains. By the end of May, the virus had been the world’s leading cause of death for almost exactly one month—having caused around a hundred thousand more deaths in 2020 than its closest lethal competitor, malaria…

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Hope for 2019

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Hope for 2019

The calendar we use is imperfectly matched to the solar year, so there’s a sense in which New Year’s Day is only an illusion—just another day among many, invested with imaginary importance by a system invented at the behest of a sixteenth century Pope trying to get Easter to fall a little closer to the spring equinox.

“Imperfect,” however, is not the same as hopelessly flawed. As annoying as the Gregorian calendar can be for those of us with the misfortune to be born on a leap day, it generally does its job of helping us plan vacations, birthday parties, and—in our case—objectives and resolutions for the New Year…

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