Haiti is a land of contradiction. Rich in natural beauty, natural resources, and human capital, it is nonetheless the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

In the 1800s, Haiti was known as the Jewel of the Antilles. Not only was it stunningly beautiful, but it was also arguably the most prosperous colony in the world. Its verdant landscape provided massive quantities of coffee (more than half the world’s supply), rum, indigo, molasses, timber, and sugar. It was, nonetheless, a colony, and the goal of the colonial power (in this case, France) was never to lift up the people who lived there. In fact, the majority of the Haitian population was comprised of slaves stolen from their homes in Africa and brought to Haiti for one purpose alone: to enrich the nation of France…

When SIL LEAD board member Nelis van den Berg was just ten years old, he told his parents he wanted to ride his bicycle to his grandparents’ house. But Nelis’s grandparents didn’t live just down the street, or even a few blocks over. They lived one hundred and twenty-five kilometers away. Nowadays, even considering a request like that could get your neighbors calling social services on you.

Nelis’s parents pulled out a map and helped him plan his route…

It might seem clueless to wish someone a “happy world refugee day.” After all, a refugee is someone who’s been forced flee their country to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. The very definition of the word implies some form of tragedy. But whether or not the tragedy a person faces is manmade or not, a refugee is someone who has survived. As both the Roman statesman Cicero and the Bible* are quoted as saying, “Where there is life, there is hope.” And nowhere is that hope more evident than with children.

On World Refugee Day, our hearts and minds turn to child refugees…

Imagine if all the English-speaking children you knew suddenly shifted to Esperanto and you knew without a doubt that once they grew up, the English language would disappear from the world forever. Sure, there’d be a written record. There’d be novels, encyclopedias, and history books (and movies!). But if nobody was speaking and using English, all of that accumulated material would quickly become the province of a small group of academics.

Of the over seven thousand languages spoken in the world today, one thousand, three hundred and ninety-three are not being passed on to new generations and will soon be lost. The words, history, and much of the culture of around eleven point seven million people… gone.

Just let that sink in for a moment…

From a very early age growing up in Fife, Scotland, SIL LEAD board member Dr. Catherine Young was headed toward a life as an educator and a lover of the natural world. While her parents weren’t teachers, they were involved in Guides, Scouts, and other youth activities and were therefore focused on community involvement and community development...

When SIL LEAD board member Dr. Margaret Jepkirui Muthwii is asked if she grew up having to help out on the family farm in rural Kenya, or if instead she was expected to focus on her studies, she laughs (she does that a lot).

Margaret says that she and her eight siblings were expected to keep up with their studies, but there was no question about whether or not they’d help out on the farm. “We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t argue about it,” Margaret says, “We just woke up and there was a schedule…”

Many of us have never heard of the exotic-sounding Quetzaltenango, a city in the mountains of Guatemala where cultures new and old meet to create a vibrant whole. But back in February of this year, SIL LEAD executive director Paul Frank traveled there to lead a series of workshops that would help spread Bloom software throughout the country, and contribute to the conservation of not just the Mam and K’iche languages, but entire ways of life. ..

When Dr. Kreeft Peyton attended her first-ever SIL LEAD board meeting in 2011, the board members went around the room to say why they were excited to be serving on the board. She went first (“Unfortunately—you know how that goes, since you can’t hear what everyone else has said and adjust”), and she said, “I am so excited to be here because I love language. I am passionate about language. I think about language in every situation that I am in.”

“It’s like the Georgetown University Linguistics Department t-shirt,” she continued, recounting her alma mater: “Analyzing your every utterance since 1949.” She laughed, remembering both the t-shirt and her slight embarrassment at everyone else’s (to her) more noble-sounding reasons for serving on the SIL LEAD board…