A Global Education Crisis (and how to resolve it)

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A Global Education Crisis (and how to resolve it)

Humans are in trouble.

We’ve always had our problems, but the exponential acceleration of technology and information has at the same time accelerated the rate at which we, as a species, are hurtling toward a number of crises of our own creation: for example, the growing environmental crisis; and the global issue of expanding income disparity.

A recent World Bank Report on ending educational poverty highlights another growing crisis—the fact that in lower-income countries, as much as 90% of ten-year-old students cannot read a simple book…

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A Call to Greatness

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A Call to Greatness

It is our honor and pleasure to introduce you to the coordinator of SIL LEAD’s work in Senegal, Béatrice Konfe. Although Béatrice would (and did) have her doubts about being called “great,” we believe that with her dedication to our mission of helping local, community-based organizations use their own languages to improve their quality of life; her joy in her own learning process; and her perseverance in the face of adversity, we can’t think of a better term to describe Béatrice…

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FOMO? Forget about it!

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FOMO? Forget about it!

Last week at the Digital Book World Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, SIL LEAD Executive Director Dr. Paul Frank spoke about what digital publishing has to offer languages without literature.

“Languages without literature… what are those?” you might ask, as you wonder what other glorious insights you might have missed by skipping another (admittedly hectic and overwhelming) conference.

Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered…

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Bloom keeps improving!

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Bloom keeps improving!

Newly updated Bloom and Bloom Enterprise have released with a number of groundbreaking enhancements!

SIL LEAD’s proposal for developing tools for creating accessible books (books for the visually impaired) was one of two winners of the ACR Access for All Challenge, which enabled the addition of the following tools to the Bloom software…

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the Imagination to Rise

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the Imagination to Rise

The challenge of any creative journey is that there is always a sense in which you are starting without a map. In the country of Uganda, the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) had a policy and commitment to mother tongue instruction. The Uganda MoES understood that a child who can’t understand the language of instruction cannot learn, and that an educated populace is the foundation of a country’s development…

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Blind Leading the Blind…? Why not!?

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Blind Leading the Blind…? Why not!?

Joyce Lopez works as the head of the Life Transformation Department at Resources for the Blind Inc. (RBI) in the Philippines. Although her siblings have moved to the United States, she remains in the country of her birth, living with her parents about forty-five minutes (by public transport) from the RBI offices in Manila and working to provide visually impaired students with the opportunity to discover their full potential. Joyce oversees the blind pastors that RBI sends to schools to work with blind children, she writes proposals, and from time to time she speaks as an advocate for the blind. When she’s not at work with RBI, she sometimes teaches computer tutorials for blind students. Joyce is a remarkable, bright young woman.

Joyce is also completely blind, and has been from birth…

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A Legacy of Words

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A Legacy of Words

It all started with a scared little boy who spoke no English, crying on his first day of school.

Norbert Rennert was six years old. His parents, who were refugees from World War II in Eastern Europe, had just moved to Canada by way of Paraguay. “I remember that experience quite vividly,” Norbert says, “So I know what it’s like going to school and being confronted with a language you don’t understand.”

It was a key moment that would lead him, eventually, to create a language program called “SynPhony,” which is currently alleviating the fears of children all over the world. The next key moment came with his daughter…

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