"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint".

- (Hesiod, 8th century BC)

Older generations have always griped about the foolishness of the young, claiming that back in “their day” kids were different. And to some extent, they have always been right. Young people are different than those who came before, if only by virtue of the fact that one of the primary constants in our world is change. People are people, though, however young (or old) they may be. Just as foolishness has never been exclusive to any age group, neither has industry, innovation, and impact.

Hannah Hudson is the youngest member of the SIL LEAD team, coming on board at the end of 2019 to work as a Project Support Specialist (we’ll get back to that). If you were to quickly scan Hannah’s resume—with her background in Graphic Design and Photography—you might think of her as one of those crackshot young people we all know, charging with glib confidence through an online world that for many of us is still something of a bewildering mystery. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

But Hannah, like all young people, has a story that might surprise you…

When Walt Disney embarked on the making of the first animated feature film in history, everybody said he was nuts. While Disney was the king of short-form animation at the time, everybody knew there was no way animation could hold people’s attention for the full run time of a feature film. They said it would hurt people’s eyes. They called it “Disney’s Folly.” And by the time he was wrapping up production, it sure looked like they had been right…

SIL LEAD is delighted to announce our selection as a winner of All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development’s (ACR GCD) Begin With Books prize. The challenge was to create cost-effective, accessible children’s books in languages that children use and understand. We proposed to bring expertise and our innovative Bloom software to a country that is new for SIL LEAD as an organization*—Mali! Our project will be called LiNEM—Livres numériques pour nos enfants au Mali (Digital Books for Our Children in Mali)” …

Those who spend their lives in service to marginalized people groups inevitably come to identify with them. Anyone who spends their days hearing the stories of refugees, the poor, and the disadvantaged cannot help but realize that with only a tiny shift in circumstances, this could be their lot as well.

For SIL LEAD board member Serge Duss, however, the empathy he has for these people is not just something he picked up in the course of doing his job…

It’s no secret that Bloom is right up there at the top of the heap when it comes to accessible book-making software. Bloom is an award-winning program with cutting-edge capabilities, and it is regularly being updated to increase its already impressive reach.

But far more important than any awards or technological bells and whistles is the fact that Bloom is being used by real people all around the world to create exciting new literacy materials in their own languages—often for the very first time in history!

It’s not just “people,” though…