“A Desire to Give Back”

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“A Desire to Give Back”

If you were to ask Rebecca Chandler Leege where she was born, she might just answer, “The United States.” This non-specificity is not because she doesn’t know the city or town of her birth, but because she has lived in so many countries and considers herself a citizen of the world, more than of any one country—so regional specifics feel a little less important. While this could be understood as the natural result of her highly mobile early life in a missionary family, it doesn’t diminish the value that such a perspective brings to her current role as the newest member of the SIL LEAD Board of Directors…

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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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Racial Justice and SIL LEAD

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A Statement from Executive Director Dr. Paul Frank:

Although the work of SIL LEAD focuses on speakers of minority languages all around the world, we care deeply about what is happening in the United States as well. The killing of George Floyd—and of so many others before him—horrifies us, provokes us, and challenges us. Those of us in SIL LEAD who are not people of color will never perfectly understand what others have experienced and suffered for far too long. But we stand in solidarity with black people and all people of color in the United States. We resonate with their call for justice. We empathize with their outrage over their seemingly endless mistreatment. 

While our work as an organization is focused on other countries, an article by Larry Madowo, a Kenyan journalist living in New York City, gave me a glimpse into how those two worlds intersect. His experience told him that “America may be the land of opportunity for many, but it would still reduce me to the color of my skin and find me unworthy.” 

I find myself wondering what would happen if some of the people we serve in other countries, or good friends and colleagues such as Susan, Kuchhat, and Béatrice, were to come to the United States? It breaks my heart to think that they, too, would be judged by the color of their skin and be deemed unworthy of respect and fair treatment. As the Apostle James wrote in the Bible, “Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right!”

We long for a more just society. We pray that black people and indeed all people of color—in the United States, and in all the minority language communities that we serve around the world—will one day be able to live without fear, fully accepted for who they are; never again reduced, marginalized, or oppressed for the color of their skin.

The Cancer Patient's Mite

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The Cancer Patient's Mite

You’ve probably seen this picture before, but did you know that the woman in the photograph is named Florence Owens Thompson? She was thirty-two at the time Dorthea Lange took her picture, and a widowed mother of seven children. Thompson told Lange that she had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, as well as birds that her children had killed. Dorthea Lange’s portrait of the “Migrant Mother” has come to be one of the most iconic images in American history. It helped galvanize the American public during the Great Depression. It drew people together, and is part of the reason why Americans came to remember that era as a time when the community gathered to help those in need…

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Imagine the Gibberish

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Imagine the Gibberish

Imagine for a moment a time when you’ll no longer be quarantined in your home. Imagine your local library has once again opened, and you can once again take your kids there to check out books. But imagine that almost all the books in that local library are written in gibberish—that only one out of every one hundred books in your library has been written in a language that your children can actually understand.

Can you imagine how frustrating that would be?…

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Coronavirus: an Indigenous Response

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Coronavirus: an Indigenous Response

Everyone’s dealing with disruption and challenges right now as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, but imagine how difficult it must be for people in indigenous minority language communities in the global south, where lockdowns have often been much more strict, and resources much more scarce.

What do you think of when you hear about “indigenous people”?

Perhaps you think of grass huts and spear-fishing, or riding shaggy ponies bareback across the steppes. There may be some truth in that. Many indigenous people have worked hard to maintain the lifestyle and knowledge base that have sustained them for millennia. But they have also been profoundly impacted and re-shaped by the forces of globalization, urbanization, and modernization. With great ingenuity and resourcefulness, they have adapted to a new reality while at the same time maintaining a firm grasp on their historical identity…

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Beyond the Brokenness

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Beyond the Brokenness

SIL LEAD exists to serve some of the most vulnerable populations in the world—minority language communities of people who are typically poor and almost completely powerless. These people are outsiders, sometimes in communities so small that they barely register on the national consciousness of their respective countries. But these people do matter.

Every individual matters.

It’s a mindset encoded in the DNA of our organization, and it’s one of the reasons that many of our staff are just a little bit anomalous, themselves. They are people who don’t quite “fit” with what you’d expect.

When SIL LEAD Associate Director Christof Weber first started with SIL LEAD, he was not precisely the candidate you’d expect for an important position in a faith-based nonprofit.

Sure, he’s an intelligent guy with a great deal of relevant work experience.

But at the time, Christof was in a difficult place…

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How are you feeling today?

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How are you feeling today?

There is no wrong answer to this question.

At the risk of sounding trite, your feelings are your feelings. Whatever they are, that’s okay.

It is okay if you’re feeling scared, anxious, angry—or all of the above. But while it’s important to take a moment to allow yourself to honestly experience your emotional state, it is also important to recognize the luxuries that we have when it comes to our current global crisis…

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