Multilingual Education and India

Dear MLE friends,   Attached is an exciting personal story from an MLE grass roots level worker in our neighbouring country B'desh. A quote: We divided  the school year  into 30 weeks and developed one  theme  for each week. Each theme had a daily  lesson  plan,  big  picture  related  to  the  theme,  a  big  book,  a  listening  story,  and  "facts  and information" activities  using  flash  cards, songs,  rhymes or  games, etc. So,  in 10 months, a  total of  1200  different  learning materials  were  produced  for  Preprimary  I  classes. When  I  look  back  and  consider  the number of materials that were produced, printed, transported, and made available to 89 schools, 

Dear MLE friends First of all: a happy new year to you! The first MLE related announcement that I received this year is quite exciting: The 1st International Conference on "Language, Education and the Millennium Development Goals" will be held November 9-11 in Bangkok, Thailand sponsored by a consortium of organizations from the Asia Multilingual Education Working Group, particularly: UNESCO, UNICEF, SEAMEO, Mahidol University, SIL International and Save the Children. Join with representatives from government and intergovernmental agencies, NGOs, academics and local community organi

Dear MLE friends, Minority Rights Group International has released " Indigenous Languages: A View from UNICEF " . This seven-page document provides a succinct summary of UNICEF's view of indigenous languages, but was not included in the main report   State of the World's Minorities and

Dear MLE friends, Minority Rights Group International has released " Indigenous Languages: A View from UNICEF " . This seven-page document provides a succinct summary of UNICEF's view of indigenous languages, but was not included in the main report   State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009. The summary statement on the end states: In conclusion, it is necessary to work for the maintenance and development of  indigenous languages and for their use throughout society. But it is also necessary  to work with the rest of the population, to promote a culture which respects cultural diversity and enrichment between cultures, in order to establish a framework for inclusive democracy. 

Dear MLE Friends, Last year a couple of people from South Asia participated in the MLE MA level course Payap University in ChiangMai offers in Thailand. In 2010 it will be offered again from Oct 11 till Nov 6th. The details are attached.

Dear MLE friends, Yesterday I visited the new MLE resource centre hosted by Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), sponsored by Unicef. They now have their own office on the campus and also have a nice website: http://www.nmrc-jnu.org/ The website already contains several good MLE related articles, has book references, pictures and other things. There is also a way to register yourself to subscribe to a newsletter: Worth doing!

Dear MLE friends, Kenya is not next door, but given the very interesting list of topics, I thought I should still share this conference announcement with you.