Example from Afghanistan: Awareness raising and mobilization at national level
In March, 2010, a“ Workshop on Multilingual Education in Afghanistan” was held in Kabul. Workshop sponsors were UNESCO, SIL International, Afghanistan Medical Consultants, Samar, World Vision and Save the Children. The workshop brought together educators, linguists, policy makers and MT speakers of Afghanistan’ s ethnic languages to discuss the following question:“ What can be done to provide quality education for girls and boys from all of Afghanistan’ s language communities?”
Workshop participants learned about research studies and experiences in other countries that have demonstrated the educational, social, and cultural benefits of helping children build a strong educational foundation in their MT and a good bridge to the official school language.
Following each presentation, participants broke into groups to apply new information to their own contexts and make recommendations for action. On the third day, participants divided into new groups based on their specialty areas( e. g., language planning, language and education policy, curriculum, etc.). Each group summarized the recommendations relating to their specific topic, revised them as needed, and presented them at a final plenary session.
Participants called for mother tongue-based education programmes in their country that will enable students to use their mother tongue as one of the languages of learning in formal and non-formal education. Following are specific recommendations relating to language development in Afghanistan that came from this event:
MTB MLE RESOURCE KIT Including the Excluded: Promoting Multilingual Education
•• Establish a research center for Afghan languages and cultures;
•• Support university departments that engage in linguistic and sociolinguistic research;
••
Analyze and record grammar and sound systems for all the languages; develop alphabets for all languages that do not have them, focusing first on endangered languages;
•• Conduct research on the customs and cultures of each ethnic group;
••
Identify and support language communities that want to strengthen and preserve their language and culture;
••
Develop educational materials in the languages;
• • Establish education programmes for adults and children that start in their home language and then help them learn one of the national languages; use the home languages for early education; teach the national languages as subjects and use them for later primary and higher education;
20