Language rights fellowship

Vision

A society that cherishes the promotion, use and development of indigenous (African) languages.

Mission

To protect and promote the use of indigenous languages, thereby enhancing Southern Africans' effective participation in all spheres of life.

Background

The current Language Rights fellowship is a result of a previous 18-month fellowship initiated in 2001 to provide guidance in the design of a meaningful contribution to regional efforts aimed at promoting the use of indigenous languages and multilingualism. The 2001 fellowship included a situation analysis of the extent of usage and the promotion of indigenous languages in the region, and made recommendations regarding the most meaningful contributions that OSISA could make.

Results of the 2001 fellowship proved the need to pay close attention to these issues in order to strengthen and make more effective the existing OSISA programmes in the region, and open up new niche areas for language development and the promotion of democratic societies. Read more about the issues identified by the 2001 Language Rights fellowship...

Strategies

There are two aspects to OSISA's Language Rights strategy:

• mainstreaming language development issues into existing and emerging OSISA programmes. Read more...
• delivering on a niche contribution by OSISA. Read more...

The new Language Rights fellowship will pay particular attention to the following key result areas:

• mainstreaming language development issues into all OSISA programmes and implementing OSISA niche projects;
• managing partnerships with identified organisations whose values coincide with OSISA's to promote language issues;
• commissioning and monitoring action research on agreed themes and priorities;
• production of scholarly material and reflection on programme experience.

Projects

The current Language Rights fellowship started in September 2005, and work is already under way. Projects include:

• promotion of literature in indigenous languages through a grant to the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS);
• harmonisation and standardisation of the orthographies of indigenous languages of Southern Africa through a grant to CASAS;
• translation of human rights materials into indigenous languages through a grant to the Transformation Resource Centre in Lesotho.

For more information, e-mail: languagerights@osisa.org.