Lite Asia believes in enriching communities and sustaining ethnic identity through the development of the mother-tongue language by engaging with minority people groups in the areas of literacy and literature, thus fostering a greater sense of self-esteem, identity and value. Key to our efforts are partnerships with like minded organizations throughout the region. 

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​We engage in, amongst other things, research, setting up and development of effective mother tongue-based literacy programs and literacy-related language planning activities in minority languages. This entails providing them with the training needed to help them to develop a writing system for their own language. We also guide them in the development of various reading and writing instruction materials in the mother tongue. Along with this, indigenous authors are trained and further literature in the vernacular is developed, contributing to the corpus of literature in the mother tongue. We hereby ensure that provision is made for involvement in further language-planning activities as the need arises, such as education materials, dictionaries and other materials translated into the vernacular.

 

A language committee is set up comprising influential people from the community and given training in their role. We then continue to train, advise, assist, consult on and raise funds for literacy programs among these groups. Our emphasis is on community ownership for sustainable development and this value is a thread through all our engagement with these communities. In cooperation with the local people, and in collaboration with other stakeholders, we help these trained community representatives to transform their futures.

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