If you haven’t heard of it – you should be aware that this year the theme for UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day is “Towards Sustainable Futures through Multilingual Education”… so international “Farmer to Farmer” agricultural video organisation, Access Agriculture, is doing its bit to mark the day. The Nairobi-based organisation already has 75 languages represented on its website www.accessagriculture.org.
The ability to have quality agricultural training videos in the local languages of farmers is key to the success of the four year old organisation. Videos can be downloaded for free or the soundtracks can be downloaded and used by local radio stations. This supports the aims of International Mother Language Day this year focussing on “local languages, especially minority and indigenous, transmitting cultures, values and traditional knowledge, thus playing an important role in promoting sustainable futures.”
During this week, work is continuing on a fact-sheet and script-writing course in the Marathi Language in Pune in India. Further local language videos will be developed after this.
In Malawi small 3gp video files have been loaded on to simple $10 phones for farmers to see and hear how to improve their farms in their own language. Access Agriculture works closely with local language professionals to get the best translations produced.
If you would like to sponsor translations into your language please contact Kevin Mutonga, Global Translations Co-ordinator, kevin@accessagriculture.org.
