ET Lit and Educ

Fast Facts:

• Language: ET*

• No. of speakers: 1,290,000

• Faith: Mostly Buddhist

• Location: Asia

• Project start date: 2017

• Expected completion: 2025 (MTB-MLE)

Goals:

• Equip ET people to read & write their mother tongue and the national language. (This goal has been achieved.)

• Teach life skills, including arithmetic, health and hygiene.

• Six-year MTB-MLE pilot (Kindergarten to Grade 5) for primary school children, starting with ET and bridging to the national language and English.

The ET people live in groups scattered across remote areas of the country. The average literacy rate was <20% for women and ~40% for men, which led to many problems – poverty, poor health and hygiene, and alcoholism. Their villages are 100% ET – children entered primary school with zero knowledge of the national language and, until this project began, had to travel to another region to attend school.

This project originally aimed to provide ET-language literacy for adults and preschool children. However, due to keen interest from the community, the project has been greatly expanded into a full six-year Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) pilot (Kindergarten to Grade 5). The students begin school with all subjects entirely in the ET language, and the national language and English are gradually phased in.

Note: A separate project has completed translation of the ET New Testament, and an Old Testament translation is currently under way.

* For security reasons, pseudonyms are used for the language name and names of individuals.

** The exact location is confidential. Prior approval is required for further reproduction or distribution in any form.

Project updates:

2024

2023