Country/region: Worldwide including Myanmar, Ethiopia, Brazil, India,Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Sudan
Project focus
PILLARS stands for Partnerships In Local Language Resources. It is an innovative approach to sharing information at grassroots level. It emphasises participatory approaches and discussion-based learning with groups of community workers e.g. churches, health, education around development themes in a set of community development guides.
The information materials are also designed to be very easy to translate into mother tongue languages among minority language groups. PILLARS focuses heavily on the importance of a local cultural dimension in information, education and communications, which includes discussing the cultural context of development issues and translating existing guides, and producing new guides in local languages. Translations have been made into over 30 languages, many of them minority languages. In Myammar and Brazil, those involved in the translation process have replicated the training with other local language groups.
Background
PILLARS builds on development research that indicated that there was a paucity of printed materials which were relevant to poor people. Coupled with this was the need for development processes to recognise the cultural and linguistic rights of individuals, to enable them to learn and communicate in their own mother tongue and practice their own culture and traditions.
In many of the contexts in which PILLARS has been implemented, the language and culture of groups have been marginalised by a more dominant group. By giving value to minority languages and cultures, the PILLARS process reinforces a positive sense of cultural identity and self-esteem, and is a powerful unifying force. It also raises the profile of that language group and improves their access to relevant and practical printed information. The PILLARS process not only focuses on groups which are marginalised on the basis of culture or ethnicity, but also excluded on the basis of education, age and gender.
Guides have been produced on a number of community development issues, such as food security, agroforestry, micro-credit and HIV/AIDS. Tearfund has supported the PILLARS translation process in a number of countries including Uganda, Southern Sudan, Nigeria and Burkina Faso. A formal two-year pilot has just been conducted in Myanmar, Ethiopia and Brazil.
Level of cultural intervention
Cultural content
Activities
In Myanmar, church workers, community workers, teachers and health workers produced PILLARS Guides in Burmese, and replicated the training with a further 13 language groups. This has proved to be particularly empowering in a context where there is effectively no freedom of speech or expression and no recourse to democratic systems and processes, and where the Burmese language and culture is promoted over and above minority languages and cultures. The Guides encourage people to value their knowledge, language and culture, whilst going some way to meeting the need for information on community development issues, and provide a space for people to voice their concerns and to suggest practical solutions to address these.
In Brazil, indigenous people are traditionally marginalized and oppressed, and are among the poorest, most vulnerable and under-represented groups of society. Although government and non-governmental organisations are engaged in advocacy on indigenous issues, they generally speak on their behalf rather than empowering them to tell their own stories. Many of the indigenous languages and cultures are themselves endangered. The PILLARS process has brought together both the Portuguese speaking and the indigenous community, and this has proved to be an effective way of building understanding and respect.
In Ethiopia, training has been conducted in a refugee camp, with the Mabban language group from Southern Sudan. The implementing organisation, ZOA Refugee Care, considers the Guides as a tool to facilitate community planning as they prepare for repatriation. One participant said it “was a landmark in the history of the Mabban people”, since the only literature currently available in their language are the Bible and some basic literacy primers.
Outcomes
- Guides produced in several local languages during pilot study (eg Burmese, Portuguese, Mabban)
- Guides produced in over 30 local languages
- Training extended to 13 language groups in Myanmar, in addition to Burmese, and 6 language groups in Brazil.
- Training in translation and facilitation helps equip local leaders to adapt ideas from outside the community and share ideas in oral/written form.
- Participatory process enables groups to develop a democratic process of information sharing, which can enable them to bring their own issues and priorities to the fore.
- New guides were produced in Myanmar on rural education and drugs trafficking;
- In Ethiopia the Wolaitta group wrote a guide on Harmful Traditional Practices, including topics on gender equity and cultural practices which are harmful to health and well-being of women and children.The local government office has requested copies of this literature as none is available in the Wolaitta language.
The process of meeting regularly to discuss development topics helps a community group to grow. The PILLARS topics encourage people to plan and work together, strengthening the group.
Feedback
Facilitator (Myanmar):“We have so many languages in our country.Through this programme people can not only maintain and value their culture and literature but can also provide knowledge and useful information about development to the community.”
Facilitator (Ethiopia): “Practical advocacy work for a community forgotten by the rest of the world and people displaced from their original domicile, deprived of their natural rights to peace and undisturbed community life. The Mabbans were facing the risk of loosing their identity and their rights to acquire knowledge. PILLARS has gone some way to restoring the rights of these people to receive information and participate in the development of their communities so that the present and future Mabban could have a better future”.
Beneficiaries
“The development of a community depends largely on the fabric of its own knowledge and language. Cultural diversity increases our vision,”Portuguese mother tongue participants, Brazil.
“I want to live out what I have learned and reflect the value of being an Indians.We need to find away to be proud to be Indian – to work to help each other to develop our own identity”. Caiua language group, Brazil
Sources
- Summary report, PILLARS coordinator
- Report of the second PILLARS workshop, Brazil
- Report of the third PILLARS workshop, Ethiopia
