Our Golden Hour

Our children's book, based on the stories of the Marma Indigenous Peoples, received multiple awards. Special thanks to all who made this possible.

For the last 10 years, I was invited as a guest speaker to Professor Paola Ucceli's class at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. After the session, Paola invites us to lunch with her and her students. I am blessed to share a few words about Our Golden Hour's initiatives to support building schools and to publish multilingual storybooks for the education of Indigenous children of Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Happy International Mother Language Day!

As this report and our studies show that children learn best when they start schooling with the languages they speak at home. It also reduces dropout rates.

Learning in your mother tongue: Are indigenous language textbooks making a difference in the Chittagong Hill Tracts? This article has been republished from Dhaka Tribune archives on the occasion of the International Mother Language Day 2022

An invitation for traditional stories of Indigenous peoples of Chittagong Hill Tracts.

I am happy to share that "It is not a fish", a children's book based on oral stories of Indigenous Peoples of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh, is a Nautilus Book Award 2021 winner (out of submissions from over 20 countries). This Indigenous story teaches our children not to harm river dolphins, more importantly, the value of empathy for all living beings, ethics of not harming others for our own self-interest (greed), and the active role we can play in preserving our nature and environment. This storybook is part of the curriculum we designed in the CHT schools. These are also multilingual books, including four Indigenous languages of CHT, and total five languages: Marma, Mro, Kokborok, Chakma, and English.

Inspiring and wonderful talk by Professor Emerita Lorna Williams, on ""Making Space for Indigenous Knowledge and Worldview in the Academy", now uploaded in IKA SIG's Youtube channel. Professor Lorna Williams words of wisdom touched hearts of many people who attended the event. Subscribe our channel and get notified for future events. Here is the link:

Making Space for Indigenous Knowledge and Worldview in the Academy - Professor Lorna Williams Feb 21 "Making Space for Indigenous Knowledge and Worldview in the Academy" conversation with with Professor Lorna Wánosts'a7 Williams. Hosted by the Indigenous Kno...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Hope sometime soon in 2021, we can go out and get together with friends, family, or colleagues, whenever we wish. Play is an essential part of children's development. Here Indigenous children play with laughter and fun.

Happy to share that our Indigenous language based multilingual book Marbashay and the Boy won the best Children's book award by Independent Publisher of New England. This one is based on an Indigenous folktale - a mongoose saved the life of a little boy from cobra snakes and the family fell in love with this little mongoose. This storybook helps children learn in their first language, see themselves and their community represented in books, teaches children the value of family, love of animals and our natural environment. Beautifully illustrated by Grace Chen. Thanks to Beth , Alec, Tim, Christopher, Jenn, Stephanie, Sumaiya, and many others who made this possible.

Happy World Indigenous People's Day! There are over 476 million Indigenous Peoples in the world, belonging to over 5000 communities in 90 countries, and speak over 4000 languages worldwide. Indigenous-managed territories contain 80% of the earth's biodiversity. If all Indigenous peoples lived in one country, it would be the third most populated country in the world. These pictures are of Indigenous peoples of Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh from past years.

Our latest storybook based on stories of Indigenous Peoples of Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh. This six language storybook teaches children about the wisdom of elders and ancestors, importance of minimizing waste and taking care of land we live on, and helping each other in our community. Our initiatives also helps to revitalize first languages of students and reaffirm their cultural values and lived experiences.

This article highlights why we do what we do and why language revitalization is critical for our survival.

Four Things That Happen When a Language Dies This World Mother Language Day, read about why many say we should be fighting to preserve linguistic diversity