2018 posts

Help alleviate poverty in rural Botswana

Remote rural communities in Botswana are among the poorest areas in the country. We request funding to help pay for daily necessities such as food and clothing, and to help provide financial support to young people who wish to pursue educational opportunities.  ELA is supporting this effort as a fiscal sponsor. Donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/poverty-relief-in-rural-botswana Funding Request:…

Upcoming Events

Starting October 15, ELA will be hosting weekly introductory Quechua classes from our old friends New York Quechua Collective, 7 to 9 pm every Monday at ELA’s office in Manhattan. Sign up here! On October 19 the American Museum of Natural History will host Ciao Babylon, a film about ELA’s work, as part of the Margaret Mead Film Festival. On…

Exploring the Other Roof of the World

This summer, with support from a National Geographic Explorer grant, a team from ELA is traveling across the Pamir region of Tajikistan and an adjacent area of western China, interviewing over 70 speakers and singers in a dozen different languages — primarily under-documented, endangered Iranic languages of the Pamiri subgroup such as Wakhi and Shughni, which…

Connecting Indigenous Food, Health, and Language

Working with NYC’s Department of Health and the Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service, ELA launched a 7-week series of activities in East Harlem centered on indigenous food, language, and community. Led by Nahuatl teacher Irwin Sánchez, the project brought together Mixtec and Mam mothers to share recipes, transmit languages, and talk about…

Kexaptùn: Poetry in NYC’s Oldest and Newest Languages

With speakers of as many as 800 languages, contemporary New York City is the most linguistically diverse place in the history of the world. Kexaptun — “a few words” in Lenape, the endangered indigenous language of New York City — is ELA’ ongoing project to collect and create poems about or set in the City, in as…