Ubongo 2022 Annual Report
2022 was a learning year for the adaptation team. We participated in various knowledge-sharing sessions and adaptation workshops in Kenya and Nigeria. We also took part in our first-ever masterclass in South Africa! Not only that, we taught the importance and the power of storytelling in one’s mother tongue to educators, development partners, government stakeholders, and media makers at our stakeholder events.
As we work towards becoming more inclusive through adapting our content into more sign languages, we continually seek opportunities to collaborate with the people who live, breathe and communicate in those languages.
We are learning that we can achieve the best results by working with people in the deaf community; so that we can have a product that not only appeals to them but will also be a learning opportunity for ourselves and for everybody else.
One of the recommendations in UNESCO’s 2022 Spotlight Report on Basic Education Completion and Foundational Learning in Africa (Born to Learn) is to teach all kids in their home language; by giving all kids the opportunity to first learn to read in a language they understand. “The vast majority of African children are taught in a language they do not speak at home. This slows or even prevents the early acquisition of reading and writing proficiency. The use of a child’s first or home language for up to six or eight years alongside the introduction of a second one, initially as a subject and later as a parallel medium of instruction is widely considered the most effective policy despite considerable practical implementation challenges.”
