from Tim…

On Wednesday of last week, the multilingual education team held a stakeholders meeting to report on the project so far, share implementation plans, and present important multilingual education concepts.  People from various non-government organizations attended, as well as educators and representatives from the Ministry of Education.

I had been working with them all of Monday and Tuesday to finalize the program and help various prepare their presentations and practice them.  And they all did very well.  All of the presentations and conversation was held in Tetun, one of the official languages of East Timor, so I was very much the outsider for the day.  I was able to have some of the discussion translated for me so I could follow some of it and occasionally contribute to the discussion.  But the day very much belonged to the team.

 

 

Afterward, I heard reports that several of the participants felt they had learned a lot, saying that they had not understood before what the multilingual education program was all about.  But having learned more, they now feel it is a good idea!

Now we just have to get everything ready for classes to start early next year…