OWL examples

OWL stands for “Ownership and Leadership” and it refers to how teachers and educators influence their communities:

In many contexts, minority language education is under-resourced and/or lacks visibility. Teachers and educators who choose this career path are taking ownership of this particular issue in their communities and so they are proactive in developing and valorising their work. Through their work with colleagues and most importantly with students, teachers become leaders in their communities and inspire more and more people to speak and carry on using their language.

This unit consists of 4 slide shows which tell you about four initiatives that promote language use and community engagement through different activities for the Latgalian language (LV), Mirandese (PT), South Saami (NO), and West Frisian (NL)

You will read an interview with Andris Slišāns about the cultural centre in Upīte (Latgalian), learn about the Amadeu Ferreira Awards for pupils  following Mirandese language classes,  Saami pathfinders (South Saami), and the Frisian children’s books ambassador.

Each slide show describes one stage of the ownership and leadership idea: 1)  a sense of responsibility, 2) understanding and tackling the needs of the speaker community, 3) agency in the revitalisation process, and finally 4) empowering the community to take action.

By dragging the button to right, you switch between the initiatives and can read and compare the activities and the ideas behind each action in a given stage (e.g. “a sense of responsibility”).