The Brief
There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken across the globe, and every two weeks a language dies. This alarming statistic was the impetus to initiating the community collaboration of “Apo Uleu” (“Our Sago”), the first children’s book in Indigenous Penan language. This project integrated many levels of cross-cultural consultation & collaboration, culminating in the distribution of a copy of the book for every Penan child across the state of Sarawak.
As an independent fundraising effort, the campaign had two key objectives, to highlight the issues and significance of endangered languages, as well as to raise funds for the publication and delivery costs of three thousand books. The campaign ran for one month, and included direct messaging, social media outreach and targeted public relations across the media landscape. This independent campaign, reached its goal of $19,500 and the books were successfully distributed.
