International Mother Language Day 2023
On Tuesday 21st February Svitac (Firefly in Bosnia) celebrated International Mother Language Day. First announced by the UNESCO foundation over 20 years ago, Mother Language Day aims to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and to promote multilingualism.
For our Mother Language day celebration, our volunteers decided to create a poster showcasing different greetings from around the world by using countries’ national animals. This activity aimed to create helpful associations between countries, their national animals, and their native greetings, through the medium of art, craft, and play.
The youngest participants began by drawing different animals from around the world, these included the Welsh dragon, India’s Bengalese Tiger, and Canada’s Beaver. After this we began the process of making the poster itself, using speech-bubble and name tags we created a small profile for each animal, its country of origin, and how to greet someone in the native language. The choice to use animals, not only engaged the kids but allowed them to create positive associations between a country and its local language.
The participants had so much fun during this activity, and the final piece was full of animals and greetings from around the world.
