Kolibrí Festivaali

Kolibrí – the Ibero-American children’s cultural festival  is a way to experience multiculturalism and multilingualism in Finland through children’s eyes. Kolibrí offers an artistic, recreational and educational program in a multicultural setting for all families, irrespective of nationality or language. The events and workshops organized  are open to all, free of charge and carried out in several languages.  From the website you find information also in Spanish and in Portuguese.

The festival is produced by Ninho Monikulttuurikeskus ry, (www.ninho.ry) a grassroots association working for a more multicultural and plural Finland. Besides the festival the association also organises a biannual seminar on children and bilingualism, promotes Ibero-American children’s literature and illustration projects in Finland and supports several exchange programs between Finnish and Ibero-American artists working around children’s arts and culture, with a special emphasis in literature and illustration.

Most of the events of Kolibrí take place in Libraries in Espoo and Cultural Centers in Helsinki.

Photos from events organized by Kolibrí festivaali

Storytelling by Verónica Miranda
architecture by Carolina Isasi & Laura Zuvillaga
music by Aurinko ry with Clara Petrozzi, Grisell MacDonell and Jordy Valderrama
illustration by Kolibrí honored guest 2017: Isidro Ferrer.

Photos credits: Kolibrí Festivaali.

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What Language do You Speak – documentary film and discussion

Film Screening at Stoa,
Turunlinnantie 1, Helsinki
6.3. 2018 at 18:00
short discussion after the film with the director and audience at 19:00

(In case you are interested in showing the film in another context, please ask for the director’s contact from Multilingual Month.)

The documentary film What Language Do You Speak? shows the universal nature of the identity defined by language.
The director of the film, Elisa Bracher from Brazil, will arrive to Finland to participate in the screening. After the film screening we’ll share experiences about multilingual contexts with Elisa, who also runs a children´s art education center in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Welcome to contribute!

Description of the film:
Children and adults who have had to adapt to an environment where their own language is not understandable, tell about their experiences in e.g. Brazil, Britain and India. Each experience is unique, but learning the language appears to be the key to being treated as an equal.

“At that time people didn’t understand us. Kids would laugh at you in class, if you said the wrong thing, or if you spoke differently. Because of that there was no other option than to stay quiet. And you had to try hard, try hard to be invisible”
(Girl from Somalia, migrated to Britain)

Brasil 2017, 65 min
Director Elisa Bracher
Main Language Portuguese, English texts. The film includes interviews or fragments also in English, Somali and many other languages.
Tue 6.3.2018 at 18.00
Stoa, Musiikkisali
Turunlinnantie 1, Itäkeskus , Helsinki
Free entry

Elisa Bracher will be interviewed by Outi Korhonen

Móðurmál – the Association on Bilingualism

Móðurmál (Mother Tongue) is an NGO founded in Reykjavik in 1994 as The Parents of Bilingual Children Association (Samtök foreldra tvítyngdra barna). It supports multilingualism by teaching languages to bi- or plurilingual children and develops structured language programs with clearly defined curricula and goals. It has offered instruction in over twenty languages for plurilingual children since 1994.

Móðurmál offers of has offered teaching in Albanian, in Arabic, in Czech, in Chinese, in English, in Filipino, in French, in German, in Ghanaian Languages Ewe & Twi, in Indonesian, in Italian, in Japanese, in Korean, in Latvian, in Lithuanian, in Nepalese, in Polish, in Portuguese, in Russian, in Serbian, in Slovakian, in Spanish, in Swedish, in Thai, in Turkish, in Ukrainian, and in Víetnamese

Móðurmál has received the following awards:

2008: “Vel að verki staðið” (“For A Job Well Done”) certificate of recognition from the Intercultural Centre for Mother Tongue’s active work on immigrantion issues in Iceland. The award was presented by the President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson.

2014: “Samfélagsverðlaun Fréttablaðsins“ (The Society Award of Frettabladid) in category “From Generation to Generation“. The award was presented by the President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson.

2016: “Foreldraverðlaun Heimilis og skóla” (Parents’ award from the National Parents’ Association) for mother tongue teaching of bilingual children

 

Multilingual Library, Helsinki, Finland

The Multilingual Library is located in Pasila Library, Helsinki and its collections cover over 80 languages. Customers living outside of Helsinki can order all materials to their local libraries around Finland.

The Multilingual library also hosts a blog about current topics related to literature and multilingualism. The blog has blogs in English and occasionally in other languages, e.g. in Somali, Persian and Arabic.

Customers who cannot find their own language among the language collection can suggest items to add to the collection.

In the book collection you find books at least in the following languages:

Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Byelorussian, Catalan,  Chinese,  Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek,  Greenlandic, Gujarati,  Hebrew,  Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Karelian, Khmer, Komi, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Mari, Nepalese, Norwegian, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Sámi, Sign language, Slovakian, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamili, Tatar, Telugu,  Thai, Tigrinya,  Turkish,  Ukrainian,  Urdu, Vietnamese and Yiddish

The mother languages of the permanent staff at Pasila Library, which is the physical location of Multilingual Library, include Finnish, Swedish, English, Russian, Estonian and Somali.

 

 

International Library, Stockholm, Sweden

The International Library is part of the Stockholm Public Library and it is in central Stockholm. It has a multilingual collection of books in around 200 languages. People living elsewhere in Sweden can order books from the international library to their local libraries.

The library´s website has language versions in Swedish, in Arabic, in English, in French, in Chinese, in Persian, in Russian and in Spanish.

In the webpage of the International Library you can also find interesting archives related to multilingual issues, like the interview archive and book recommendations for and from readers in different languages, apart of the previously mentioned at least in Polish, Bulgarian, Portuguese and Urdu.

The collection includes books in the following languages: Acholi, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Ashanti, Azerbaijani, Baluchi, Bambara, Basque, Bemba, Bengali, Berber language, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Buli, Burmese,  Catalan, Cebuano, Chewa, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dari, Edo, Efik, English, Greenlandic, Estonian, Ewe, Fanti, French, Fulani,  Galician, Geez, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrean, Hindi, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Kikuyu, Kirgisyan, Kongo (Kikongo), Korean, Krio, Kurdish (Kurmandji and Sorani), Kymric (Cymric/Welsh), Lao/ Laos,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Det flerspråklige bibliotek, Oslo, Norway

Det flerspråklige bibliotek, Oslo, Norway:
The multilingual collection of the National Library of Norway has books and films in 69 languages. Libraries around Norway can order materials for their customers.

The library also offers special packages with books and other materials for multilingual reading promotion. One of the tools  are the adventure bags with bilingual editions of selected stories in several different languages. For the celebration of mother language day there are special material packages as well. Other institutions can book these materials through their local library.