We are closing out our week inspired by Vero, Founder & CEO of @languagepreservationproject. Vero is a Harvard-trained doctora of education with several years of experience in creating meaningful learning environments for children. She is also a heritage Spanish speaker, raising trilingual children. Vero shared with us how she blended these elements of her identity to create The Language Preservation Project: “When I became a mother four years ago, I knew that I wanted to raise my Mexican-American-Danish son to feel connected to all parts of his rich heritage through language and customs. I grew up with Spanish in my home, but I was far from fluent. I wasn’t sure that I would be successful at passing along a language that I didn’t speak fluently, but I felt such a strong connection to the Spanish language and Mexican culture that I naively moved forward with my plans. It was hard, but I persisted and leveraged all of my knowledge about early childhood development, learning science, and liberatory learning environments to create a multilingual and multicultural home for my son. Four years later, I successfully raised a son who speaks two languages fluently (Danish and Spanish) and is emerging in a third (English).” “The Language Preservation Project is a movement to reverse the trend of language loss across the generations. We support families and educators in recognizing and leveraging the strengths of their own culture and heritage language and then using this to raise and teach multicultural and multilingual children. This project, starting in Spanish and then expanding to other languages, aims to reverse years of institutionalized and cultural messaging that immigrant and indigenous languages and cultures are weaknesses and not strengths.” “I fight for a more equitable world by creating culturally and linguistically affirming learning environments where all children thrive.” #womxn #leaders #local #localleaders #womenshistorymonth #onward #empowerment #empoweringwomen #elevatingvoices