The Language Project

Über uns

The Language Project supports and empowers the youth of Laos in their quest for a brighter future by creating and supporting library resource centers that give motivated people access to the tools they need now to study and help themselves. Our libraries range in size from @ My Library, in Luang Prabang, with its 150 daily users, 1,000 book checkouts a month and 25,000 computer hours last year… to smaller school libraries… to a little village library of books kept in a box in a teacher’s home.

We provide students with the means to step beyond a limited rote education, to develop their skills and to change their future. We encourage thinking, creativity, engagement, asking questions and lifelong learning; we support self-study, hands-on learning, learning how to learn and sharing your knowledge and we promote pride in one’s culture while becoming citizens of the world. We are an ongoing experiment, looking for and finding gaps in skills and knowledge, testing the best ways to address those gaps and sharing what we learn.

Studying languages, computers, basic academic subjects, learning new skills—to type, to program software, to think and solve problems, to record your own music, to grow teak, to express yourself—studying your own culture, folklore and history with books and videos that students have never had access to before or mastering English in order to get a job or a scholarship… it's all happening @ My Library.

Our libraries are unique, with collections carefully selected and tested to be Lao user-friendly. Even though 85% of our materials come from outside Laos, unlike other libraries, each is carefully chosen to meet specific local needs, abilities and requests. Our libraries make a difference, one book and one person at a time.

The Language Project was founded in 2000 and is registered as an American 501(c)3 charity.