Kamusi Project facing funding issues

[dzo at bisharat.net]

Many of you may be familiar with the Kamusi Project - the online living 
Swahili dictionary that began at Yale and later transitioned to an NGO 
that has developed and tested a model for online dictionaries in 
multiple languages (Global Online Living Dictionary - "GOLD") with means 
to look up definitions across languages.

It's currently facing a budgeting crisis and seeking ways fund 
implementation of its model. I just did a short write-up on the Beyond 
Niamey blog:
"Kamusi at 20: Keeping the vision alive and working"
http://niamey.blogspot.com/2014/09/kamusi-at-20-keeping-vision-alive-and.html

In principle, the GOLD model stands to benefit non-dominant languages 
(even though it includes all languages) by first of all providing a 
platform in which words and definitions in any language can be entered. 
Secondly it facilitates dictionary look-ups across uncommon language 
pairings (Navaho-Swahili?), with appropriate annotations where those 
occur through one or more other languages.

I believe Martin Benjamin, the Kamusi Project director, is subscribed to 
ILAT, so hopefully he can respond to any questions about this effort and 
its current situation.

Don

Don Osborn, PhD
(Kamusi board member)