Bilingual tales put to paper

The second edition of My Voice My Culture, a publication featuring  37 bilingual Marlborough intermediate school students speaking about their backgrounds in 18 languages, has been printed and released.

The Monday book launch was presented by Bohally students Alena Esenko from Kyrgyzstan and student Janhavi Mahabir from South Africa, alongside Thai and Samoan performances from Bohally Intermediate, St Mary’s School and Renwick School student in the Bohally Intermediate hall.

Bohally teacher Rowie O’Driscoll said that the Welcoming Communities and REAP Marlborough project was, “an amazing opportunity, meeting different kids and getting them to share their voice and their culture as you don’t hear much from some kids about where they’re from”.

“The ‘My Voice My Culture’ book is something special to each of them and having the efforts of the students and their volunteer tutors recognised today was so nice.

“This started in Term One, as we’ve got lots of students here at Bohally that can speak multiple languages, so we chose those who would benefit from this programme the most with parent permission, then into the writing.

“Working on this with Heather Barnes and Selena Tonks has been great, they have done the majority of the work together and it’s great we’ve had another year of it to benefit multilingual students, and it’s great to see so many parents here for this too.

“There’s such much variety in the book, but one that was very special was Ruby, who is from the Solomon Islands, speaking about her family because they only moved here last year for better opportunities academically.

“Hearing the sacrifice and gratefulness that her parents have made to bring them to New Zealand was pretty amazing reading.”

The book is just as valuable to the volunteer tutors who helped the students with their bilingual learning and translations.

Volunteer Spanish language tutor Wendy Iguaran and Malay language tutor Hasinah Kassim were thrilled to see the final product, which will be available in the Marlborough library and participating school libraries.

“It’s such a good experience, because every kid can express themselves and be part of this big project ... it’s a really great opportunity to share and learn”, said Wendy.

“Culture is not just being from somewhere; it’s something we can share with each other – Spanish itself has so many language and culture differences in it from the rest of the world, which is beautiful because we learn together.

“Helping the children to express their feelings, how they want to express it here in Marlborough, is something we love to support as a language tutor, and we’re happy to do it”, adds Hasinah.

“I’ve learned lots about these children, every one of them is special and have their own ideas and when I saw the book, I knew we’ve done a good job as tutors.”