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The Mother Tongue Books project was created by the Matènwa Community Learning Center in December 2008 as a response to a very direct need of the Matènwa Community Learning Center -- a lack of books available for children in Haitian Creole. Currently, the book exchange is between school children in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Matènwa, Haiti (a community on the island of Lagonav). Books written by children for children are translated from one mother tongue into the mother tongue of the children receiving the books.

Many children around the world do not acquire functional literacy skills even if they have had a K-3 education because they are not learning to read in their mother tongue. It is illogical to think that a child can read for meaning in a language for which he or she does not have a rich oral vocabulary.

Most classrooms and exams in Haiti use French as the language of instruction, not the Kreyòl language spoken at home. The MCLC’s mission is to teach children in Haitian Creole, yet there is a struggle to find books for the youngest children who are learning to read.

By sharing books across borders and translating them into a mother tongue, children are contributing to each other’s education and helping one another become literate. This social justice project brings joy to all who are reading, writing, and exchanging books and promotes the creation of Mother Tongue school libraries. In the future, we envision Mother Tongue books will be shared in many more languages with many more schools and children involved in their creation. We also hope to introduce new audiobooks and interactive Mother Tongue ebooks.