Our objectives, of making gradual improvements in aspects of public policy and practice centering on multilingual and multicultural matters in the State, are unlikely to be fully achieved if our actions remain in the “ivory tower” of the academy, or if they are addressed only by the handful of professors (and administrators) who have developed this Strategic Initiative and supported its initial efforts.
Actually, with a recent state-level action on the part of the Hawai’i Department of Education, multilingual students are graduating with the Seal of Biliteracy as a formal recognition of their abilities in a language other than their first language. So there are, in a sense, several cohorts of state residents whose capabilities should be built upon to support initiatives in this area. Likewise, students presently graduating from various programs around the State constitute potential activists who undoubtedly value multilingual and multicultural perspectives, as definitional to some extent of their own identity.
As this project continues, we will accumulate links, short accounts of programs that generate or graduate members of (more than one) multilingual cohorts. In due course, we hope to show how these cohorts and other supporters can work together to develop the multilingual multicultural initiatives this Strategic Initiative is intended to support.