Open Data Features Bilingual Early Learning in Chicago

One of the greatest currencies I have in this life has been retaining my mother tongue, Twi, a language I learned as a child from the strong Ghanaian women who cared for me. My parents are immigrants who spent most of my early childhood working 1 or 2 full-time jobs just to make ends meet. So when my grandmother immigrated to the US during my early childhood to raise me, she taught me both English and Twi.

What it has meant for me as an adult is that I have never been truly lost in foreign lands studying abroad and that no matter where I am, I am always one conversation away from accessing my cultural heritage. In the African immigrant dwellings of Chateau Rouge, Paris or Biljmer, Amsterdam — I could instantly connect to community members and learn about local Ghanaian restaurants, festivals or current events. In Accra and Kumasi, Ghana, I never got ripped off by a cabbie and could haggle with market traders to get the best price.

Right here in Chicago, I have been able to find a sense of community in the Uptown neighborhood on the North side, being in the know on the next celebration of life party, seamstresses, and even the Ghanaian festival this weekend. So it was great to learn that this experience of retaining your cultural heritage in early childhood was something many early learning sites in Chicago accommodate. As mRelief is always looking for new ways to enhance our tools, we came across the Socrata Data Portal and learned about amazing features of early learning sites that exist on the tool and one of them is languages. 144 of the 731 have a “languages other than English” option and here all of the languages listed:

African dialects

Arabic

Assyrian

Bosnian

Chinese

Filipino

Igbo

Italian

Korean

Mandarin

Nepali

Polish

Spanish

Tagalog

Ukrainian

Yoruba

Urdu

According to the most recent Census, the 5 most common spoken languages after English are Spanish, Polish, Arabic, Tagalog and Chinese — all of which are represented on the portal. This is a great example of relevant open data that applies to families. With Chicago’s history of immigration, this data represents one opportunity for families to preserve their culture and to use open data to do it!