Preservation of Language, Culture and Identity of the Akha People.

Sharing that Language, Culture and Identity with the outside World.

Our dream is to build up the Akha University as a focal point for the Akha to come together from Four Countries in which they live to preserve their culture and language. The Akha culture is a very broad spectrum education, unlike in the west where books and "science" rule academia.

How do you put together an education system for a people who so often just fight for their basic human rights?

Our original focus with our work with the Akha was first aid and language for education. But the human rights situation was so difficult for the Akha that we had to spend a huge amount of time on this issue if language or education was going to be increasingly available to the Akha.

The concept of the Akha University was based on the idea of long term work to protect the Oral Literature of the Akha people and their traditional knowledge systems.

We continue to work on this education system, and it is not just for the Akha people, but to educate other peoples as well about Akha life.

Part of this process has also been to challenge those who stereotype the Akha such as missions, govt. policies, the drug war and tourism related businesses from galleries, to trekking and post card producers. ;; We have been very sucessful in changing attitudes.

Part of the University idea is to produce books about the Akha and also for the Akha. From the Akha Journal to alphabet books, we continue to work on these printing projects. We have numerous books in Akha language and continue to work on this effort.

Some of the books we have produced can be seen in the Downloads section.