Bilingual Birdies uses music, dance and puppetry to teach little kids to appreciate cultures from around the world. The foreign and live music program allows children to appreciate basic vocabulary words and phrases in languages such as English, Mandarin, Spanish, French and Hebrew.
The goal of the program is to cultivate the next generation to be culturally and socially aware. Sarah Farzam, founder and CEO of Bilingual Birdies, explains that aside from learning new words in a second language, students will also be able to broaden their view of the world.
The idea behind the nine-year-old business was to create a place where kids from multi-cultural backgrounds would not feel awkward about their upbringing. In an exclusive interview, Farzam recalls how embarrassed she used to feel when she was little for growing up as the only ethnic family in an all-white neighborhood, according to Forbes Magazine.
In 2007, Farzam started teaching classes where children could learn simple conversation phrases through song and dance. She eventually started renting her own space to conduct the classes in with the help of charity organizations.
Today, Bilingual Birdies has a staff of 20 people handling about 17,000 children a week in 40 different locations in New York City alone. Students of the program are not limited to multi-cultural families, but also those from all-American backgrounds.
The program has been tweaked for stateside locales such as New York City and San Francisco. The program also plans to go worldwide by teaching English to students and educators located in Kenya, according to Huffington Post.
The idea of teaching language through music is backed up by research, as children with a strong sense of beat are more likely to read better. Susan Hallam from the Institute of Education of the University of London explains that speech and music have a shared processing system allowing musical experiences to enhance the perception of language.
The Kickstarter campaign for the Kenyan program of Bilingual Birdies has successfully reached its goal of $15,000. The campaign, which aims to train Kenyan teachers, donate instruments and offer concerts for kids, has been pledged by 214 backers.
