A Welsh children’s author is calling for more to be done to make the language accessible to ethnic minorities.
Theresa Mgadzah Jones, the author of ‘Mamgu, Mali a Mbuya’ – a storybook about a young girl who has two grandmothers from different cultures, said there “isn’t enough diversity in Welsh literature”, especially in children’s learning materials.
Jones said she wrote the book because “she didn’t want other black or non-white children to grow up with that image that they don’t exist because they didn’t themselves in literature provided by schools”.
She has written a number of Welsh language children’s books that centre around diverse characters.
“The Welsh language isn’t a white language, it’s a language for anyone in Wales”, she told CJS News.
She also claimed there are many different communities in Wales who didn’t know about the different language services offered by the Welsh Government, who have a target to get a million Welsh speakers by 2050.
Recent statistics revealed the number of Welsh speakers was at its lowest in 8 years. It also showed the percentage of 3 to 15-year-olds speaking Welsh has been declining steadily since 2019
Jessica Dunrod who is the first black Welsh children’s author said, “If you don’t give kids the tools you shouldn’t expect them to get far”. She also called for more bilingual language books to be provided as we “often are expecting kids to learn Welsh when their parents don’t know the language”.
When asked about what they were doing to allow diverse communities to learn Welsh, the Welsh Government cited their ‘Croeso i Bawb’ (Welcome to all) language course that is offered in Cantonese, Syrian Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, and Ukrainian.