Mandela Project

A child learning English from a book has the words but not the sound. They can’t hear how sentences flow, where the emphasis lands, or what the language is supposed to feel like when it comes from someone who grew up speaking it.

In the summer of 2022, CU Denver’s School of Public Affairs hosted a six-week leadership institute for 25 Mandela Washington Fellows, the first time a Colorado university had partnered with the program. Seventeen of the fellows recorded audiobook versions of children’s books from their home countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, so ESL kids could read along while hearing the story told by someone from the place it came from.

I recorded them. Joan Fishburn, the project’s facilitator, coordinated each fellow’s session and let me know when they’d be in to record. I ran the sessions in CU Denver’s ThinqStudio — the digital pedagogy studio, whose director, Dr. Dennis DeBay, gave me access to the space. I set up the room, directed the fellows through their reads, and coached people who had never been behind a microphone before. Then I edited and delivered 20 finished recordings. I had never used the studio before this project, and figuring out its equipment on the fly is what led me to build the Podcasting @ThinqStudio course so the next person wouldn’t have to.

A Feast for Joseph
Read by Rafaela Gomes Andrade

Sing to the Moon
Read by Lubang Alex Charles

Catch That Chicken
Read by Sophia Wabosha Otieno

Recorded at CU Denver’s ThinqStudio for the School of Public Affairs as part of the 2022 Mandela Washington Fellowship.
Books by their respective authors and publishers.