ESF turns 50 and is ready for 50 more!

You likely don’t know what is special about the date of September 23? It’s the date when ESF (Esperantic Studies Foundation) was officially established 50 years ago in 1968. For us in ESF, our golden anniversary is a great opportunity to celebrate and take pride in 50 years of uninterrupted work under the banner “For linguistic justice in a multicultural world.” During the past half century, we have been supporting education and research, increasing the prestige of Esperanto, promoting fair and just communications and seeking “Esperantic” solutions to language problems. The world looks very differently now than it did 50 years ago, but the focus on language problems and linguistic justice in a multicultural world is equally important now, or maybe even more important. ESF is ready to continue our efforts for the next 50 years!

If you are participating in the World Esperanto Congress this year in Lisbon, we invite you to come to the ESF table at the Group-Action Fair (Movada Foiro) and to the ESF presentation, which will be given by one of the co-founders and current ESF president, Humphrey Tonkin. The presentation will take place on Friday from 11:30 to 12:15 in Sacramento room — please notice the date change and please check the congress program for any changes. Dr. Tonkin will talk about ESF and the evolution of interlinguistics in the context of the major political changes from the early days of ESF in the 60s until today.  His talk will explore the current era of exponential growth of Esperanto on the Internet, thanks to Duolingo and similarly websites, and the reality of the “decentralization” of the Esperanto movement and weakening of “traditional” Esperanto associations. We also invite you to read the 2017 ESF annual report.  2017 was a particularly interesting, fruitful and positive year for ESF. The report includes an introductory overview of the first 50 years of ESF and the parallel development of interlinguistics including the evolution of the Esperanto movement as seen by Humphrey Tonkin during the past five decades: https://www.esperantic.org/jarraporto_2017

For 50 years ESF has been an important engine of the Esperanto Movement in part by helping create Lernu, Edukado and Tekstaro, to name just a few of our important projects. These projects, and hundreds of others, would not have been possible without the generous support of our donors, both current and past. If you are a donor of ESF, we warmly thank you and hope you are equally proud of the results which were made possibly through your generous financial support! In this special year, we are launching a campaign to enable supporting important projects for the next 50 years of ESF! After 50 years, the world, of course, will be very different.  By investing in ESF you can be certain that your gifts will be in good hands and will enable important, appropriate projects for 50 more years. Quoting one of our donors, Francisco Lorrain, from Canada, “Among current organizations, ESF is the one that, through its various continuous, professional-quality projects, has most concretely and energetically contributed to the spread of Esperanto in recent years.” We hope that you will continue to support us as generously as you have in the past.  We invite you to make a donation for our special campaign to mark our gold anniversary and to enable our work in the next 50 years. You can donate through UEA (esfo-p) or by credit card or Paypal: Patron Level ($1000), Gold Level ($500), Silver Level ($250) or Bronze Level ($100). You can also donate any amount that you can afford now, either one time or monthly.

Ĵenja Amis and the ESF Board

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