By Papa Abdoulaye Diop (YES 2017-2018, placed by AFS in Janesville, WI)

On June 19, Mouhamedoune Dame Ndieguene (YES 2014-2015, placed by AFS in Cleveland Heights, OH) began regularly posting short videos on social media that teach viewers English words, phrases, and proper pronunciation though Wolof, the national language of Senegal. Each video covers a unique topic, such as greetings, personal introductions, and parts of the body. Mouhamedoune came up with the idea for this video series after noticing that many people in Senegal were mispronouncing English words, and he wanted to come up with his own way of helping out. He realized that this was due to the way they were taught the words, and that if they were taught via their mother tongue they would have an easier time pronouncing English words.

These videos were posted by Mouhamedoune on both Instagram and Twitter and turned out to be a really big hit! As of the writing of this article, these videos had been viewed more than 44,900 times, with over 10,400 engagements. Mouhamedoune is very proud of this success saying, “we are giving the opportunity to those who’ve never had the chance to express themselves in English the ability to do so.” The initiative has gone far beyond his expectations, and he continues to post these videos on a regular basis to reach more and more people!

You can check out these videos on Mouhamedoune’s social media accounts at @MouhamedouneN on Twitter and @m_o_u_h_a_m_e_d_o_u_n_e on Instagram.