Press Release
March 15, 2011(10-March-2011)
With great pleasure, we would like to announce that XOBDO.ORG has successfully completed 5 years of existence on 10-March-2011.
XOBDO is a group of people living across the globe to collectively do something good for the region. Now, it is an NGO registered under “Registration of Societies Act XXI of 1860” with a registration number of RS/KAM(M)/240/A-24/352 of 2010-2011 with an office at House No-20, Ashok Path Beltola, Guwahati.
The love for their mother tongue has generated more than 1600 selfless volunteers who are working day and night from different parts of the world to create this unique project – a multi-directional, multi-lingual, multi-media embedded, online dictionary of the languages of the North-East India. Apart from achieving 35000 Assamese words, it is already galloping ahead with a large corpus of Karbi, Dimasa, Mising, Meeteilon, Hindi and Bengali words. Efforts are on to attract volunteers to provide a constant addition of words in the other 23 languages adopted in the project.
Apart from creating the online dictionary, XOBDO is also involved in an ambitious project to digitize and archive many old and new Assamese texts in collaboration with www.xophura.org
XOBDO.ORG has also prepared course materials to teach Assamese to the children of the non-residents Assamese people living in different parts of the world. Using these materials two class room sessions are going on – one in Abu Dhabi, UAE and another in Bay Area of California. The materials are freely available from http://learn.xobdo.org
Like last year, this year also XOBDO.ORG would like to recognize 8 person who selflessly contributed directly to these efforts. We would also like to recognize other 3 people and 4 organizations or entities who contributed significantly towards advancement of Assamese in the internet.
Those who directly contributed toXOBDO.ORG:
1. Dr. Probodh Borah – More than 6000 Assamese words contributions in XOBDO.ORG. We also appreciate his popular Assamese blogs with special emphasis to science and travelogues.
2. Sushanta Kar – Northeastern Bengali words contributions in XOBDO.ORG . We also congratulate him for Assamese to Bengali translations of various novels, stories, poems etc.
3. Arnab Phonglosa – Dimasa words contributions in XOBDO.ORG
4. Caroline Kropi – Karbi words contributions in XOBDO.ORG
5. Philippe Ramirez -Tiwa words contributions in XOBDO.ORG
6. Dr. Barnali Deuri Bora – Deuri words contributions in XOBDO.ORG
7. Abdul Hamid – Meeteilon words contributions in XOBDO.ORG
8. Bornaly Hazarika – Hindi words contributions in XOBDO.ORG
Those who are not directly involved in XOBDO.ORG
1. Dr. Banajit Pathak: for working day and night selflessly for spreading and popularizing Assamese in the internet. We also appreciate him for designing the first Unicode font customized for Assamese. It can be found at www.kuhipat.org
2. Himjyoti Talukdar: for all the online and offline publicity he gathered for various projects related to the use of Assamese over the internet.
3. Uddip Talukdar – for English-Assamese translations ( especially of
Sherlock Holmes stories)
4. Oxomiya Kotha Botora : A Facebook group started by Mr. Pankaj Borah, who is currently pursuing Ph D Norway. The group initiating a kind of language revolution (ভাষা আন্দোলন) in the internet. Due to the pressure from this group a number of national and multinational companies were forced to apologize and correct their advertisement published in distorted Assamese.
5. enajori.com : for spreading and popularizing Assamese in the internet.
6. The Sunday India (Assamese version)
http://www.thesundayindian.com/index.php?lang=as: For being the first
full-fledged Assamese Unicode online magazine.
7. e-Jonaki Jug Initiatives (http://sites.google.com/site/ejonakijug/): A initiative started and lead by Mr. Wahid Saleh, born in Jorhat and now a prominent citizen of The Netherlands. The initiative helped to increate online Assamese contents.
Last year XOBDO conducted a series of essay compettetion to encourage students to write in Assamese. The results are as follows:
Essay Competition-1:
1. Group A First Prize : Hrithik Gogoi, Class IV, Hajji Asimuddin Mission School, Sonari (Cash Prize Rs 1000)
2. Group B First Prize : Daisy Gogoi, Class VIII, Hajji Asimuddin Mission School, Sonari (Cash Prize Rs 2000)
3. Group B Second Prize : Jairaj Kalita, Class VII, Faculty School,Geetanagar, Guwahati
Essay (Cash Prize Rs 1000)
Competition-2:
4. Consolatory participation prize to Ms. Monalisa Borah, Class X,
Assam Jatiya Bidyalaya, Noonmati, Guwahati. (Cash Prize Rs 1000)
XOBDO.ORG decided to continue conducting all Assam essay competition in the future as well.
XOBDO has a number of other dedicated volunteers whom we could not include this year. Without their selfless dedication, it would have not been possible for XOBDO to reach where it stands now.
We welcome your comments at letters@friedeye.com