Trend-setting US-based Igbo language, culture Academy, Preserve Our Heritage, marks 2nd anniversary

Preserve Our Heritage (POH), a trend-setting Igbo Language and Culture Academy, based in New Jersey, United States of America (USA), will turn two years on May 5, 2023, and has set the skies as its limits as far as its agenda of propagation of the Igbo language and culture is concerned.

The organisation, which exists to teach both children and adults the rudiments of Igbo Language and Culture, started off after a chance conversation in May 2021 between the Founder/Tutor, Mrs. Ify Okeke-Okiche, and her toddler who was eager to understand the conversation between her mom and their nanny.

Mrs. Okeke-Okiche’s decision to teach her children and other kids around her the Igbo Language and Culture, which started as a Virtual Summer Course for kids, has grown, literally, into a full-fledged Academy which, in two short years, now offers multiple courses a year for both children and adults not only from within the US but from across the world.

Okeke-Okiche, the daughter of two US-based celebrated educators, Chief Casmir Uzor Okeke and Lolo Dorathy Ngozi Okeke, now dedicates her spare time to teaching beginners and intermediate level Igbo Language and Culture classes via zoom, not just to make the students literate in the language and culture of the place of their birth but to help preserve the Igbo Language and Culture, which is among the indigenous languages that have been predicted as facing extinction in the near future if serious efforts are not made to preserve them.

Preserve Our Heritage (POH) students presently log-in virtually from across the globe for the enriched and exciting classes that now parade a formidable faculty that includes seasoned Igbo Language Teachers/Educators from Nigeria, the Motherland.

The program prepares the students for meaningful engagement in a multilingual world, helps children to understand family members and friends’ conversations in the mother tongue and develops the interest of the students in African culture generally.

With informal conversations, visualisation and interaction with native speakers of the Igbo language as the Academy’s main approaches to lessons, the students quickly learn the Igbo alphabets, numeracy and simple conversations in Igbo language upon registration in the program.

POH has also graduated from merely teaching and learning Igbo Language and Culture to philanthropy.  During the Christmas season, Mrs. Okeke-Okiche now uses the proceeds from the enrollment of students to help the needy in her hometown, Amuzi, Ikenanzizi, Obowu in Imo State, Nigeria.

A POH Igbo Club has also evolved as a forum where students gather virtually to learn, encourage each other and share the experiences of their journeys to becoming fluent in spoken and written Igbo language.

More information about the organisation is available on their YouTube channel (Preserve Our Heritage) and on their Instagram platform (@pohigbo).

For enrollment, email pohigbo@gmail.com or call 973-868-8751.