Our Mission
To elevate the language education profession and promote the transformative power of language learning.
Our Vision
Greater support for language educators. Broader access to language learning. Deeper connections across communities and cultures.
The Language Connects Foundation (LCF) is a national not-for-profit and philanthropic organization created in partnership with our parent organization, ACTFL, to uplift language educators and champion language education.
As a standalone entity, our ultimate goal is to help ensure a diverse, well-prepared, and highly effective language educator workforce today and for generations to come.
Our work addresses critical challenges currently facing the language education profession:
- Professional Development – Supporting educators’ growth by expanding access to mentoring and continuing education
- Scholarships & Awards – Recognizing the incredible accomplishments of educators and students, especially from traditionally under-served communities
- Public Education – Ensuring that those outside the profession understand the importance of language education
Become Proficient in LCF
Our Impact
Explore ACTFL's already impactful efforts and learn how our work helps to ensure a diverse, well-prepared, and highly skilled language educator workforce.
Who We Are
Meet the passionate staff members who ensure LCF is poised to realize its mission.
Financial Details
We're new, so we don't yet have tax returns to share yet. In the meantime, please check out the financial soundness of our parent organization, ACTFL.
Our Guiding Beliefs
The things we know to be true. The things we’ll never contradict.
- Access to high-quality language education—especially as a means to freedom of expression—is a human right.
- Learning another language exponentially enriches the experience of being human.
- Language is a window to understanding and empathizing with other cultures—including their traditions, history, values, and perspectives.
- Language empowers people to profoundly connect with one another and their heritage, fosters peace and prosperity, and avoids needless conflict.
- Every language is valuable. Every language is worth learning. Every language is worth teaching.
- Students have language teachers who look like them, sound like them, and have similar experiences. Language education grows more meaningful and effective with these fundamental connections between student and teacher.
- Without significant investments in a pipeline of passionate, highly-trained, diverse language educators, the U.S. will fall behind its global peers.
The World As We Envision It
How those we support will experience the future.
- Everyone has access to a high-quality language education and every community deeply values language learning. In schools, languages are considered a core subject area.
- Language education is universally recognized for providing learners with irrefutable benefits (from enhanced cognition to increased empathy and beyond) and empowering them to create and sustain more human connections.
- Teaching languages—in fact, all teaching—is viewed as a viable, rewarding profession that deserves ongoing support, resources, and advocacy.
- Every language educator has equal access to the high-quality resources and professional development they need and deserve to thrive. Language educators are empowered to make decisions that impact their learners. Unfair barriers to becoming a language teacher are eliminated.
- The diversity gap between our language educator workforce and our language learners is bridged, and all language learning environments are welcoming to all.
- The business community values language education. They partner with language educators to advocate for greater language education policies, resources, and investments.
- Governments—from local school districts to global partnerships—emphasize the importance of language learning as a means of promoting peace and cooperation. They invest time, money, and human resources in language education at every level and in every institution.