Our History

In march of 2017, tilde Language Justice Cooperative signed a short-term fiscal sponsorship agreement with Southern Vision Alliance (SVA) to manage participant fees for two Interpreting for Social Justice (ISJ) trainings. At the end of 2018, the Wayside Center for Popular Education sunsetted and gave a $9k donation to tilde to carry on the interpreter trainings it hosted;  tilde passed the donation on as seed funds for the tilde Education Fund (tEF), a new and independent fiscally sponsored project of SVA. 

From 2017-2024, tEF offered 2-day ISJ trainings in the central region of NC: The nearly 300 total participants in those trainings came from different communities across North Carolina and spoke a number of languages, including Spanish, Swahili, Arabic, Karen and Burmese. 

In March of 2021, ViiV Healthcare invited tEF to launch capacity building trainings for HIV organizations, which took place under the Colibri Academy in 2022-23 and brought language justice accompaniment to 9 HIV organizations. 

In 2023, the Southern Regional Program expanded, creating a new partnership with the Latino Educational Achievement Partnership to pilot the LJLP model for the first time. In 2024, tEF began the process of earning independent 501(c)(3) status, adopting a horizontal leadership model and changing its name, launching a national language worker network, and a listening process, alongside strategic planning for each of Wave’s core programs.