The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) aims to support the documentation and preservation of endangered languages across the globe. This initiative provides grants to individuals worldwide, including linguists, linguistic anthropologists, and community members skilled in linguistic documentation, facilitating the recording of endangered languages to safeguard these languages for future generations.
The broad goals of the ELDP include supporting as many endangered language documentation projects as possible, encouraging fieldwork on these languages, creating a comprehensive repository for linguistics, social sciences, and language communities, and ensuring the documentary collections are freely available. The Individual Graduate Scholarship (IGS) specifically supports scholars for up to 3 years, covering field trip costs and a living stipend for the period of field research and data processing. Funded projects aim to produce accessible, comprehensive, and archivable materials, including digital video and audio recordings, texts, and other linguistic data, which are to be represented in standard formats for maximum access and usability. These projects contribute not only to language preservation but also to the development of documentation methodologies, providing invaluable resources for both the language communities and the wider scientific community.