Round 6 recipients

The Government supports the maintenance and promotion of NZSL, as an official language of New Zealand, through the activities carried out by the NZSL Board. The NZSL Board has a total of $1.645m per annum to allocate to activities designed to maintain and promote NZSL. Its priorities are set out in the NZSL Strategy (2018-2023). Round 6 of the contestable process for community-driven initiatives was open in August 2019. 

This is the sixth year that the Board has run a contestable process for funding, giving anyone in the Deaf or NZSL user community the opportunity to put forward their ideas. The NZSL Fund also supports a range NZSL Board strategic initiatives. These include the Online NZSL Dictionary, NZSL Week and work to develop standards for NZSL Interpreters. Community initiative contestable funding

One-year projects between $5,000 - $80,000 are received through an annual contestable funding process managed by the Office for Disability Issues (ODI).  This funding round was the first to be opened in the first half of the financial year since the fund was established in 2014/15. Future funding rounds will be advertised in advance to enable allocation early in each financial year.  For the 2019/20 contestable funding process, the Board received a total of 17 applications. The Board recommended to ODI that 12 applications be funded or partially funded at a total value of $327,721. Selections were based on alignment with the Board’s NZSL Strategy (2018-2023) language planning priorities.

Here is the complete list of successful recipients, a description of the project and the total funding (excl GST) received.