The ELDP is a funding program to document and preserve endangered languages in a digital archive.

The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) promotes the digital documentation and preservation of endangered languages worldwide. Each year, the program provides grants to approximately 30 to 40 speakers and early career scholars to work with language communities to create collections of digital audio and video recordings. These are archived in the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) and made available free of charge to language communities, scholars, and the public worldwide.
 

The archive contains unique recordings of local knowledge systems represented by the bearers of that knowledge in their own languages. The digital collections include not only linguistic elicitations, but also recordings of everyday conversations, rituals and chants, instructions for building fish traps or boats, and explanations of kinship systems and the use of medicinal plants.

So far, the ELDP has awarded grants to more than 500 documentation projects of varying scope, and has trained hundreds of speakers, early career scholars, and documentarians in modern language documentation. An overview of all funded projects can be found here .
 

The unique collections of the Endangered Languages Archive can be found here .