MISSION: to foster the development of Cameroon's language communities through linguistic research, literacy and translation work through building capacity within cooperative working relationships so that local citizens can acquire the skills for doing all facets of language development.

LINGUISTIC RESEARCH - SIL linguists are committed to quality research and to mentoring others in order to produce linguistic descriptions, phonologies, and grammars of national languages.

TRANSLATION - Translation is the process of saying or writing clearly and naturally in one language what is stated in another. SIL personnel work with mother tongue speakers in order to apply translation principles so that development information, stories and biblical texts can be accurately communicated in the mother tongue.

LITERACY - SIL literacy specialists emphasize that reading and writing in the mother tongue is a gateway for development that opens up a new world of information and communication. SIL's vision for language programmes is to see literacy become a sustainable community value with the ownership of literacy goals and activities in the hands of the people.

READING MATERIALS - The advancement of literacy in a given language community requires the writing of a full range of literature. Maintaining and strengthening community interest in reading and writing occurs as basic primers and books about a variety of topics become available to the people.

PARTNERSHIP and COOPERATION - SIL Cameroon enjoys a variety of working relationships, as listed in the annual report.

TRAINING - The transfer of knowledge and skills for language development tasks is carried out by group classroom instruction and individualized mentoring. As local citizens "learn by doing" they develop their mother tongue while they also become trainers of others.