In this presentation, we give concrete examples of how community-based approaches can successfully mobilise people at all levels to commit to the formulation and implementation of innovative and creative solutions to problems resulting from antiquated European colonial language policy and practice. We begin with a very encouraging case study from the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius, which is now a municipality of the European Netherlands, where we became involved in a community-wide mobilisation process that has led to a change in policy from the use of the official colonial language Dutch toward the use of the students’ first language as language of instruction in the schools. Next, we consider a community-based initiative in Honduras where we worked with six indigenous and two African-descended communities whose first languages are different from the official language of education, Spanish. Instead of adopting a traditional academic approach to research and to the formulation of solutions to the challenges posed by this situation, community activists themselves became co-researchers along with other community members. This yielded some very robust results supporting the use of students’ first languages in education, the main features of which will be outlined in this presentation. Finally, we turn to the South Pacific to showcase innovative community-driven approaches to the actual implementation of language policies that integrate students’ first languages in educational systems where the dominant colonial languages English and French were formerly used as the exclusive languages of instruction. Our experiences with community-based initiatives in the Melanesian countries of Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea effectively demonstrate that, even in a situation where students speak hundreds of different indigenous languages and resources such as formally trained teachers and commercially produced materials are in short supply, effective first language literacy programmes can be established and maintained by community members themselves.