In recent (socio)linguistic research there is a growing awareness that rural, small-scale multilingualism as the most widespread communicative setting across the globe. Yet, literacy programmes accepting and incorporating this diversity are non-existent. LILIEMA is a unique educational programme currently based in Senegal that addresses the need for enabling learners to use their entire repertoire, nurturing, and validating local knowledges and sustainable multilingualism. This article focuses on the participatory methodologies at the heart of LILIEMA (Language-independent literacies for inclusive education in multilingual areas), born from a collaboration between professional linguists and local teachers, transcribers, research assistants and community members. We explore how the cultural knowledge of local participants and ethnographic and qualitative sociolinguistic data jointly contributes to our thick understanding of the social environment for literacy and how it can make African languages and multilingualism more visible. Furthermore, used methods allow to describe fluid and potentially ambivalent multilingual speech events based on different perspectives motivating choices both in terms of languages ideologies and linguistic practice. LILIEMA pursues the objectives to support and enhance the use of (multilingual) literacy, strengthens languages and linguistic awareness and fosters self-confidence in all sectors of life by creating innovative spaces for small and locally confined languages.