Legal and victim services organizations in the Washington, DC area benefit from a unique model in providing language access. The local nonprofit Ayuda applies for grant funding to run a centralized service, which handles the language access needs of more than 90 nonprofits in the area. Ayuda vets interpreters, trains interpreters in how to work in legal or victim services, contracts with the interpreters, fills the requests for in-person interpreters from the nonprofits, handles invoicing and payment, and arranges for telephonic interpretation and document translation services for free to the nonprofits. The model takes advantage of economy of scale, specialization, and collaboration. Ayuda funds its interpreters' banks with a variety of grants and other unrestricted funding.
This webinar is part of the Closing the Language Gap: Ensuring Access to Justice and Healing for All Series:
Casa de Esperanza, in collaboration with members of the Vera National Resource Center for Reaching Victims expert work group on Limited English Proficiency, will explore the importance of language access for achieving justice and healing for all crime victims. These virtual trainings focus on the ways we can break down language barriers by working with systems, communities, and organizations to (1) ensure compliance with federally-mandated standards for language access, and (2) to achieve best practices and enhanced outcomes in language access planning, provision, compliance, and advocacy. This series includes virtual trainings for audiences such as: advocates, legal-service professionals, law enforcement and policy makers.
