Translating essential resources in collaboration with Emma's Torch
Respond has been collaborating with Emma's Torch over the past few weeks to translate essential resources related to employment and benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Emma's Torch provides refugees with culinary training, ESL classes and interview preparation. The non-profit runs their training out of their restaurant and café in Brooklyn, New York, giving students on-the-job experience as well.
As COVID-19 started spreading in the region, they decided to temporarily suspend their operations for the health and safety of their staff, students, and clients. The Program Director, Edric Huang, developed resources for their current and former students who are struggling to find employment or support during the pandemic. They're breaking down complex information into easy step-by-step guides to make them more readily accessible. These documents include information about food banks, job opportunities, English classes, accessible daycare, unemployment benefits, and much more. Respond volunteers are translating these guides into a handful of languages that serve the community most, currently in French, Spanish, Russian, Haitian Creole, and Arabic - with Amharic, Urdu, Tibetan, and Burmese in the works. Edric sends over weekly updates, and the volunteers translate the new edits, allowing them to stay connected to the material and provide context-driven translations.
"On every refugee or survivor's first day of training, we repeat endlessly: 'You are now in the Emma's Torch family.' " explained Edric. "Respond has demonstrated to our students that their family is even bigger than they could have imagined. With these translations, our students can urgently access crucial resources and make decisions empowered by accessible knowledge — and ultimately have hope that we will be able to get through this. Our mission is to ensure these refugees and survivors of trafficking not only survive but thrive together — and I'm so grateful that Respond has helped make that happen."
Unlike how most translation projects initiate, we first started working with Edric on an individual basis, as a volunteer. He wanted to volunteer as a translator during the COVID-19 pandemic and went through the language screening process to determine which languages he could support as a volunteer. "After being furloughed from my job at Emma's Torch, I wanted to both continue working beside my local community and connect local with national/international concerns," explained Edric. "With so many needs across the nation in this moment and in general, I wanted to see what I could be doing remotely beyond donations. As I researched organizations supporting asylum seekers, I found Respond! "
Respond's mission not only supports migrants in their asylum application process in the US, but also migrants in a variety of other situations, as shown by this project. We're excited to keep working with Emma's Torch, as they provide a key piece in empowering refugees, asylees, and victims of human trafficking with education, and job preparedness. Many of the students can bring in their personal work experience as well as the culinary history and culture from their countries of origin, which demonstrates just how valuable their inclusion in the workforce can be.
Click here to learn more about the work Emma's Torch does and their community of students.
Click here to support Emma's Torch, current and former students, and future operations when it is safe to open again, by purchasing a #DiningBond !
A special thanks to Edric Huang for his work, and our 15+ amazing volunteers who have been translating this material.
Blog written by Esther Lenora Biesse
