Our two CUNY Career Launch interns, Izzy Taveras and Alesia Martinez, began their Social Services Access Team positions the week of July 14 at Cafewal, a space run by our partners EV Loves NYC and East Village Neighbors Who Care. Izzy and Alesia have each worked over 75 hours helping community members navigate immigration issues, apply for work authorization, resumes, find employment, and obtain social services and benefits.
Izzy and Alesia use their Spanish language skills to make the space more inclusive to Spanish-speaking community members while working with volunteer interpreters to assist French, Pulaar, and Wolof speaking community members who make up the majority of Cafewal’s community base.
Izzy Taveras majors in Criminal Justice at John Jay where she is working towards her certificate in legal translation and interpretation and volunteers as a researcher for language access policies in the United States. Izzy plans to apply for the BS/MA program at John Jay to earn her JD and PhD and possibly go into immigration law.
Alesia Martinez is a rising senior at Kingsborough Community College where she expects to graduate with an Associated in Science degree in Mental Health and Human Services, ultimately earning her master’s degree to become a licensed social worker. Growing up as a daughter of immigrants, she has translated documents and helped family members navigate different application processes.
Congratulations to the 6 participants of our Interpreter Training for African Asylum Seekers program who successfully completed the program last week!
Throughout the course of the 6-week program, our 6 interpreters-in-training provided 750 hours of service. They helped asylum seekers apply for work authorization, Fair Fares discount Metrocards, IDNYC, and other services. They helped 284 people create a resume, either by working directly with clients or by assisting as interpreters for volunteer resume writers. They also helped asylum seekers who had work authorization look for employment opportunities and apply for jobs.
Our participants provided interpretation at a medical clinic hosted by East Village Neighbors Who Care (EVNC) in October, and also assisted clients to medical appointments with EVNC volunteers. In November, they worked at the New York Health and Hospitals Resource Fair connecting the majority of the 250+ attendees to representatives of the organizations tabling the fair.
In total the 6 participants in our program aided over 700 new New Yorkers.
We trained 6 asylum seekers, who learned the ethics and techniques of interpretation, as well as how to help people apply for benefits. Throughout the program, participants used their interpretation and language skills to provide direct services to people seeking asylum and other immigration relief and are in need of case management. Participants helped new migrant arrivals navigate the processes of critical services and benefits including work authorization, Fair Fares,health insurance, change of address, SNAP food benefits, school enrollment, and more. Interpreters also assisted volunteers in crafting resumes for clients.
The program offered professional development opportunities, featuring paid, hands-on training for multilingual asylum seekers who speak critical indigenous West African languages and dialects such as Pulaar, Wolof, Soninke, Hausa, Twi, Hassaniya Arabic, and Amazighin addition to French and Arabic. Participants benefited from a direct employment pipeline through RTP and receive professional recommendations for external opportunities, emphasizing our commitment to workforce development and economic empowerment. The program serves a dual purpose: providing career opportunities for qualified asylum seekers while enhancing language access services for the broader community of new arrivals.
We are excited to announce a joint project between Afrikana and the Refugee Translation Project that will provide paid, on-the-job interpreter training to multilingual asylum seekers from the African continent. The project aims to empower asylum seekers by providing them with employment opportunities as stipend-based interpreters while simultaneously providing niche language support to asylum seekers in need of services. We aim to pilot this program as soon as possible, as the need is urgent.
The Problem:
New African asylum seekers in New York City face many unique challenges and obstacles, two of which are lack of employment opportunities and lack of access to social services due to language barriers. They constitute a new group of asylum seekers to New York, and there is not enough service organizations capable of assisting them. They therefore end up being excluded from resources meant to help new immigrants. The huge influx of asylum seekers from Senegal, Mauritania, Sudan, Guinea, the Congo and other African countries are escaping slavery, religious persecution, and war. They are in need of health, legal, and other services. Many speak languages or dialects of languages that are not recognized by the city’s existing language policy. Afrikana, an organization that has become a vital lifeline for new African migrants navigating the complex processes of immigration, resource access, and housing, are in desperate need of interpretation services for the 300 clients they serve daily! Although currently, there exists the AfriLingual coop supported by MOIA, this service is not enough to interpret on behalf of over 40,000 new African asylum seekers.
Our Solution:
This program addresses both of these problems by training and paying multilingual asylum seekers to be interpreters in order to help other asylum seekers access social services. Displaced people with niche language acquisition and lived experience are uniquely qualified for this work, yet they often lack access to professional pathways to develop their careers, either as interpreters or in related fields. This program provides workforce development for immigrant social services, professional interpretation training, employment experience in the United States, work references, letters of recommendation, and capacity building to help multilingual asylum seekers build their careers while receiving income. The work is flexible and scalable, allowing participants to gain experience and earn income while they build their careers, attend school, or open businesses. This is critical as African asylum seekers have difficulties participating in workforce development programs as they are not offered in the languages in most demand from the community.
The program enables participants to provide interpretation to help other asylum seekers to navigate the system in languages not covered by New York’s existing language access policy, such as Wolof and Pulaar. The participants will help asylum seekers fill out I-589 asylum application form, and apply for housing, SNAP food benefits, health insurance, and work authorization.
Background:
Afrikana stands as a beacon of hope and support for new arrivals to NYC seeking refuge and a chance at a new life. Founded in response to the increasing influx of asylum seekers at Port Authority, the organization operates out of two adjacent storefronts in Harlem, serving as a much-needed advocate and resource for all migrants, including newcomers from the continent of Africa, addressing language barriers, disparities in shelter placements, and limited free immigration legal services.
The Refugee Translation Project is a non-profit dedicated to helping refugees transition to a life of safety and security by providing free translation services to people seeking asylum and other immigration relief, increasing access to vital resources, and offering training and employment opportunities to asylum seekers.
Refugee Translation Project 