The New Yorker recently published a great article: “A Translation Crisis at the Border”. It focuses on Indigenous Guatemalans who have been forcibly displaced by violence and climate change. Even after their arduous journey to the U.S. and trials at the border, many experience a major barrier: lack of language support for Indigenous languages.
RIT does not work at the border—but our community’s joint efforts have allowed us to provide multi-language services to more and more Indigenous newcomers.
Per the New Yorker, “at least forty per cent of the children and teen-agers arriving in the Bay Area” are Mayans who speak Mam. Therefore, hiring Mam-speaking interpreters and cultural liaisons is a massive community need.
Together, we are filling this need.
RIT now has two Mam-speaking staff who work at Oakland schools. Maria Aguilar, Community Navigator visits schools and provides navigation support to students and families. Since 2017, Maria has supported many of the 1,200+ Mam speakers in the school district at 50+ school sites. And Carmen Jimenez (pictured above), who graduated from UCLA last year, is our new School-Based Program Associate.
Carmen provides academic support and mentoring at two schools, one of which is Fremont High School (her alma mater!) She also recruits high-achieving bilingual youth for our leadership program.
Meet one of our youth leaders, Dagoberto--a senior at Fremont High School. For the past year and a half, Dagoberto has been a peer tutor in RIT’s after-school tutoring program. He is trilingual, speaking Mam, Spanish, and English.
“Even if I struggle, I still help my friends and classmates,” he says. “Not everyone speaks the same language and we can help each other. If someone speaks Mam or speaks in Spanish or other languages like Arabic, we can still try to speak with them in their language. We can try and we can help.”
