Big Picture News: Language should not be a barrier

All who come to Solid Ground for housing, food and other services face challenges to meeting these basic needs – but there’s an added layer of complexity for our program participants who speak little or no English. To ensure that our services are available to all who need them – regardless of their primary language – we prioritize access to interpretation and translation services.

Language access for racial & social justice

Solid Ground program participants come from myriad cultural backgrounds and language traditions (including American Sign Language). To meet their unique needs, our staff access interpretation and translation services approximately 800 times a year for about 25 different languages.

Our Language Access policies are grounded in our racial and social justice work, as they are absolutely essential to our ability to meet people’s needs in an equitable manner.

Support for our staff

Connecting staff to language services gives them the tools they need to more competently work with limited-English speakers. We strive to leverage both internal and external resources to help staff do their jobs well.

Sandra Williams, Cooking Matters Coordinator & certified Spanish interpreter/ translator, leads a cooking demo at the Seattle Mexican Consulate. (Photo by John Bolivar)

For nearly a decade, a staff Language Access Team – comprised of multilingual staff as well as those who frequently use language services on the job – has worked together to create policies, procedures and a resource guide to inform our work and continuously improve how we deliver services.

The team developed staff training in best practices when working with limited-English speakers, and tips for effectively working with interpreters.

Our Language Access policies support staff in making sure program participants have equitable opportunity to understand the services available to them. They also value the internal capacity of our bilingual employees to interpret and/or translate English into other languages.

Solid Ground also maintains multiple bilingual staff positions to meet significant language needs in different program areas. Bilingual staff are given extra compensation for their skills.

Language access in action

A few common and key ways we utilize language services include:

• Face-to-face and phone meetings between families seeking housing and their case managers and advocates
• Group interpretation for cooking and nutrition classes, advocacy listening sessions, and various workshops (e.g., financial fitness, tenant, homeowner)
• To help domestic violence survivors navigate legal processes and create safety and stability plans
• Phone interpretation for legal representation to help people access public benefits
• Translation of key documents that include technical legal, housing or contractual language or where the consequences of misunderstanding could cause harm

In short, language access is key to Solid Ground’s mission, and we are committed to continually improving our services for limited-English speakers.

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Big Picture News is a segment of Solid Ground’s Fall 2015 print newsletter. Sign up here to receive the entire newsletter by snail mail! 

Big Picture News: Financial empowerment for all

Below is the Big Picture News insert from our Spring 2015 Groundviews newsletter. To read the entire newsletter or past issues, please visit our Groundviews webpage.

Financial Fitness Boot Camp Coach, Judy Poston

At Solid Ground, financial empowerment is integral to our mission to end poverty. Financial justice starts with helping people understand their personal finances, build resilience and achieve financial stability. On a policy level, we work to break down systemic barriers that keep people poor.

Our Financial Fitness Boot Camp (highlighted in the lead story of this newsletter) provides an important model for this work – but it is just the jumping off point for a much larger movement. In integrating financial empowerment across the Solid Ground community, we focus on people’s strengths to provide tailored support and access to resources so that everyone – including our staff and volunteers – can realize their financial stability goals and access opportunities to thrive.

We believe that…

• Financial empowerment will help our community shift from generations of poverty to generations of financial stability.
• Through education, people have the power to achieve financial stability.
• Understanding personal finances develops individual power and furthers economic justice.
• People are capable and resourceful in creating pathways to financial independence; with the right tools, they can make informed decisions.
• Financial empowerment brings awareness of one’s own capabilities and strengths.
• We can help alleviate fear of banking systems through financial empowerment.
• We are cheerleaders for our clients’ pathways to financial independence.
• All Solid Ground programs can instill the importance of building and saving assets.
• Through financial empowerment, we can help people believe in their ability to become financially independent.

In line with these beliefs, our financial empowerment services focus on…

• Basic Budgeting & Money Management: Creating savings and spending plans, prioritizing debts/expenses, and creatively thinking outside the box about how to manage money.
• Understanding Credit: Developing a better understanding of the meaning of credit scores and awareness about what people can do to improve their credit.
• Asset Building (income creation): Celebrating assets and asset-building accomplishments, and identifying ways to build assets and income-boosting supports such as tax credits and public benefits.

Some ways we’re weaving financial empowerment agencywide…

We discuss budgeting basics to help people maintain affordable housing. We connect people with job/training opportunities and resources. We provide nutrition and food budgeting education – focused on the affordability of healthy eating – and support people to grow their own food. And we work with banks to create opportunities for people to develop savings.

On a systems level, we support income equality and raising the minimum wage. We also advocate statewide for issues such as increased debt settlement regulation and consumer protections on payday loans. Combined, these efforts are creating systemic change to build a financially healthier community and economic justice for all.

This post taken from the Big Picture News insert from Solid Ground’s May 2015 Groundviews newsletter. To read the entire newsletter or past issues, please visit our Groundviews webpage.