How a group of Berkeley students bridge language barriers for Hurricane Harvey responders
“I can speak English and Vietnamese fluently, so I often volunteer as a medical and legal interpreter. I once witnessed a Chinese lady be denied an interpreter in court. She could barely speak a word to defend herself. Meek and jaded, she made me realize how language barriers make non-English speakers so vulnerable here in America. And I was in California, a predominantly blue state that often prides itself on how much they embrace immigrants,” recalled Anh-Thu, founder of the Ladon Language Project. The experience inspired her to form a team and create the Ladon Language Project, a platform to crowdsource bilinguals. The Project began from a Spring 2016 class at the University of California, Berkeley––a school with a rich history of social and political activism, now more famous for recent political events after the election. The Project’s idea is to form a network of bilinguals who can provide on-demand language support. The team’s aim is to make the services as simple to use a