Whether they are supporting a floating health training facility in the Amazon or running training sessions with solar-powered hardware stored in a single backpack, the volunteers at WiRED are dedicated to delivering health and medical education to remote communities in Africa, Latin America, Asia and elsewhere. Many of these communities have no access to the electricity or Internet grids. WiRED offers healthcare training and provides access to free computer-delivered courses so that remote communities are health-aware and health educated, thereby being better able to address routine and epidemic health problems.
Translators without Borders has been part of this adventure, translating WiRED’s Express Series and other health training modules on a broad spectrum of topics. The training modules were brought to Amazonian communities on WiRED’s most recent field trip, with its partner Project Amazonas. “Language is central to all of our educational efforts. Health education material is useless to people who cannot understand the language in which it is written. TWB greatly extends the reach of our programs and enables us to fully serve these remote areas,” explains Allison Kozicharow, a WiRED Board member. The results that the organization has achieved though its two-year collaboration with TWB volunteers are significant: with more than 250,000 donated words, TWB volunteers have delivered professional translations of training modules into Spanish, Portuguese and French.
WiRED’s Learning Center currently carries more than 300 interactive modules, serving grassroots audiences and medical professionals in under-resourced countries. TWB has worked with WiRED to translate 70 health and medical education modules. These included community- and individual-level Ebola and infectious disease training, professional-level medical training in new and improved procedures, and non-communicable disease training. While community workers and individuals can learn about basic health issues, prevention and treatments, medical professionals can gain knowledge on the most recent techniques such as how to treat severely malnourished infants, polio, or interpret echocardiograms. Many modules are also appropriate for school children to learn about basic biology and health.
Like TWB, WiRED is a volunteer-driven organization with limited resources to cover translation costs. “To translate our materials, we used to put the word out, usually to universities, where we often relied on translators without special skills in medical translations.” By cooperating with TWB, WiRED resources can be focused on creating professionally written, peer-reviewed health and medical education modules and fully serving remote areas.
Find out more about the WiRED Learning Center here.