DANBURY, CT, USA – February 2016 — Translators without Borders (TWB), has received valuable program funding from the Start Network, which will allow it to increase its ongoing response to the urgent European refugee crisis in Greece and the Balkans. TWB has been operating its Words of Relief Translation Crisis Relief program in the region since September 2015; this grant will allow the organization to expand its work and extend it into the spring.
This is the first time that Translators without Borders has been awarded funding from Start Network, funded by UK Aid, a multi-donor pooled fund, launched in April 2014 that enables NGOs to provide early and rapid response to emergencies.
Translators without Borders deploys its Words of Relief Rapid Response Teams in Arabic, Farsi and Greek, providing immediate, high quality translations for aid organizations along the refugee route. Every day the teams of professional volunteers translate news for refugees working in collaboration with Internews, critical information on Reception Centers and ferry strikes, and signage for Reception Centers and health information. Our partners include UNHCR, Mercy Corps, the International Rescue Committee, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and more.
In addition to the Rapid Response teams, TWB is providing guidance on hiring interpreters on the ground and plans to provide translation training for staff in Athens and on Lesvos. The Start-funded project also includes improvement to machine translation crisis engines in languages of the refugees and the standardization of place names.
The Start Network is an international group of NGOs that enables a broad range of humanitarian actors and partners to provide the best possible solutions for people affected by crises. It provides platforms for collaborative approaches to decision-making and provision, which enable organizations to achieve more together than any single organization acting alone could accomplish.
The challenges faced by populations affected by humanitarian crises are often bigger than any one single organization working alone can solve. Factors such as climate change, population growth and resource competition will see this trend continue and increase over the next 5 – 10 years. The vast ecosystem of NGOs involved in crisis response need an aggregator that can collaborate at scale to address these issues.
The Start Network is such an aggregator. Through unique collaborative processes, the Network can provide a platform for programs to be developed and decisions on each crisis to be made by local civil society actors who are best placed to respond. Not only are the most appropriate decisions made at the most appropriate places in the humanitarian system but quick, co-created responses ensure complementarity and coherence that single organizations cannot achieve alone.
At present the Network is overseeing £56m of such programs in West Africa and Europe, and is investing in Network infrastructure and capability to deliver more such collaborative responses in future.
About the Start Network
The Start Network is an international network of NGOs that enables a broad range of humanitarian actors and partners to provide the best possible solutions to people affected by crises. The Network extends to 25 members and 7000 partner organizations, employing more than a quarter million people across 200 countries and territories. For more information: http://www.startnetwork.org
How Can You support TWB?
By Donating. We are a small team and need funding to help keep TWB operating. Please consider even a small amount. To donate, please visit:https://translatorswithoutborders.org/donors
By signing up for our Biannual Newsletter and Monthly Updates. Our communications won’t overcrowd your inbox but will keep you up to date all on the crisis, health and education work that TWB does around the globe. To sign up for our newsletter, please visit:https://translatorswithoutborders.org/News-and-Events
If you are a trained translator, please consider joining one of the Words of Relief Rapid Response Teams or the TWB Workspace. For the current rapid response teams, we are in need of Arabic, Farsi, Greek, Urdu and Kurdish translators. To join, please complete this form. In the TWB Workspace, we do ongoing translation work in health and education for our non-profit partners. We currently need more Nepali and Newari translators for that work, as well as French. To sign up, please complete the volunteer form: https://translatorswithoutborders.org/volunteers/translator-app
