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Spanish-Speaking Services Improving, But Room To Grow

Linnea Haskin, Jamestown Public Market director, and the Rev. Luke Fodor from St. Luke’s Episcopal Church have indicated that services for Spanish-speaking individuals in Jamestown are improving in the community. However, both Haskin and Fodor told The Post-Journal that many services in the community are still limited by language barriers. Pictured are representatives from United Healthcare who recently worked to help local migrants obtain health insurance and answered the questions and concerns of Jamestown’s migrants. Submitted photos

Over the past decade, services for individuals who primarily speak Spanish have improved in the local area; however, the recent increase in Spanish-speaking migrants in Jamestown has highlighted the need for continued improvements in various services in the community.

Linnea Haskin, Jamestown Public Market director, has been working closely with migrant families in the community over the past few months. Haskin said that services for individuals who primarily speak Spanish remain relatively limited in Jamestown.

“I will say it remains an ongoing challenge from my perspective, and I think it’s because we’re largely a white English-speaking community,” she said. “I’ve been really shocked at how many services in our community are not available in Spanish, whether that’s flyers that aren’t translated, paperwork that’s provided, just having an English or an English Spanish translator on staff is difficult for many organizations.”

While Haskin acknowledged that the availability of services for Spanish-speaking individuals in the community has improved over the past decade as a result of advancements in technology and the community’s understanding of the need for more services for Spanish-speaking members of the community, she said there is “always room for improvement.”

Haskin emphasized how the translation services utilized by UPMC Chautauqua, The Chautauqua Center and Jamestown Public Schools are vital to migrant families in Jamestown.

Pictured are representatives from United Healthcare interacting with local migrants.

“I am always encouraging groups or organizations in our community when you’re creating an event on Facebook or a flyer to distribute to families or just promoting any of your services, try and take that extra step to translate it into Spanish,” she said. “This doesn’t just affect the migrant families. We have a fairly large for our area and growing Hispanic population in general. That kind of surprised me when we’ve been helping families is like, ‘Well, why isn’t this in Spanish?’ We have Spanish speakers in our community. It’s an ongoing conversation about how do we make people feel welcome.”

Haskin suggested that community members considering meeting migrants “halfway,” by considering how difficult it would be for English-speaking members of the community to feel comfortable in a different country that spoke a different language. Haskin added that the migrants that have relocated to Jamestown are continuing to learn English and adapt to the community. She highlighted the Jamestown Public School district’s ESL program that helps Spanish-speaking students learn English “very quickly.”

However, while Haskin indicated that some services for Spanish-speaking individuals have improved in the community, she said it is still a “gamble” each time a migrant family is required to make a phone call to a service organization whether or not the organization has a translator who can speak the Spanish language.

“Often we don’t know the answer until we call and find out for ourselves, so it’s something they have to always be mindful of,” she said.

The Rev. Luke Fodor from St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, explained that the church has been translating its services into Spanish and working to communicate better with Spanish-speaking families and migrants in the Jamestown community.

Fodor said he has discovered that his English communication as a pastor has become “better and clearer” as he has become more mindful about language and the needs of his audience.

“It helped me as I tried to speak English in a way that I know the translate apps will pick up, it just helps me pay attention to the things we take for granted in our own communities,” he said.

Fodor told The Post-Journal that understanding the importance of communication and learning better ways to communicate with different individuals throughout the community is always something that people can improve on.

“Have there been improvements in the last 10 years? I would hope so just because of technology, but I think there are technological changes you can make, but the real changes are the adaptive changes, and those are the harder ones to change and even to see sometimes,” Fodor said. “We tend to fix things with little technical fixes, instead of paying attention to the need to think differently about the tools that we’re using and maybe even the way we are communicating.”

Fodor indicated that the more people in the community consider making adaptive changes, the more people will learn how to speak “beyond language” in ways that are “more direct and more filled with grace and connection.”

“That’s the adaptive change, and that’s not going to happen by magically learning new words; it’s going to because we have a curious spirit and we’re desiring to be in connection with new people and to learn from each other,” he said.

From Fodor’s perspective, the community appears to be making strides toward that goal of deeper connection with people from different backgrounds, languages and cultures. Nevertheless, he explained that adaptive change continues to be a “struggle” at times in the community.

“It’s not that we can’t learn the Spanish language, or we can’t put the forms in the Spanish language,” he said. “It’s that we ourselves aren’t even really looking at ourselves. We need to look at ourselves in the mirror first and say, ‘This is who I’m called to be-better.’ and then if I can be better and look at myself and give myself dignity and the worth I deserve, then I can extend that to other people as well, whether they speak English, whether they come from generational poverty or not.”

Haskin added that people in the Jamestown community have more in common with each other than they think. As a result, she emphasized the importance of “making life easier” for all members for the community by implementing effective translation services and other services for Spanish-speakers in Jamestown.

“Any translator you talk to can tell you it’s not about language to language, it’s about culture to culture,” Fodor said. “So how do we map out that reciprocal life-giving celebratory connection with people that are different from us, and yet, inherently the same?”

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