In December 2021, SIS completed the recruitment and induction of a new cohort of 11 Volunteer Linguist. The group who speak 14 different languages between them, are joining our team to support the delivery of Social Prescribing and Community Outreach.
The backgrounds of the volunteers were very varied and interesting, some of the new cohort already have a relationship with SIS as professional interpreters or Telephone Befriending Volunteers but others were new to the SIS family. The induction and training sessions took place on line but we were still able to make them very vibrant and interactive particularly with the use of breakout rooms where more intimate conversations and discussions could take place.
This group is joining our existing team of 26 Volunteer Linguist to help delivery our essential services
Social Prescribing connecting people to local services and organisations to get support and help with practical, social and emotional needs. Volunteer Linguists are the front line for this service, undertaking triage with service users to ascertain their needs and then help with some of the issues such as understanding correspondence, finding and understanding information about services, filling in forms, and making appointments.
Community Outreach making connections with people and groups from language communities to let them know about SIS and the services we can offer. Community Outreach could be on-line or face to face and include social clubs and groups, religious venues, shops or places of work and education where people with language needs might meet or attend.
One of the drivers for additional recruitment is the expansion of these services into East and West Sussex as funded by through the Bilingual Health Promotion Project . SIS has added some new languages to our team through this cohort – Tamil, Albanian, Dari, Pashto, as well as additional volunteers in languages for which we have a high demand – Arabic, Farsi and Chinese.
We are really excited to be working with more individuals and communities in 2022.
