Jonas Fine Tan - Polyglottery and its Place in the Social Welfare Sector

When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit in Singapore, my family received a friend’s message looking for anyone who spoke other Southeast Asian Languages to translate for migrant workers in quarantine facilities, and signed me up without my knowledge. Little did I know that this would become the most impactful and fruitful event in my language learning journey.

It’s hard to imagine any community globally that hasn’t been affected by the pandemic. This rings true for already vulnerable groups such as migrant workers and refugees, who are experiencing an exacerbation in common issues such as inaccessibility to adequate living conditions, legal counsel, or food and medical care. Furthermore, in many countries, COVID has triggered an overall increase in homelessness in lower income families - a substantial proportion of which are settled refugee and immigrant families.

In my presentation, I hope to cover my personal experiences over the past year serving immigrant issues in different capacities - from clinical translations in COVID crisis settings, to planning digital multilingual mental health hotline responses and surveying immigrant sex workers. Through these points, I hope to advocate how we, as polyglots, can apply ourselves to work for and serve vulnerable communities, especially as the times become ever more trying.

Furthermore, I hope to speak about how these experiences have thrown me into many new environments and situations, reviving my passion for language learning, in light of its power to do good, and catalyzing the biggest growth in my language learning journey I have seen thus far.

Join us at: PolyglotConference.com
fb.com/PolyglotConference
fb.com/groups/PolyglotConference
twitter.com/Polyglot_Confer
instagram.com/PolyglotConference

The Language Event
Join us at: TheLanguageEvent.com
fb.com/TheLanguageEvent
fb.com/groups/TheLanguaageEventEdinburgh
fb.com/groups/TheLanguageEventAuckland
fb.com/groups/ThelanguageEventMelbourne
twitter.com/PolyglotMeetup
instagram.com/TheLanguageEvent

Space image by gregrakozy.com

Видео Jonas Fine Tan - Polyglottery and its Place in the Social Welfare Sector канала Polyglot Conference