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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Riva Shang, Economic Empowerment Community Organizer at Asian American Federation
5:35:16
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173 sec
Riva Shang from the Asian American Federation testified about the importance of improving language access for Asian New Yorkers and other immigrant communities. She highlighted the RISE initiative and the work of the Language Justice Collaborative in developing interpreter cooperatives and a community interpreter bank.
- Asian Americans have the highest rates of limited English proficiency in NYC at 44%
- The Language Justice Collaborative received $3.8 million in FY25 to develop worker cooperatives for translators and interpreters
- AAF is training 16 immigrants fluent in top Asian languages to become community interpreters
- Funding is requested for FY26 to continue building the cooperative and launch services
Riva Shang
5:35:16
Thank you, Chair Brennan and Chair Aviles and the committees on finance and immigration.
5:35:20
My name is Riva Shang.
5:35:21
I'm the economic empowerment community organizer at the Asian American Federation where we represent a collective of 70 plus member nonprofit organizations serving 1,500,000 Asian New Yorkers.
5:35:33
At AAF, we believe that we should welcome all immigrants with fairness and dignity.
5:35:37
Asian New Yorkers are the fastest growing demographic in the city, making up over 17% or one in six of the population.
5:35:44
AAF's Rapid Immigrant Support and Empowerment or RISE initiative is facilitating new immigrants access to critical services and supporting the non profits that deliver them.
5:35:54
But today I'm gonna focus on one important prong of our immigrant support programs, improving language access.
5:36:00
Asian Americans have highest rates of limited English language proficiency in the city at 44%.
5:36:06
Meaning nearly one in two Asian New Yorkers face language barriers that limit their access to government services, employment, education, and civic participation.
5:36:15
As part of this work, AAF is a proud member of the Language Justice Collaborative along with African Communities Together, Massa, NYIC, HOPE, and IARC which in 2017 helped pass Local Law 30 requiring New York City agencies to implement language access plans.
5:36:31
The implementation of that law has seen agencies rely on poor quality machine translations that at times turn out nonsense translations and on unreliable third party teleservices like LanguageLine.
5:36:42
In fiscal year twenty five, city council allocated $3,800,000 that allowed us as a coalition to develop worker cooperatives of translators and interpreters as well as a community interpreter bank.
5:36:54
Using this year's funding, AAF worked with our member organizations to recruit community members to serve as Asian language interpreters.
5:37:01
We received over 160 applications and through rounds of screening we are now working with a group of 16 immigrants who are fluent in the top Asian languages in New York City.
5:37:11
Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, both Cantonese and Mandarin, Korean, and Urdu who are training as community interpreters and will go on to build a worker owned cooperative.
5:37:20
These interpreters alongside translators from other immigrant communities served by LJC will be poised to fill the critical need for high quality interpretation for NYC area government, non profits, schools, hospitals, and the private sector while also providing opportunities for income and business ownership for the same immigrant communities that need them.
5:37:39
The funding that we are requesting from council would allow us to continue building the cooperative with our trainees who will begin providing services within FY26 and launch fully by the start of FY27.
5:37:50
We applaud the council's support this year and urge you to again support funding for this initiative in FY26 budget to ensure continuity for these programs that are already in progress.
5:38:00
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and more information on our immigrant rapid response programming can be found in our written testimony.
5:38:08
Thank you.