Creciendo Juntos – Working Together

Human Services Working Group Meeting Notes

Thursday, January 11, 2007, 3 pm, United Way – High Street

Present: Kathy Klump, Janet Muse, Rhonda Miska, Jon Nafziger, Ivonne Lopez, Sue Moffett

We started the meeting by welcoming a new member, Kathy Klump, who worked for years with MJH as a bilingual staff member.

We previewed a 16 minute video from the Maryland Health Dept which Janet had brought about the different care two Spanish speaking women got – one who had an interpreter and one who didn’t. We decided that we did want to show the video to open our plenary session with a focus on interpretation.

Our keynote speaker on Jan 25 will be Svetlana Shulgan from Blue Ridge AHEC Community Interpreter Services. We decided we wanted to ask Ms. Shulgan to speak a bit about the program (it’s history, who uses it, etc), as well to touch on some of the basics skills of an interpreter as well as how to use an interpreter. Finally, we decided to request she speak to how cultural differences – not just language – can impact the way an individual interacts w/ institutions and the services they receive. {Note: Rhonda emailed Ms. Shulgan with these requests on Friday morning.}

Sue will contact the IRC and ask them to give a brief plug about their interpreter service and have literature available. We decided with these elements that we would have more than enough material to fill the allotted time at the plenary session.

Rhonda announced that Incarnation is looking to host a community conversation/public forum on immigration with the Quality Community Council and encouraged people to contact her if they want to be part of the planning effort.

Jon, as chair of the nominating committee, encouraged people to submit nominations or self-nominate for the three offices of chair, vice chair and secretary.

Since we want to address the issue of interpreter access at MJH and UVA, and since Jadi and her colleague from UVA haven’t been able to attend our meetings, we decided that we would ask Jadi to set a date for a meeting, and perhaps meet at UVa in order to more easily facilitate that conversation. The next meeting date is TBA, most likely a Thursday in February as Jadi’s schedule dictates.