Photo By Staff Sgt. Joseph Knoch | Chirag Govindbhai (left) and Jeannette Lozano (right), both volunteer translators and...... read more read more
When the NRG Stadium Community Vaccination Center opened in Houston February 26, 2021, there were not enough translators on scene to handle a city where 38.9% of residents are non-English speakers, approximately 17% more than the national average of 21.9%.
Thanks to the partnership between Harris County Public Health, U.S. Army North, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, volunteer translators are now serving alongside Service Members and FEMA employees to translate for non-English-speaking Houston residents interested in taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
“The first day we started here we were pretty busy,” said U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Anny Barragan, an aerospace medical technician with the 20th Medical Group out of Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, South Carolina. “I speak Spanish as my native language, so people were coming to me saying, ‘We need your help translating over here.’ I was running back and forth between all of the lanes.”
Barragan is on orders in Houston at the NRG Stadium CVC to help provide the vaccine to locals, but she was not brought here to be a translator. Having grown up in a Spanish-speaking household and being a medical technician on mission in a city with a massive Spanish-speaking community, it is easy to see how she found a natural way of serving through translation.
In response to this need for more translators, the partnering organizations began recruiting more volunteer translators. Thanks to Harris County Public Health, volunteer translators who serve during the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo were recruited to come on board at the NRG Stadium CVC.
“I started volunteering here at the CVC on the first day they opened,” said Armando Chavez, the volunteer coordinator for Harris County Public Health at the NRG Stadium CVC. “After volunteering for 21 days straight they realized that I had not taken a day off and they approached me, offering me a job as the volunteer coordinator.”
When Chavez took his new position he continued to devote much of his time to his role as a volunteer coordinator but is required to take at least one day off each week. Chavez is a dedicated volunteer, and takes an active role in reaching out to fellow volunteers at the Rodeo.
“I perform the role of a supervisor and manager for the volunteers,” Chavez said. “I work with the U.S. Air Force and FEMA logistics and operations teams to make sure that we have what we need to keep our volunteers taken care of.”
Chavez is a volunteer at heart and he is devoted to his work; so devoted, in fact, that he even regularly trains on his bicycle at the NRG stadium parking lots for an upcoming 100-mile marathon. One morning this past February, before working at the Rodeo later that afternoon, he was riding laps around the stadium when he spotted a fellow Rodeo volunteer.
“I met up with Armando when I was volunteering at the Rodeo this year,” said Jeannette Lozano, a volunteer translator and screener with Harris County Public Health, and Houston native. “I was helping to load a vehicle when Armando rode up on his bike and introduced himself. He said we need people like you who are willing to help out at the NRG Stadium CVC.”
Lozano is a member of the greeters and breeder’s committee for the Houston Rodeo and, like many of the volunteer translators at the NRG Stadium CVC, has previous experience working as a translator.
“I feel great giving back; it’s been a wonderful experience so far,” Lozano said. “Anything to help the community during COVID-19 is very meaningful to me.”
On a day-to-day basis, the translators might see anywhere from 50 to more than 100 non-English-speaking people and, sometimes, these people speak a language which is less common in the Houston area. In cases like these, the volunteers work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency translator hotline to conduct the appropriate pre-vaccine medical screening.
“I’m translating to Spanish here, but we have other languages that people speak which we don’t have translators for in person,” said Chirag Govindbhai, a volunteer translator and screener with Harris County Public Health. “In cases like this, we just pull out our call sheet, show it to that person and have them point to the correct language and get them on the phone with a translator.”
The volunteers work on their schedules, offering their time free to serve the Houston community alongside Chavez and four additional FEMA translators. Among them are three English-to-Spanish translators and one American Sign Language translator.
“We are having one to five deaf people coming through every day and I’m providing interpreting services so that they have appropriate knowledge about the vaccine,” said Laura Forbes, American Sign Language interpreter for FEMA. “Many people don’t think about the deaf community's needs for a translator.”
The purpose of the translation is to make sure all recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine are properly informed and monitored for pertinent past medical history, including any routine vaccines they may have recently received.
Though Barragan loves to speak her native language with fellow Spanish speakers, her primary role at the NRG Stadium CVC is to screen people for past pertinent medical history before receiving the vaccine.
“Usually they might have their routine vaccines like tetanus, shingles or flu… they aren’t supposed to get the COVID-19 vaccine if they took those other vaccines too recently,” Barragan said.
A few questions typically asked in conjunction with taking the vaccine include whether or not the individual has ever felt dizzy, sleepy, or fainted after receiving a shot of any kind. In cases where people answer yes, the screeners advise that a friend or family member do the driving while the individual takes time to monitor their state after receiving the vaccine.
All of the volunteers and workers serving to translate at the NRG Stadium CVC agree that their work is important and valuable to them.
“I don’t get anything from this other than the reward of helping people. I usually come on Sunday from 1 to 4:30 p.m. and Monday from opening to closing if I can.”
For information about COVID-19 related volunteer opportunities near you reach out to your local department of Public Health.
U.S. Northern Command, through U.S. Army North, remains committed to providing continued, flexible Department of Defense support to the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of the whole-of-government response to COVID-19.
| Date Taken: | 04.06.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 04.13.2021 19:17 |
| Story ID: | 393471 |
| Location: | HOUSTON, TEXAS, US |
| Hometown: | PANAMA CITY, PA |
| Hometown: | KATY, TEXAS, US |
| Hometown: | SUMTER, SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 128 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Houston’s Rodeo Volunteers Translate at Local CVC, by SSG Joseph Knoch, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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