Welcome to the D.C. Language Access Coalition website!

With Asian American LEAD, the D.C. Language Access Coalition is organizing community meetings for Limited-English Proficient & Non-English Proficient immigrant community groups about language access services at Health Care Centers in Washington, D.C.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Time: 4:00-5:30pm
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
901 G Street, N.W.
Room No. 221

Approximately 250 students, parents, educators, and concerned community members filled the meeting space of the Charles Sumner School on the evening of August 18th for the D.C. Candidates Forum on Improving Education, sponsored by the Communities for Education Organizing (CEO) and The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region.

The D.C. government recently cancelled its contract with Health Right – a managed care organization (MCO) that administered health benefits to beneficiaries of Medicaid and Alliance in the District of Columbia. Now the Department of Health Care Finance (DHCF) is leading an effort to inform Medicaid and Alliance beneficiaries that their service will be switching from Health Right to one of the remaining two MCOs: Chartered or Unison Health Plans.

The staff, SMART youth, and member organizations of the D.C. Language Access Coalition recently submitted testimony at the 2010 D.C. Oversight hearings. Those who testified sought raise awareness among Council members about the ongoing challenges faced by limited and non-English proficient (LEP/NEP) community members when accessing vital services at government agencies.

ESL students from the LAYC and the D.C. Language Access Coalition’s SMART program met with Michelle Rhee yesterday to share their problems and concerns about DCPS. A similar meeting was held this time last year, when students presented issues including the need for more materials, bilingual security guards, bilingual counselors, better teachers, and more supports for newcomers. While some of these issues were addressed over the year, others have yet to be solved and were brought up again at this second meeting.

For the past few months, the D.C. Language Access Coalition has been working hard with the U.S. Census Bureau to reach out to limited English proficient or non- English proficient communities in the District. In the 2000 Census, these groups were undercounted in D.C. as well as nationwide and we are trying to reverse this trend through our 2010 Census education campaign.

On January 26, 2010 the Coalition hosted a Policy Briefing where they presented policy priorities to D.C. Council Members representatives. The Coalitions policy intern Amber Carran-Fletcher worked with coalition members to come up with 3 policy points for education, healthcare, housing, human services, workforce development and employment relations, and WMATA.

To read the recommended Policy Priorities click here.

After the deadly crash of a metro train in late June 2009 Coalition members started looking into how the LEP/NEP community was going to be served with important information and notices. One Coalition member in particular noticed that WMATA was using machine translations to translate important information on their website.

Julia Alanen published an article in the International Legal Studies Program Law Journal on the significance of Language Access in the United States.