DENVER – If you’re able to speak another language other than English, Denver wants you to become an interpreter — at no cost to you.
It’s all part of an effort led by the Denver Office of Immigrant & Refugee Affairs (DOIRA) to help the city respond to the needs of approximately 37% of Denver’s population who are limited English speakers, according to Claudia Castillo, language access program manager for the City and County of Denver.
Now accepting its third cohort of candidates, DOIRA’s Interpreter Workforce Training program began in July of 2023 after Castillo saw the need to help people who spoke a language other than Spanish. Through her research, she found Denver’s Vietnamese community – the largest percentage of limited English speakers in the city – had a really hard time accessing city services and support.
Her findings would reveal the need to help limited English speakers went farther than that.
“We started to see this (need) with different languages – Tigrinya, Somali, Rohingya and Wolof – basically all western and central African languages – as well as Latin America, as well as just a variation of languages that we needed to cover within the city in order to meet the residents’ needs,” Castillo said.
It was thanks to an approved proposal submitted by Castillo for a community program using pandemic relief (ARPA) funds that DOIRA was able to kickstart this type of training, making Denver the first city nationwide to use the funds to help limited English speakers who are new to the city get much needed services and support, according to Castillo.
While the program offers the training at no cost, it is by no means “free,” she stressed.
“It does not cost the individual money to attend, but it does cost them their time,” Castillo said, arguing that candidates who register for the program have to commit 13 days of their personal time to the training to study, do homework and take a test – potentially being away from their jobs, and most importantly, their families for about 7 hours each of those 13 days. “That’s why it was very specific in that it’s ‘at no cost,’ because it’s true – taking the course is not going to cost you money, but it’s definitely not free.”
Luckily, those ARPA funds do help candidates by providing free, on-site childcare to those who may need it as well as meals throughout the day through the duration of the program.
DOIRA is looking for people who speak Vietnamese, Amharic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, French, Burmese, Karen, Farsi, Somali, Nepali, Korean, Urdu, Haitian Creole, Khmer Armenian, Swahili, “or any other languages” for this training, Castillo said.
“Dari (a dialect of Persian) and Pashto (the national language of Afghanistan) were some of the languages that were being asked for” by the community, she said.
Though the market for Spanish interpreters is “saturated,” Castillo said, the program will accept anyone who speaks Spanish and who wishes to become an interpreter as space allows.
A total of 21 candidates will be accepted into the 3rd cohort (there will be 9 total through 2025), but before even starting the course, those interested will have to take a language proficiency test in both English and the language they want to interpret in.
The program is not open to people who just moved to Denver, Castillo warned.
“This is not geared for newcomers who don’t have the full command of the English language,” she said. “Our main demographic is people who have been here in the city, (who) know the city. It’s... for most of them, it's something that they've already done.”
Registration for the Interpreter Workforce Training closes March 11 or until DOIRA gets 21 participants to enroll. The training will be done by Cesco Linguistic Services, and the program will go from March 25 through April 17.
Those who graduate will receive a certificate of completion, an introduction to small business services in Denver, as well as a grant to register as a small business with the State of Colorado.
To register, click here.
