The monsoon rains came early to Pakistan in 2022, transforming rivers into roaring torrents that swallowed entire villages. In Nowshera district, as floodwaters receded and displaced families sought help, language became an invisible barrier as devastating as the floods themselves. Pashto-speaking families who had lost everything found themselves unable to navigate the very systems meant to help them. “We went to the government office to register for aid, but we couldn’t explain ourselves properly. The staff didn’t speak our language, and they didn’t seem interested in helping us,” said a displaced person to researchers who studied the vulnerabilities of flood-affected communities. The forms, the health advisories, and the bureaucratic processes often exist in languages that create walls between desperate people and the assistance they urgently need.

This isn’t an isolated failure, but a symptom of a much larger problem. As climate disasters multiply worldwide, language barriers are turning humanitarian crises into communication catastrophes.

A common problem for thousands of languages

Across the world, approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in regions of high climate vulnerability sprawling across Africa, South Asia, South and Central America, and small island states scattered across rising seas. Aside from climate hotspots, these areas are where humanity’s estimated 7,000 languages flourish in their greatest diversity. In these very regions where the climate emergency hits hardest, the tapestry of human speech is most complex.

Consider the mathematics of vulnerability: the three countries facing the highest risk from natural disasters are linguistic powerhouses. The Philippines, facing recurring typhoons that grow stronger with warming oceans, is home to over 120 languages. Indonesia, an archipelago slowly being submerged, shelters approximately 800 languages among its islands. India, facing catastrophic heat waves, droughts, and floods, speaks 123 major languages – and that’s before counting hundreds of smaller languages that don’t make official statistics.

In order to face up to the climate crisis, populations are in need of plenty of information that is often not delivered in their language. This includes climate resilience programs, training on drought-resistant farming techniques, and early warning systems for extreme weather. But the language gap becomes even more acute during emergencies, when people desperately need evacuation instructions, locations of emergency shelters, trauma counseling services, information about their displacement rights, access to health services, legal assistance navigating compensation programs… Each of these represents not just an information gap, but a justice gap, where those who need help most are systematically excluded from receiving it simply because the help arrives in the wrong language.

A barrier to participation in solution design

In West Papua, Indonesia, local communities speak languages like Dani, Yali, and Asmat – languages that evolved alongside the forests and coastlines they’ve managed for millennia. When these communities try to participate in regional climate planning meetings, they find themselves unable to do so, their profound ecological knowledge locked away behind linguistic barriers they didn’t create.

This knowledge is irreplaceable. In the Amazon, where indigenous communities speak hundreds of languages, each tongue carries detailed information about plant species, water cycles, soil conditions, and animal behavior. Yet these communities are systematically excluded from climate conferences and policy-making processes, not because they lack expertise, but because they lack the “right” languages.

The exclusion happens at every level. Local climate communicators want to help their communities understand what’s happening to their world. But translating complex climate science accurately requires resources and training. This year CLEAR Global had the opportunity to work with Aymara and Tacana Indigenous communities in Bolivia, where we developed glossaries to find precise terminology that will help in upcoming climate emergencies. 

Including language in our response to the climate emergency

These problems are replicated billions of times over across climate-vulnerable regions. Each time, the failure goes beyond the logistical issue; it’s a question of fundamental justice. If we cannot speak to people in languages they understand, we cannot help them. If we cannot hear what they’re trying to tell us in their own words, we miss the usefulness of humanity’s wisdom. And if we continue to build our global response to climate change in just a handful of dominant languages, we guarantee that the billions who live in vulnerability’s path will face the crisis alone, excluded from the very conversations that will determine their survival.

The earth is speaking through fires, floods, and storms. But humanity’s response remains trapped in just a few dominant languages, leaving billions in silence.

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LLMs, and generative AI models use algorithms trained on a lot of text (A LOT of text) to recognize complex patterns. The more text and greater computing power they employ, the better the model performs. At the foundational level, they learn to respond to user requests with relevant, in-context content written in human language – the kind of words and syntax people use during ordinary conversation.

The paper said that LLMs can speed up and even improve translations, particularly for less experienced translators. The researcher looked at training compute, which is the amount of computational power required to train an LLM. The more training compute an LLM has, the faster and better a translator can work. In theory, this could lead to translators working more quickly and thus earning more money for the same number of words. 

Clearly, neither Nick Thompson nor the paper’s author work in translation. Post machine translation editing fees are often much lower than fully human translation ones. So, I think it’s a leap to say that more people are making money from translating, but it is reasonable to conclude that translators can work more efficiently.  

However, I think the research could yield interesting findings about the quality of LLMs and translations in lower-resource languages. The researcher used translators working from English into Arabic, Hindi, and Spanish. It’s well documented that LLMs currently work best in English and other languages that have a large digital presence. Spanish also has a large digital presence, but Arabic and Hindi – not so much.

LLMs may make translation slower in some cases

The study focused on strengthening the argument that the more resources an LLM has in terms of its training compute, the faster and better the translation is. The data supports this hypothesis. It’s hardly surprising. 

The researcher didn’t provide the data on whether or not LLMs helped or hindered translation in the first place. Machine translation (a different application of AI) can speed up translation in languages for which lots of digital data is available, and it’s widely assumed that LLMs are the same, if not better. There has been little (if any?) analysis if the same is true for low-digital-resource languages. And this is the first study I’ve seen where the data suggests that it might take longer to translate content using an LLM for Arabic.

And that’s interesting because it supports the idea of how critical digital language data is. 

There are 2 big issues here:

• A recognition of the problem – and that it won’t just go away or “big tech” will just build data for low resource languages.
• An acknowledgement of the critical need of resources to develop data and tools that will help narrow the digital gap for speakers of low-resource languages. 

The case for developing language technology 

This is a global problem: almost half the world’s population, 3.7 billion people, do not speak a major language. It’s no coincidence that those 3.7 billion also have the lowest incomes and are the most marginalized. The problem is particularly acute in crisis situations because datasets cannot be built during a crisis and this blocks access to life-saving information. 

A combination of low literacy, a lack of information in local languages, and very little digital information available means that 3.7 billion people will continue to struggle to get information unless there is a fundamental shift in access. While the other half of the world’s population can get information in a language they understand on their phones, computers, and tablets, the most marginalized struggle.

Infographic by CSA Research.

LLMs and language diversity

Language technology and large language models are evolving rapidly, yet only a fraction of the world’s 7,000 languages are meaningfully online. 

The development of language technology in low.-resource languages is not increasing quickly enough to bridge the gap, particularly speech and voice technology. In my estimation, around 45 languages have enough training data. Efforts are underway to create more inclusive LLMs that encompass the world’s linguistic diversity. Governments and organizations are creating datasets and models for underrepresented languages. We work with initiatives in India, South Africa, and the UAE, in addition to the efforts of other organizations.

These efforts are a great start, but in our experience, flipping the script on this will require adequate resources, consistent engagement and collaboration for a cohesive and fruitful approach that allows for scale-up. 

A call for inclusive language technology

As technology progresses and language models evolve rapidly, access to language tech is improving for some but creating a growing gap for others. For LLMs to truly benefit everyone, governments and donors need to invest in developing digital data. And LLMs need to be trained on more diverse data. This involves creating resources and datasets for underrepresented languages, involving local communities and researchers, and ensuring that AI development is inclusive and equitable. The future of LLMs may be bright, but it’s crucial to ensure that these powerful tools are developed responsibly and inclusively, benefiting the most marginalized.

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While sitting on a train to Toronto, I’m struck by the linguistic diversity around me – a woman speaking Hausa to her child, a man speaking Québécois, two girls speaking Mandarin. Countries are becoming linguistic melting pots, increasing the need for multilingual communication. In the humanitarian field, recognizing the significance of language and its cultural context is increasingly important; effective communication is essential for sharing ideas, scientific breakthroughs and medical discoveries. With over 7,000 spoken languages worldwide, this mission is both awe-inspiring and daunting, yet organizations like Translations Without Borders (TWB) and Evidence Aid (EA) are stepping up to meet the challenge.

The Collaboration: Evidence Aid and Translators Without Borders/CLEAR Global

Let’s start with the impact. Between May 2023 and 2024, Evidence Aid’s resources have been viewed 95,483 times. The most frequently visited translated articles in both Italian and French were on Anemia and iron metabolism in COVID-19 patients, amassing 2,937 combined views. Similarly, the Spanish version of an article about Ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) containing low or no dairy compared to standard RUTF for children with severe acute malnutrition got 535 views, compared to the English version which got just 22 views. More broadly, Evidence Aid had 53,226 users in the past year, with Italy taking the lead with 3,616 users, followed by the United States with 3,503, Sweden with 3,010, and France with 2,179 users. Clearly, translations are crucial since Evidence Aid’s resources are accessed by a variety of countries.

Evidence Aid is a humanitarian organisation that improves the effectiveness of humanitarian efforts by offering free plain-language summaries of research, namely systematic reviews. This empowers stakeholders to make evidence-informed decisions. With 11 collections, Evidence Aid ambitiously covers a broad range of topics. 

Their goal is to create easily readable and accessible summaries of systematic reviews, reducing the research workload for on-the-ground organisations and providing them with effective interventions and lessons from previous emergencies and disasters.

Recognizing that global issues demand global solutions, Evidence Aid saw the need for its summaries to be available in languages beyond English. Thus, the partnership between CLEAR Global and its global community, Translators without Borders (TWB) and Evidence Aid was born. Currently, Evidence Aid receives support to translate summaries from English into eight languages: Arabic, Chinese (traditional and simplified), French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

As noted above, the impact of this collaboration has been profound. 

Clearly, evidence-based research has a significant audience and is actively being used. These statistics also highlight the value of translations, demonstrating their widespread use!

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In June, CLEAR Global joined localization professionals, language technology companies, and other industry leaders from around the world for this year’s LocWorld 51 conference in Dublin. Themed “AI and Beyond”, the conference was packed with presentations, panel discussions and networking opportunities as attendees unpacked the latest trends, challenges and innovation from global attendees. 

CLEAR Global’s Chief Executive, Aimee Ansari, was fortunate to be asked to talk about our work during the opening plenary. Aimee spoke about how 3.7 billion people face language barriers when trying to access digital information. She highlighted the challenges and risks of these language barriers. 

CLEAR Global’s focus this year was creating a fairer future and exploring the role AI technology plays. Here are the 4 key takeaways from LocWorld 51.

1. Language inclusion in AI is a global priority 

Despite the widespread adoption of AI in the language and localization industry, language exclusion is a problem in AI. Generative AI is based on large language models (LLM) and mainly trained in English, excluding 80% of the world’s population. 

Language inclusion should be a global priority to ensure that AI technologies serve all communities equitably. CLEAR Gobal’s aim in Dublin was to advance the conversation around the impact of language inclusion and the significant impact AI can have on bridging language gaps and empowering local communities. 

2. Innovation in the localization industry 

This year’s Process Innovation Challenge saw incredible advancements in efficiency and creativity, reshaping how languages are managed and localized globally. CLEAR Global’s TILES (Touch Interface for Language Enabled Services) was the runner up of the PIC, won by CaptionHub who graciously donated their prize to us. 

Innovation is at the core of language inclusion, driving the development of technology that can bridge language divides and empower marginalized communities worldwide. As these advancements continue, collaboration and investment remain crucial to ensure equitable access and impact.

3. Coordinated collaboration is urgently needed 

Language data collection efforts remain siloed; each organization collecting their own, often domain specific, data. Funding is fragmented and inadequate. But there are projects, like CLEAR Global’s project to build machine translation in Rwanda, that are open source, scalable and have incredible potential to empower marginalized language speakers and provide vital access to information.

To create inclusive LLMs that include data from marginalized languages, we need language data – digitized voice or text datasets in the right languages. Even languages with millions of speakers may not have high quality parallel language datasets. 

Collaboration is urgently needed between linguists, technology partners, and community based organizations to provide access to these speakers. Thankfully, we have a community of linguists, Translators without Borders, but greater coordination is needed between technology partners and organizations.

4. Everyone has a role to play in a fairer future 

Creating a fairer future requires a collective effort from all. Researchers, developers, development workers, linguists, community members and organizations must work together to ensure that everyone regardless of language has access to vital information. 

To achieve language inclusion in technology, now is the moment to double down and invest in technology and organizations that empower diverse language speakers globally.

80% of the world is counting on us.

Written by Megan Johnson, Communications Officer, CLEAR Global

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Digital services can offer vital information, communication, and community – as long as they’re designed for the people who need them. Yet despite innovations in connectivity, service provision, and language technology like large language modeling, only a fraction of the world’s 7,000 languages are meaningfully online. For the billions already locked out, the gap is widening. 

With relevant and appropriate language technology, more of the world’s most marginalized people can access information and be empowered to make decisions that affect their lives. Learn how we work with local organizations and language communities to build relevant, sustainable solutions. 

Building language technology in marginalized languages helps close this digital divide

 

Kinyarwanda is the most widely spoken first language in Rwanda. Yet, like many other non-European languages, it is disproportionately underrepresented in the digital space. We partnered with Digital Umuganda, a Rwandan language technology company specializing in African languages to address language-based digital exclusion for Kinyarwanda speakers. For this project, we built and integrated a Machine Translation Plugin into Moodle, an online learning management system so users can switch between Kinyarwanda and English. This enables users of digital learning in Rwanda to access content in their language while also improving their English. The topics in this case were entrepreneurship, digital literacy, and also content on Rwanda’s tourism experience. By building machine translation (MT) capacity between English and Kinyarwanda (bi-directional) we can help the public sector improve communication with communities and access to services.

Our collaboration enabled Digital Umuganda to strengthen its technical capacity to support further projects promoting digital inclusion through language technology. It also showed how our model can catalyze sustainable technology development for marginalized languages, and make good on our commitment to localize aid. In this blog, we explore how we help local language technology experts equip themselves to address language marginalization in their own contexts. The next blog in this series on digital inclusion will look at what we learned about generating language data and building the technology to reach people in their languages.

Engaging Kinyarwanda speakers to generate language data

 

To begin creating language technology like machine translation, you need language data – digitized voice or text datasets in the right languages. Even languages with millions of speakers like Kinyarwanda may not have language datasets that are good enough to create accurate, viable, and domain-specific language technology capacity – yet.  

In order to build machine translation capacity in Kinyarwanda, we mobilized speakers from our Translators without Borders Community, the Mbaza NLP community coordinated by FAIR Forward and Digital Umuganda, and speakers from local universities such as the University of Rwanda’s School of Art Languages. We took a collaborative approach by sharing information about the project goals, the tool they would use to collect and validate language data, and the project’s intended impact. We aimed to ensure our community members had full transparency about the project and how their language data would be used. Demonstrating our commitment to transparency and open communication helped strengthen relationships and foster a sense of ownership between the community and our project team. This approach helped build trust in the technology and the overall project.

"I felt empowered knowing that our voices were being heard and valued in the development of language solutions that directly impact our Kinyarwanda community."

– Jessica Kubito, TWB Community member

We also explored different methods of data collection, on- and offline. In collaboration with Digital Umuganda, we organized a data collection hackathon in Kigali, Rwanda, where community members met in person to work together on generating Kinyarwanda language data. While in-person data collection is more costly, it ensures that people without access to devices or a stable internet connection can engage. It gave community members the opportunity to share their opinions, ask questions, and express any concerns about the data collection tool we were piloting. The datasets collected can be accessed online: e-learning content, tourism experience.

“It was refreshing to see that the project team genuinely cared about our input and feedback. This collaborative approach made me feel confident that the language solutions being developed would truly meet our needs."

– Juvan Mutsinzi, hackathon participant

Understanding communities’ linguistic challenges and needs to design user-centered solutions

 

Community engagement played a pivotal role in ensuring that the language solutions we created were tailored to the local community’s specific needs and preferences. CLEAR Global’s project team gained valuable insights into linguistic challenges, cultural nuances, accessibility challenges, and user expectations through active involvement and collaboration with Digital Umuganda. The sense of ownership fostered by involving Kinyarwanda linguists online and on-site ultimately led to more effective and impactful language solutions that have since been applied in use cases beyond this project’s scope. 

Communities and organizations know their context best

 

We collected localized, domain-specific language data on relevant topics offered through digital learning – entrepreneurship, digital literacy, and Rwanda’s tourism experience. One example of a linguistic challenge faced was how to render in Kinyarwanda concepts related to education systems and knowledge sharing. Knowledge acquisition in Kinyarwanda is embedded in traditional customs and practices. Linguists had to find appropriate phrases that were both accurate and would not risk representing educational content as elitist or reproducing colonial ways of thinking. The Kinyarwanda linguists working on the data collection adapted and contextualized the text. Their input helped ensure the text we used to develop our machine learning tool was appropriate and relevant to the users’ needs. 

To make the most of the community’s engagement we facilitated two-way communication channels between our project team, linguists, and hackathon contributors. This allowed for continuous feedback and iteration to enhance the data collection tool. By actively inviting input and feedback from the tool’s end-users, the project team gained insights into some of the requirements of a more user-friendly tool. For example, Kinyarwanda linguists expressed a preference for a solution with intuitive navigation capabilities and a user-friendly interface. Language data collectors also emphasized the importance of making the language data collection platform easily accessible to individuals with varying levels of digital literacy, ensuring simplicity in interaction and reducing the need for extensive training. They highlighted the need for more logical features that enhance the overall user experience.

Collaboration builds agency, trust, and more effective language technology 

 

Sustainable social impact requires local ownership and long-term commitment. We value the insights of communities such as Mbaza NLP and local organizations – they simply know their context best. When planning projects, we prioritize participatory decision-making to ensure key stakeholders have the agency to shape effective, inclusive, and sustainable initiatives that benefit their communities.

Partnering with local community-based organizations and people experiencing digital exclusion helps us develop digital initiatives that address their unique challenges. Collaboration with end-users from the start also promotes acceptance and adoption of digital interventions within the community. Considering localized challenges, community needs, language and format preferences, and sociocultural dynamics helps us identify relevant use cases for language technology – and assess when a digital solution might not be the best option. 

We have now handed over ownership of the machine translation tool to Mbaza NLP, ensuring the community continues to develop and apply the technology to other use cases beyond this project’s lifespan. Our collaborative approach strengthens our partners’ capacity to address access challenges, helping communities get vital information and be heard long after the project is completed. Digital Umuganda and the local community are now better placed to develop future language technology in even more languages to support other communities at risk of digital exclusion. By pooling our resources and leveraging existing technology infrastructure, we can increase the quality of existing technology, avoid redundancies, and scale our social impact solutions more efficiently.

Starting 4 billion more conversations

 

Four billion people – half the world’s population – are still excluded from important global conversations because their languages are underrepresented online. Our Four Billion Conversations movement #4BC aims to change that with initiatives like the Language AI Playbook to help social good partners integrate technology and mobilize communities. 

Our tech team has supported digital language inclusion in various contexts and languages:

– Learn how our pilot project, TILES (Touch Interface for Language Enabled Services), supported Hindi-speaking farmers in India to access information about climate change mitigation strategies.

– Explore Kompas, our multilingual artificial intelligence platform, curates verified, up-to-date information for people affected by the war in Ukraine.

– Discover chatbots like Shehu, using natural language understanding to answer questions about COVID-19 in Hausa, Kanuri, and English in Nigeria.

– Read our ebook to learn more about how language and communication are key to achieving sustainable development, climate change action, and health care for all.

Do you want to work with us to support digital inclusion in your language?

 

Click here to partner with us.

With thanks to our technology and funding partners:

Digital Umuganda 

Digital Umuganda is an AI and open data company with a mission to enable access to information in local African languages. Digital Umuganda creates open-source datasets, models and tools that make it possible for NLP including Large language models to work for marginalized communities that speak underresourced languages. Learn more at digitalumuganda.com

 

Digital Transformation Center Rwanda

The Digital Transformation Center is a Rwandan-German initiative aimed at developing impact-driven digital solutions in Africa. Therefore, it not only provides advisory services and training for government institutions and local tech companies, but also a modern space to boost creativity and collaboration. Learn more at digicenter.rw

 

GIZ Fair Forward: 

On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (“GIZ”) implements the project “FAIR Forward – Artificial Intelligence for All” which strives to create a more open, inclusive, and sustainable approach to AI on the international level, and more specifically, to develop artificial intelligence ecosystems locally across its seven partner countries (Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, India and Indonesia). For more information, visit FAIR Forward – Open data for AI (bmz-digital.global)

 

Written by Paul Warambo, Senior Community Officer, and Emily Elderfield, Advocacy Officer, CLEAR Global

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Language inclusion is key to helping women and girls shape a better future for themselves. This International Women’s Day, CLEAR Global looks at how we can listen, inspire opportunities, and promote women’s rights with inclusion. It all starts with language. 

Investing in women is a human rights issue. Exclusion from vital information and services is detrimental to women’s health, well-being, and opportunities. Time and again, women, children, older people, minorities, and people with disabilities are disproportionately affected by vulnerability and language exclusion. Read on to see how the evidence stacks up. Learn how language awareness can support everyone’s right to health, promote gender equality, and help reach those most in need around the world. 

Ensure women are not left behind

 

When we talk about real-life examples of language exclusion, the inequality is stark. This week, our colleague Victoire shared insights into some of the struggles he’s witnessed women around him face in DRC. 

 

Beyond bullets – dangerous language barriers in DRC 

 

People have been displaced in their thousands by violence in eastern DRC. The situation is particularly dangerous for women and girls, who face a protection crisis. Thousands of displaced people are struggling to access basic needs like safety, shelter, food, and health care. While humanitarian organizations are working to address challenges, language barriers can create obstacles to effective assistance. Language-based exclusion can hinder the humanitarian response and prevent displaced people from accessing vital information. We’ve changed the name in the story below to protect the person’s identity. 

Francine, a 24-year-old mother displaced from Rutshuru with her two children, tells of her struggle for survival. We’ve changed her name in this story to protect her identity. When fighting broke out, her husband disappeared. She fled with her children, walking 60 kilometers on foot from Rutshuru to the Kanyaruchinya camps in the suburbs of Goma.

Unable to read and unfamiliar with phones, Francine speaks only Kinyarwanda and limited Swahili. She struggles to access information about food distribution and relies heavily on rumors. She recounted how community aid distributors approached her with documents to sign, withholding their content. Fearful but desperate for help, she signed them – but received no assistance. Her limited language skills make her hesitate to speak up or ask questions, further isolating her.

After enduring two days without food, Francine approached a humanitarian worker, hoping to register as a displaced person and access aid. The worker, seemingly unable to understand her, simply gestured for her to wait. 

“I think if my husband was here, or if I knew French or Swahili, I could be treated differently and report the abuse we face in this camp,” Francine concludes.

The situation is dire. Displaced individuals like Francine say they receive inconsistent aid, sometimes nothing at all, and are forced to sign documents they do not understand. Feeling powerless due to language barriers, they are left vulnerable.

Francine, like many others, fled the fighting to seek safety within the camps. Yet, she’s found language barriers create new obstacles. Ensuring humanitarian communication happens in the languages of displaced people can contribute to more equitable and effective aid distribution. Solutions must listen to displaced people to ensure their needs are met.

 

"Here, I feel like a stranger, unheard and misunderstood. My only dream is to return home, where I can speak my Kinyarwanda and a little Swahili freely, without shame. That's all I pray for."

– Francine

– Interview by Victoire Rwicha, CLEAR Global in Kanyaruchinya camps, North-Kivu, Goma, DRC.

Every day, we see how language can make the difference between being heard or not. To take one critical example, good communication can mean women get the health care they need; while language gaps can mean they go without. 

At CLEAR Global, we partner with women’s rights and health organizations to make sexual and reproductive health information accessible in the languages and formats women in each context understand. With innovative communication solutions, women can access resources, healthcare services and support, share their concerns and get reliable answers, whatever language they speak.

Why language inclusion matters for women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights

 

Everyone deserves to know their rights and be free from the threat of sexual violence. But in crisis settings, survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse by humanitarians rarely have access to reporting channels in their language. Effective action on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) can support the right to health, promote gender equality, and reduce vulnerability that disproportionately affects women and children. Yet without language awareness, these services never reach some of those most in need.

In highly diverse language communities, we see too many women become vulnerable to exclusion because of language barriers. Lack of accessible, actionable information worsens health outcomes, spreads distrust and disinformation, and increases the burden on health systems. 

 

If we don’t understand language needs, women and girls risk being unable to access critical information and healthcare in the languages they speak: 

• Residents of the 10 countries facing the highest maternal mortality rate speak more than 850 languages.
• Every week, 4,000 adolescent girls and young women become infected with HIV. Over 75% live in sub-Saharan Africa - a region with up to 2,000 languages.
• Despite a global decline, child marriage is increasing among girls from the poorest backgrounds - who are also among the most likely to face exclusion due to language.
• Millions of girls are forced to drop out of school every year due to issues related to menstruation and teenage pregnancy.

Poor access to sexual and reproductive health services reinforces language exclusion. If those millions of girls were not forced to drop out of school, they could gain the opportunity to learn a national language or key communication skills like digital literacy. Inclusive access to information, education, and support can bring the hope and opportunities that women and girls deserve.

Language to include women’s rights

 

The benefits of language inclusion are clear. By making vital information accessible in the languages people use, we can ensure that sexual and reproductive health and rights messages and services reach the women and girls they’re targeting. At CLEAR Global, we assist partner organizations to listen and communicate with women and girls, so they can claim their rights and access appropriate support.

When we use language to include women in the conversation, we can:

Now at the forefront of language technology for social good, CLEAR Global aims to transform communication and shift power structures with our inclusive solutions. Our nonprofit organization bridges the communication gap and empowers marginalized language communities to access vital information,  services,  and opportunities,  and   make their voices heard. Read on to learn how CLEAR Global creates channels for communication in the mother languages people use – including more marginalized language speakers in critical conversations.

• Help people be empowered to make informed choices about their health care;
• Help women and girls understand and decide about contraceptive use, recognize symptoms of infections or disease, and participate in their maternity care;
• Support vulnerable individuals to better understand their right to a healthy life free from violence.

Understanding women – which languages work? 

When a crisis strikes, more information needs to be available on the languages people use and understand. Without reliable data, humanitarians find themselves developing communication strategies on the basis of often unreliable assumptions. The result too often is that affected communities struggle to communicate with responders in a language they understand, just as we saw in the case of Francine in DRC. One reason that women, children, older people, and people with disabilities are often at the greatest disadvantage is their lower access to education. This means that they are less likely to understand national and international languages. 

We support organizations to develop language-informed programs and communication strategies through language data research and analysis. Learn more about CLEAR Insights language data and maps on our website. 

– We’ve developed the first language use data sets and maps for 30+ countries to help humanitarian and development workers know which languages are spoken where.

– Our Global Language Data Review identifies 88 countries for which language data is most critical to ensuring no one is left behind. Find out what language data you need to support people who are at risk of being marginalized because of their language. 

– Five easy steps to integrate language data into humanitarian and development programs. This is a quick reference guide for planning and delivering aid programs.

– We’ve successfully worked with partners like IOM DTM, REACH, and UNICEF to integrate standard language and communication questions and key language considerations into multi-sector needs assessments and ongoing surveys.

Practical ways we can make change

 

Once we know what languages women and girls speak, it’s time to implement solutions that work for them. CLEAR Global assists nonprofit partners to build language awareness and inclusive solutions. Together we can support women’s right to health, promote gender equality, and help reach those most in need. Here are the practical ways we can make change: 

– Use digital resources like apps, chatbots, and telemedicine to improve accessibility in users’ languages. 

– Address digital exclusion – consider tools that work for people with low literacy, who don’t have access to or aren’t familiar with technology.

– Understand the words people use – to provide services that meet people’s needs, communicators must consider social norms, potential euphemisms, shame or embarrassment when talking about their bodies, sensitive concerns, or violation. 

– Build systemic language support – to understand and address issues, help health workers manage language barriers, and reduce mistakes and miscommunication that threaten people’s health and well-being.

 

Global resources – multilingual glossaries 

 

We create digital resources like language glossaries to support women and girls to claim their rights. CLEAR Global’s Glossary App is an invaluable multilingual resource for Safeguarding and protection against sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA).

With 208 safeguarding terms in 40+ languages, this glossary equips people working with those at risk of sexual exploitation, abuse, or harm to communicate about PSEA more effectively. Program staff, volunteers, translators, and interpreters can use it to understand vital safeguarding terms. There’s the option to hear audio pronunciation and watch sign language videos, on- and offline. It helps responders use consistent, standard translations, avoid confusion and stigma, communicate more effectively with communities and their staff, and prepare for challenging conversations. With the right words, organizations can better listen to women and girls and ensure they can access the right support.

We developed this glossary in collaboration with partner agencies including the International Organization for Migration, Safeguarding Resource and Support Hub, Social Development Direct, CDAC Network, H2H Network, CHS Alliance, UNICEF, and other members of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee. 

Including women – projects around the world

 

These are just some of the ways we collaborate with our nonprofit partners to help them listen to and communicate more effectively with communities. Promoting women’s rights around the world has long been part of CLEAR Global’s language inclusion work around the world: 

– During the Zika virus response, we worked with the World Health Organization to deliver essential videos with advice for pregnant women subtitled and voiced in Haitian Creole and Brazilian Portuguese.

– In Kenya, our translations of educational materials and health care posters for community clinics enabled rural communities to get information about neonatal breastfeeding tips in local languages for the first time.

– To better understand how Rohingya women in Bangladesh speak about their health and trauma, we held focus group discussions in their language and created language resources including audio files and glossaries for aid workers to better address women’s needs.

– Our research found that language, communication style, and channel influence how satisfied Rohingya patients feel about sexual and reproductive health services.

The TWB Community – investing in women

The TWB Community, at the core of CLEAR Global, helps promote inclusion daily to help create a more inclusive world for everyone. Over 120,000 language volunteers come together to offer language services, supporting humanitarian and development work globally. 

Community members take on language-related projects including translation, revision, subtitling, and voice-overs, and they help build language data to support CLEAR Global’s work. These language services help bridge communication gaps between responders and people living through a crisis. Beyond that, they help make access to opportunities and progress more equal. Learn more about our community member’s experiences on the TWB Blog.

Recently, community members have worked with NGO partners including: 

– WHO, IASC, and GADRRRES (World Health Organization, Inter-Agency Standing Committee and the Global Alliance for Disaster, Risk Reduction and Resilience in the Education Sector): We translated materials to support children’s safety, health, mental health, and psycho–social well–being; 

– e-Cancer: We helped ensure vital medical information reaches more people, to advance inclusion and progress for all – “Knowledge, practice, and communication barriers for oncology doctors in Chile when addressing the sexuality of their patients”

– Room to Read: We made the nonprofit animated film project ‘She Creates Change’ accessible in Japanese, promoting gender equality through the stories of girls across the globe. Check out the launch trailer here.

Commit to supporting women and girls’ rights

 

Want to join us? Together we can support women and girls to claim their rights and access essential services like health care. If you’re a nonprofit humanitarian or development organization, work with CLEAR Global to ensure women and girls are included and empowered to access the services and opportunities they deserve. 

Partner with us

We are calling for supporters to invest in women with CLEAR Global. If you share our vision for equality, sponsor CLEAR Global to help us build inclusive solutions that ensure women’s and girls’ voices are heard. 

Sponsor CLEAR Global today

 

Want to learn more? 

 

– Read community member experiences on the TWB blog

– Learn about our movement to start four billion conversations to support women and girls 

 

Show your support 

 

Together we can transform challenges into opportunities and shape a better future for women, whatever language they speak. 

Share our blog to spread the message: if we want to promote inclusion and equal opportunities, we must invest in women. 

 #InspireInclusion

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Written by Danielle Moore, Communications Officer, CLEAR Global

The post Listen, inspire, include women’s rights ​ appeared first on CLEAR Global.