Beyond Translation: Empowering Youth Language Brokers Through Summer Camp

Funded by Family & Community Support Services, TIES ran a 4-day summer camp for youth translators (child language brokers), combining fun field trips and community resource visits with peer support.

This summer, The Immigrant Education Society (TIES) ran a summer camp for youth who help their families with translating, also known as child language brokering (CLB). Funded by Family & Community Support Services, the 4-day program emphasized support, resource sharing, and community building for these youth, referred to as child language brokers. The summer camp provided the opportunity to create fun, supportive, and safe spaces for child language brokers to share their experiences and connect with other youth who share similar experiences. Our summer camp gave us the chance to engage with and directly support child language brokers, while also creating fun, lasting memories for these youth.  

Throughout each cohort, youth had opportunities to visit various community locations (such as the Genesis Centre) to become more familiar with available and accessible resources, meet and interact with local law enforcement, and much more! When asked, most agreed their favourite parts were going on field trips or getting ice cream, but also having a new sense of support and community:

“What I like about this summer camp is we are going to different places like water parks and more. So I don’t have no feedback this summer camp was perfect!”

“I was there for this camp last year as well and it was fantastic and this year as well the staff is really friendly and sweet”

“I liked the games we played at Summer Camp for fun or [...] educational purposes.”

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