Ensuring Meaningful Access for Survivors with Limited English Proficiency

AUDIENCE: Community-based & system-based victim advocates.

Sponsored by:

Trainer Bios:

Ana Paula Noguez Mercado is the Interpretation Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator at the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence (API-GBV).

She is responsible for coordinating and facilitating trainings for interpreters and bilingual advocates, as well as providing technical assistance to diverse agencies and providers on building interpreter skills, and improving language access for domestic violence and sexual assault victims.

Previously, Ana Paula worked at the National Women’s Institute (Mexico City) where she served as Adviser on Violence against Women, Access to Justice and Human Rights to the Institute’s President. Once in Los Angeles, she designed, implemented and oversaw the Domestic Violence Prevention Program at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), aimed at raising awareness and informing immigrant survivors about their legal rights.

Originally, from Mexico City, Ana Paula is fluent in Spanish, English and French. She has seven years of experience as a professional interpreter and translator for legal aid and non-profit organizations, public schools, universities, cultural institutions, among others. In 2014, she co-founded Antena Los Ángeles, a collective dedicated to language justice advocacy, training and consulting, as well as interpreting for the social justice context.

She co-coordinates a network of volunteer interpreters/translators who support language needs in diverse settings in the Los Angeles area.

She has experience developing curriculum and facilitating trainings on language access, empowerment of immigrant and indigenous communities through access to legal remedies and political participation, as well as on diversity, cultural humility, implicit bias and access to reproductive health.

Ana Paula received her law degree from Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City). She obtained a Master’s Degree in Gender and the Law from Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona/CIESAS with a special research interest on language access and due process guarantees for detainee indigenous women in Oaxaca, Mexico. She received her LL.M. (Master of Laws) in Critical Legal Studies and International Human Rights Law from UCLA School of Law in Los Angeles, CA.

Amber Hodson  – Coming Soon!

Total Training Hours: 7.0

This project was supported by Grant #2017-WR-AX-0038 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice.  The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.