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Creative fundraising for a more inclusive future: the story of Ludejo BV

How Ludejo BV go the extra mile, and how your company can support with fundraising too

CLEAR Global is a nonprofit, with the TWB Community of over 100,000 language volunteers at its core – fundraising is key. Along with our research and partnership programs and AI-based language technology solutions, we’re helping people get vital information and be heard, whatever language they speak. A considerable part of what we do at CLEAR Global is thanks to our sponsors and collaborators. Without them, our impact wouldn’t be the same. Both financial sponsors and in-kind sponsors help us to quickly respond to humanitarian crises. Right now, the support we receive is helping provide urgent language services in response to the Türkiye-Syria earthquake, the Ukraine war, the conflict in Nigeria, and more. Our valuable sponsors help us harness the power of our community to do more good.

“I believe – and my team is completely behind this – in giving. Even, or perhaps especially, in difficult times. When you give, something keeps flowing. Giving provides confidence in a hopeful future for everyone. Ludejo is the company I established on a foundation of love. We are grateful to be in a position to support CLEAR Global financially. We will continue to support CLEAR Global with our time and our talents.”
Malon Hamoen – Ludejo’s Founder & CEO

Malon and colleagues fundraising for TWB and CLEAR Global — Photo credit: Technolex Translation Studios, Ukraine.

All our sponsors ignite our hope for a brighter future, where speakers of all languages can access opportunities and make their voices heard. Our invaluable supporters provide us with the collaborations, expertise, and funding that are required to move our mission forward and help more people access information digitally in a language and format they understand.

We love to celebrate companies that go the extra mile in their willingness to support our mission- not only fundraising but also looking for ways to engage the wider community to help us grow visibility and support across the world. One of them is Ludejo BV.

Since their very own foundation, Ludejo BV decided to fundraise to support our TWB community.

It all started back in 2016, at the GALA conference in New York. Our CEO, Aimee Ansari, gave a speech about the need to ensure that language is not a barrier when it comes to the humanitarian sector. As Aimee explained the work that Translators without Borders, now CLEAR Global, does, one audience member was hooked.

It was then that Andrew Hickson, now Media Production Manager of Ludejo BV, first heard about our work and just had to meet Aimee. As he learned more about the vision, to ensure that people get vital information, and be heard, whatever language they speak, he felt there was more to be done. “When I got back from New York, I was very excited to talk to Malon about helping TWB.” However, we weren’t in a position to help financially. And Dutch isn’t really a language that requires a huge amount of time or investment for TWB.

The beginning of a Fun(draiser) collaboration.

Fundraising in 2017 –

Andrew, and Ludejo’s Founder & CEO, Malon, met Aimee once again at the Association of Translation Companies (ATC) conference in London. They got talking about ways in which they could help our nonprofit with the resources they had, and decided to commit to supporting our work by running fundraisers. They decided that the best way to bring language service providers (LSPs) together would be to organize a fundraiser during the next GALA conference, which in 2017 was in Amsterdam, “a home conference of sorts.”

“I ran out of time and ideas for the fundraiser, so in a bit of a panic, I shaved off my beard. People seemed to like that.”
Andrew Hickson from Ludejo explained.

Andrew Hickson and supporters at GALA
Photo taken by Stas Kalianov
Trim Tint or Tattoo – Amsterdam 2017 GALA

This was just the beginning of a long, organic, and exciting collaboration. The fundraiser in Amsterdam was supposed to be a “one-off”, but with the coordination and support of GALA, the organization of these events became easy and natural. With GALA’s support and Ludejo’s vision of bringing together the LSP community to support our work, the TWB Fundraiser has become a GALA Tradition. Our work has been very much in alignment – both of our mission statements clearly outlined the need to improve multilingual information access. Yet as a newly founded LSP, they didn’t have the resources to support us in the traditional way.

Ludejo’s fundraisers have emphasized bringing the LSP community together to support the cause and also to have fun!

For five years, Ludejo BV’s fundraisers have helped us spread the word about our work at multiple GALA events! The first one was in Amsterdam, in 2017. That was the time Andrew decided to shave his beard, and got other people to do the same, get henna tattoos, and dye their hair, all for a good cause!

Then, in 2018 –

The time came for another gathering in Boston.

The Boston fundraiser took place during the week leading up to St. Patrick’s Day. So the theme for that year’s fundraiser was easily decided. “A Bit of Craic for TWB” (or ABC for TWB for short” – and “Craic” is the Irish word for “fun!”). The team powered through intense Boston snowstorms to get to the unmissable fundraising event and managed to raise lots of money for a good cause!

Ludejo Boston Fundraiser 2018 band
Andrew and Eric at the Boston fundraiser, photo taken by Igor Marach.
Andrew Hickson in Boston
Andrew Hickson Boston fundraiser, Photo taken by Diskusija Translation Agency

In 2019 –

The GALA conference took place in Munich. According to Andrew, “Something about Germany makes me think of David Hasselhoff. So it just made sense to have an 80s-themed party.” The eighties-themed fundraiser was hugely popular and even followed up by a spin-off nineties-themed fundraiser at the EUATC’s (European Union Association of Translation Companies) conference in Tallinn in 2019.

Igor, Maria and Andrew
Photo taken by Del Sur Translations
Photo taken by Malon Hamoen

2020 and 2021 –

During the COVID lockdowns, we were able to arrange a “Best in Show” fundraiser for TWB with Geoffrey Bowden and the team at the EUATC. This T-Update conference took place online, but the fundraiser was still able to raise over $1000.

Last year, GALA gathered again after a pause, in San Diego, California. Ludejo made a great effort in showcasing our Ukraine Appeal and the impact we could have by supporting the affected people of Ukraine in their own languages. They wanted to bring everyone together not only to support our work but also to remind people that we had colleagues and other members of the LSP community facing a crisis and that it was our responsibility to not be indifferent to the situation.

Dakar and Best in Show
Dakar Rally – sponsor Oryx Rally 2018
Noelle

The Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) – another champion supporter of our work

GALA is another kind supporter of our work, who has been extremely generous in inviting us to participate in each of their conferences and has welcomed Ludejo BV’s fundraisers to promote our important work!

GALA usually happens once a year, altering locations between the US and Europe. Ludejo’s fundraisers have become so intertwined with the regular GALA program that as of 2023, GALA has decided to now include our fundraiser as part of the agenda and registration process!

In 2022 Ludejo turned five: and with their growth, they decided to become our diamond sponsor!

After 5 years in the industry, Ludejo has positioned itself as a leading voiceover and translation company, especially in the Dutch market. Malon and Andrew have wanted to support us as much as possible since their very beginnings, so in 2022, they decided to become a diamond sponsor.

We’re extremely grateful for everything Ludejo is doing to help us advance our mission of making the digital world more inclusive, giving people access to essential resources and tools in their language while growing our Four Billion Conversations movement. You can learn more about our aims to increase access to information globally on health, women’s rights, climate change, and forced displacement.

“Ludejo is one of our most valued sponsors. They consistently support our work, raise awareness, and advocate. And they do it in the most fun and creative ways. Their business model – prioritizing community support over profit – is truly inspiring and I hope will one day be the norm.”
Aimee Ansari, CEO – CLEAR Global / TWB

San Diego 2022

And they will keep bringing the fun to fundraisers!

What Aimee says is true: they know how to run a fundraiser, and they couldn’t be more creative or committed!

This time, in 2023 –

Ludejo will continue the tradition and run yet another fundraiser for us at the GALA event in Dublin. If you will be there, we invite you to save the date, March 14th, 2023!

This time, they will be hosting a speakeasy-themed event, aiming to raise USD 5,000! Combined with a Great Gatsby dress code to make it fun, Ludejo will be inviting language and localization professionals to support TWB and CLEAR Global by sharing a simple and profound idea: we make the most of our impact when we can get our message across in the easiest way possible for people to understand.

We truly hope that you can join them!

You’ll have a great time while learning with and from experts in the language and localization industry. And you’ll get to meet wonderful people like Malon and his team!

Fundraisers like this one make a difference to us. They help us reach more people and multiply the impact we create at CLEAR Global, with the support of our TWB Community of over 100,000 language volunteers across the world.

If you’re inspired by Ludejo’s commitment to giving back, talk to us and explore the opportunity to become a sponsor.

become a sponsor

And if you’re already a sponsor, why not take inspiration from Malon and Andrew, and create your own feel-good fundraiser for us?

MultiLingual – Getting Creative with CSR

“When all is said and done, and we look back at our lives, we can say ‘We did this.’”

Raising awareness is crucial for non-profit organizations seeking to inspire social conscious about important issues, and to encourage volunteering and sponsorship. Key to this inspiration is the impact of their digital presence, yet non-profits do not always have sufficient in-house technical expertise necessary to maximize the potential of digital marketing tools. Fortunately, Translators without Borders (TWB) has a powerful asset in this respect. Idaho-based MultiLingual Computing, Inc. not only hosts and supports the technical aspects of the TWB website, but it also manages TWB’s email accounts, a critical tool in the organization’s daily operations.

MultiLingual Computing is a leading information source for the localization, internationalization and translation industry, and an enthusiastic and like-minded supporter of TWB. Its print magazine, MultiLingual, reaches subscribers in 92 countries, and it also publishes a free, bi-weekly e-newsletter. Editor-in-chief and publisher Donna Parrish ensures that Translators without Borders is visible in both publications. Most recently, MultiLingual ran two complimentary full-page ads for TWB in the magazine, and an advert in the newsletter.

MultiLingual – TWB Gold Sponsor

MultiLingual’s contributions go even further. The company recently became a TWB Gold Sponsor, donating US$5,000 to strengthen the capacity and operations of the organization. Donna is also a member of the TWB board and brings 25 years of programming experience and an in-depth appreciation of the technical issues involved in dealing with different languages. Donna promotes TWB through her role as Principal of LocWorld, the leading conference for the global business of translation, localization, and global website management. Translators without Borders is invited to the conference each year, and a booth is provided – an invaluable donation that fosters TWB’s outreach and fundraising efforts.

Donna points out that fundraising for TWB and other good causes can also be a lot of fun:

“For last year’s LocWorld conference in Dublin, KantanMT invited us to help organize a coastal treasure hunt and hike to raise funds for TWB. It was great fun made even more so with beautiful views, tasty snacks, and enjoyable camaraderie. Best of all, the event raised US$6,500 for TWB! Participants loved it and were rewarded for their efforts with a pub supper and traditional Irish music.

This year we’re holding the June 2017 conference in Barcelona, and of course, TWB will be there. Barcelona is always a draw for attendees from all over the world. We hope they learn many things, including how important the work of TWB is.”

Another creative fundraising idea from MultiLingual was during the holiday period last year. Magazine readers who donated US$100 or more to TWB were offered a free annual digital subscription!

Partners in Synergy

Social media is a valuable tool TWB uses to raise awareness of the importance of access to vital information in the right languages. Donna and her team at MultiLingual regularly engage with TWB on social media to help amplify those messages to reach a broader audience. Donna explains:

“Translators without Borders is often seen as the non-profit arm of the localization industry, the moral compass. What it does for people in need with the support of its sponsors, elevates the industry and the translation profession. That is good for everyone in the industry.

Our partnership with TWB also benefits from the focus on reciprocity. While we support TWB in any way we can, TWB does its best to give visibility to MultiLingual whenever possible using its fast expanding social media presence and its website. This is the “give-back” to us, and we value it highly.

Our partnership with Translators without Borders dates back to 2010 when Lori Thicke asked me to join the board, which I did with pleasure. Why? Someone at MultiLingual put it succinctly: when all is said and done, and we look back at our lives, we can say ‘We did this.’”

By Sarah Powell, Translators without Borders volunteer writer

VoiceBox – Spreading the message through video

“As a company, we love the immediacy and accessibility of what we do. We are delighted to be able to help Translators without Borders in achieving its mission – you can’t put a price on that!”

Working in over 200 languages, VoiceBox, a multimedia agency based in the vibrant production and tech hub of Swansea, South Wales, is an expert in video content localization using multilingual voiceover and subtitling. In 2016, VoiceBox established a new working relationship with Translators without Borders for the provision of multilingual dubbing and subtitles for a series of videos.

The agency is currently working on two projects with TWB. One involves dubbing a video for young people, produced by Blue Seat Studio, focusing on the important theme of sexual consent into 12 languages from Finnish, Russian and Bulgarian to Greek, Italian and German. Another project involves dubbing a series of World Health Organization training videos, which are part of a public health emergency exercise program for communications professionals, into French and Russian.

Voicebox: Responding to the demands of a fast-changing world

VoiceBox’s Marketing Manager Ben Dobson explains that “video content can overcome barriers to literacy and provide useful solutions through subtitles or signing for the deaf or hard of hearing. This means our work guarantees both immediacy and accessibility. This is invaluable at times of crisis or disaster when important messages must reach the largest possible audience to support people in need. Our work with TWB builds on this capability.”

“For maximum exposure of video content, we also focus on social media engagement and search engine optimization. Of course, throughout, quality of product is paramount. Our cloud-based operation uses 100% native-only artists to ensure linguistic authenticity. Our translators don’t just translate, they effectively ‘trans-create.”

“Our wide range of clients includes companies and organizations of all sizes, from big names such as Disney, Coca-Cola, Intel, Google, Apple and the BBC to up-and-coming production agencies such as GinGenious. As a company, we love the immediacy and accessibility of what we do. We are delighted to be able to help Translators without Borders in achieving its mission – you can’t put a price on that!”

Become a TWB sponsor

Click here to learn about the types of sponsorships offered at TWB. Annual sponsorship commitments are available from Bronze ($1,000) to Diamond Plus ($20,000), and many levels in between.

By Sarah Powell, Translators without Borders Volunteer

When the thinkers meet the doers – TWB in-kind sponsor Asian Absolute

Collaboration with in-kind sponsor Asian Absolute

Asian Absolute, the language services company, has been a valuable in-kind sponsor to Translators without Borders (TWB) since 2011, offering technical support and expertise for the organization website. We spoke to Henry Clough, Managing Director of Asian Absolute who told us about his experience collaborating with TWB.

“In 2011 I became aware of TWB through its presence at the Association of Translation Companies’ conference. We had been discussing within Asian Absolute how we could give back to society in a meaningful way, and I was immediately drawn to TWB – both its impressive achievements with the obvious commitment of the people involved, and also its relevance to what we do at Asian Absolute.”

“After a couple of email exchanges with Lori Thicke (the founder of TWB) it became apparent that there was a need within TWB which lay within Asian Absolute’s core expertise and I offered to put our web engineering team at the disposal of TWB.”

“We provide maintenance and updates for the website. Primarily this involves adding press releases and other external communications to the site, as well as updating the details of NGOs, sponsors and volunteers, and there’s some creative work from time to time developing new pages and functionality. The TWB team is very easy to work with and Asian Absolute is given the opportunity to contribute ideas towards the development of the digital presence, most recently during the planning for the new website.”

Henry also talked a little about TWB’s new website. “The old site was built in Drupal and we’ve now migrated to WordPress. Our engineers are comfortable with both systems so for us the switch is just an exercise in developing new processes to reflect the new structure of the site.”

Finally, he describes his experience with TWB as, “Very positive”

The individuals at Asian Absolute who perform the tasks for
Translators without Borders enjoy having the opportunity to apply their skills to an endeavor which is making such a positive impact on the world, and our wider team is inspired by TWB’s mission.

“The people at TWB are great to work with, we are impressed by the professionalism and efficiency which we encounter, and reassuring us that the time we put in is well spent.”

The professional support TWB receives from Asian Absolute enables the organization to run one of its core outreach activities, the website.

More about Asian Absolute here.

Become a sponsor

Read more on the TWB website, if you or your organization want to become a TWB sponsor.

By Francesca Debernardis, former Translators without Borders Communication Intern

Translators without Borders Receives Funding for Crisis Relief Network

Translators without Borders (TWB) is pleased to announce funding for a pilot of its Words of Relief system to improve communications between aid workers and local populations during humanitarian emergencies. The funding by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) recognizes the critical role language and translation play in improving crisis response and saving lives.

Translators without Borders will test the concept in Kenya with Swahili and Somali, and will work collaboratively with a number of partners including UN-OCHA, the Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities Network (CDAC-N), Acrolinx, Content Rules and Microsoft. TWB was one of six projects to receive funding in HIF’s fifth round of funding; total funding for the projects exceeded one million dollars.

Kim Scriven, manager of the HIF said: “This round of funding has identified an exciting and diverse range of innovative ideas at the forefront of the humanitarian system.” The HIF, supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), funds projects across the world which use innovation and technology to improve the global response to natural disasters and humanitarian crises.

Words of Relief was developed to address a critical problem: two-way communications during and immediately after a crisis. During a prolonged crisis or following a sudden-onset crisis, one of the most immediate priorities for both relief workers and victims is disseminating and receiving information. Yet language barriers frequently complicate this effort. This was particularly apparent after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake/tsunami in Japan, when NGOs and frontline aid workers realized they were unprepared and unable to communicate in the primary languages of the affected populations. According to a 2012 report by the International Organization for Migration, “Affected households prefer receiving information in their regional language…. [but] the role of regional and local languages is often neglected while devising communication strategies.”

Words of Relief aims to eliminate linguistic barriers that can impede vital response and relief efforts during and after a crisis by 1) building a corps of vetted translators and interpreters, as well as machine translation capacity, in under-resourced world languages; 2) preparing a digital “inventory” of essential crisis response information in multiple local languages that can be accessed on demand by aid organizations, frontline relief workers, and affected communities; and 3) maintaining a network of human and technological linguistic resources that can be mobilized immediately in response to a crisis. The pilot of the program will test processes and technologies to be used in development of a worldwide network.

The pilot is a 17-month project, commencing in November.

For more information about HIF funding click here. To view the HIF’s portfolio of projects click here.

For further information contact: Rebecca Petras [email protected].

TWB awarded grant from Indigo Trust to support medical translation project for Wikipedia into Swahili

Indigo Trust is a grant making foundation that funds technology-driven projects to bring about social change, largely in African countries. Translators without Borders (TWB) has been awarded a grant of $14,500 by Indigo towards the costs of the medical translation project for Wikipedia – the 80 x 100 Project. The grant will help train and fund translators at the TWB Translator Centre in Kenya to translate healthcare articles into Swahili.

“The aim of the 80 x 100 Project is to make the most popular Wikipedia medical articles, on issues like HIV and polio, available in as many languages as possible,” said TWB Program Director, Rebecca Petras. “Existing English language medical content is constantly proofed and improved by Wikipedia’s medical team. The content is translated into multiple languages, mainly by TWB’s vast community of volunteer translators.”

The Indigo Trust is backing the translation of articles into Swahili, by supporting the TWB Translator Training Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

Matthew O’Reilly, Program Manager at The Indigo Trust, based in London, said, “The job of translating the English Wikipedia content into Swahili will be done by the translators at the new TWB Centre in Nairobi. 10 translators and 2 editors will work on the Wikipedia translations, using the Centre’s computing facilities and memory translation software. Not only does this make life-saving medical information more understandable, but it also improves the employability of the trainee translators. The finished translations will be proofed and uploaded onto the Swahili version of Wikipedia, which currently has approximately 25,000 articles. Once on Wikipedia, the content will then be marketed to NGOs, community health workers and others. This will help African communities have more access to knowledge and information, in a language they understand, that could save lives.”

Check out the Indigo Trust Blog here.

Subtitles for Mothers in India from Translators without Borders

Translators without Borders volunteer Leandro Reis is leading a project to subtitle health films into over a dozen Indian languages including Telugu, Gujarati and Kannada. These films, created by the Mother and Child Health and Education Trust, will encourage hospitals and community health workers to teach new mothers about breastfeeding their babies.

His subtitling work is being carried out on the dotSUB.com platform.

Why is this so important? Because each day 11,000 babies die in the developing world from preventable causes. Of those who die, 22 percent could survive if their mothers had better knowledge about breastfeeding.

Thanks to the volunteers you see here, and many others, Translators without Borders is working to ensure that in the future, mothers in India will know how to keep their babies healthy. Read more here.

Willingness to Work Again

ProZ.com is a Translators without Borders partner organization that provides a powerful technological platform for outsourcing translations for the NGOs that Translators without Borders help in their humanitarian work.

The ProZ.com professionals created a system that helps the users to request, collect and display feedback from clients and colleagues in their profiles in the form of their “willingness to work again” (“WWA”) with the translators. This is a way to appeal to potential clients and to set a translator apart in the ProZ.com directory.

Many translators who volunteer their time and expertise to help Translators without Borders deliver on translation projects for humanitarian not-for-profit organizations have received the WWA feedback. It means that Translators without Borders provides high quality professional service to partner NGOs.

The volunteer translators who received Willingness to Work Again (WWA) feedback as a result of working on Translators without Borders projects include Katie Voutt, Blandine Drooghmans, Susan Pasco, Norah Mulvihill, Manuela Mariño Beltrán, Géraldine Bestel, Monique Sarah, Carol Chaykin and many others.

Find out more about how the Willingness to Work Again feature works.

By Marina Sayfulina, former Translators without Borders Social Media volunteer