Co-designing and co-translating 56 videos in 14 languages with refugee and asylum seekers, using a trio writing approach to make essential information easier to understand and act on. 

What was the problem? 

With the support of Welsh Government funding, Children’s Legal Centre Wales, TGP Cymru, and Swansea University approached ProMo Cymru to help create a series of guides in video format, designed for children seeking asylum in Wales.

Unaccompanied children who were seeking asylum in Wales needed support understanding written guides provided by Children’s Legal Centre Wales, who had updated their guides’ information and were looking at ways to make the content more engaging and easy to understand.

Children’s Legal Centre provided the translated written content from the guides. When we began to produce the videos and record the voice overs with the young people, we discovered that children seeking asylum needed support not just with the literal translation of the guides, but also with their relative language interpretations due to their differing cultural backgrounds and personal experiences. 

For example, in English we say “it’s raining cats and dogs” to convey the meaning of heavy rain. However, if we directly translated this to a French speaker, it wouldn’t make any sense and would be understood to mean that cats and dogs are literally falling from the sky. Instead, the French equivalent is ‘Il pleut des cordes” which means, ‘It’s raining ropes.” 

Our Approach

ProMo has over 25 years of experience co-designing digital youth information projects, and TGP have a wealth of experience supporting and representing vulnerable children and young people in Wales.

Using our combined experience, we created videos to help Child Asylum Seekers understand the updated guides provided by Children’s Legal Centre Wales. 

TGP, their interpreters, and the young people reviewed and interpreted all of the scripts and re-wrote them in a way that could be understood. We sat down with the young people and TGP interpreters to review the information that we needed to convey and co-wrote the script in a way that was culturally and linguistically relevant to the people it was aimed to support.

Available in 12 different languages (Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Kurmanji, Oromo, Pashto, Punjabi, Sorani, Tigrinya, and Vietnamese) the written Children’s Guide covers:

• The asylum processes
• The legal rights and entitlements children can access
• Being cared for by a social worker
• An explanation of how the immigration system works
• A Pathway Plan for when they turn 18
• A list of organisations that can help them

Outcomes

Using a Trio Writing approach, we co-designed 4 videos per language, and also provided the videos in English and Welsh.

• Applying to Stay in Wales
• The Asylum Process
• After your Asylum Interview
• Your Rights when you are in Wales
  

The voiceovers for all 14 languages were recorded in our office by young asylum seekers currently living in Wales. We made sure to account for varied language interpretations and created each video in a way that was youth friendly and relative to the children’s backgrounds and circumstances.

The videos have been published on the Welsh Government website. They’re accessible in all languages via the four links listed on this page.

Each video is also hosted on the Welsh Government’s YouTube channel.

Contact auguste@promo.cymru if you are interested in creating media through co-production.