Peace College Spanish students are reaching out to various community organizations through a new service learning project.

What started as a small translation project of Dr. Mercedes Guijarro-Crouch's Advanced Grammar and Composition class in 2006 has grown into an entire course.

"The smaller project inspired me for what we did this past spring. Once I realized how agencies were interested in this kind of work and how much students were able to benefit from this practical way of learning," said Dr. Guijarro-Crouch.

Jamie Stancil '08, Aracely Espinoza-Calix '09, Kristen Warmack '08, Mayra Sanchez '09, Denice Fuentes '08, MarIa Lopez '08 and Yaimara Lopez '08 enrolled in Dr. Guijarro-Crouch's new Problems in Translation class where they translated documents from English to Spanish for six different organizations within the Triangle area.

Planned Parenthood, the Alliance of AIDS, Methodist Home for Children, Triangle Family Services, Boomerang and The Boys and Girls all benefited from new documents that the class translated.

The nature of the documents contained a variety of information including financial, housing assistant programs, counseling, foster care, privacy notice for protected health, medical procedures, safe sex and sexually transmitted diseases, letters to costumers and other important and useful resources for the Hispanic community.

"I think that the most important aspect of this class has been that Peace students have been a bridge between American non-profit organizations and the Hispanic community. They have also enriched their knowledge of Spanish by facing and solving grammatical and lexical problems as well as comparing and contrasting English and Spanish, realizing how cultural values and differences are intrinsically related to the way we structure and see our world through our language," said Dr. Guijarro-Crouch.

For more information about the Peace College Spanish department or on the possibilities of having documents translated for your organization, please contact Dr. Mercedes Guijarro-Crouch.