“COVID-19 Multilingual Support Project” by TUFS Students and Graduates Win Japan PR Grand Prize

April 28, 2022

The “COVID-19 Multilingual Support Project,” a project involving about 60 students and graduates of TUFS, received the “Citizen of the Year” award from the Japan PR Awards (sponsored by the Japan Public Relations Association), which honors individuals and organizations that were most active in fiscal 2021 from a public relations perspective. The trophy was awarded on Friday, April 22, 2022.

The COVID-19 Multilingual Support Project was launched in April 2020 by students and graduates of TUFS to provide multilingual information on infection prevention and public assistance to foreign residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area in response to the spread of the new coronavirus infection. The project has been highly evaluated for its continuous multilingual support for foreign residents in Japan who are anxious about communication.

While the project is currently inactive, it’s website, “COVID-19 Multilingual Information Portal,” still provides information in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Tagalog, Urdu, Nepali, Arabic, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and French, in addition to Japanese and English. The information is also available in Brazilian Portuguese and French.

Comment from the project leader Sawako Okamoto (4th year, School of Japan Studies) :

We are very happy that our activities were noticed.

With the world in turmoil, I can imagine the immeasurable anxiety of the foreign residents who are living in a situation where they do not understand the language. I hope that we were able to help them in some small way.

Although our activities came to an end last year, we plan to keep a summary of our progress so that if the same situation arises again, we will be able to conduct similar activities more smoothly.

We would like to thank the PRSJ once again. Thank you very much.

Reference

COVID-19 Multilingual Information Portal https://covid19-tagengo.com/

TUFS Today Feature “"Alumni/Students x President: Disseminating Information on the New Coronavirus in Multiple Languages: COVID-19 Multilingual Support Project”" https://wp.tufs.ac.jp/tufstoday/alumni/20060101/