We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas/holiday season, dear readers and colleagues. Unfortunately, one of our wonderful colleagues and friends, Álvaro Degives-Más of Reno, Nevada, did not: he suffered a heart attack on December 23. After a few days in intensive care in St. Mary's Hospital, he was discharged, but his medical bills have proven to be an almost insurmountable challenge. The same week, his wife underwent a painful ophtalmologic surgery without anaesthesia (!) to save funds and the procedure was not successful. They lack the funds for another procedure, and she has lost vision in one eye. They have no insurance. To make things even worse, they also lost their car last week.
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| Judy and Álvaro in Vegas this year. |
Álvaro Degives-Más is a court-certified Spanish interpreter and Spanish, Dutch and English translator. He's also the co-founder of the Nevada Interpreters and Translators Association and a relentless advocate for our profession. He's donated hundreds of hours to NITA and other organizations, and he's NITA's wonderful webmaster.
This is obviously a very difficult time for him, and we've obtained his permission to post his story here. Would you be willing to join is in a donation for Álvaro? Every little bit helps. Can you imagine how much of a difference we could make if every person who reads this just donates $5? We are getting incredibly excited just thinking about this -- and we know our colleagues are a generous and wonderful group. We've created a PayPal donation account. Thank you so much for reading and for spreading the word. Clicking on the "donate" button will make you feel good, we promise!
Making a donation via PayPal is easy: just choose your amount -- you don't even need a PayPal account. We have chosen this method, in spite of the small fees associated with it, because we wanted to make it easy for colleagues from around the world to donate if they are so inclined. Unfortunately, we don't have time to set up a non-profit, so the donation will not be tax-deductible.
We (Judy and Dagmar Jenner) are a pair of identical translating and interpreting twins working in Spanish, German, English, and French (Dagmar only). We were born in Austria, grew up in a bilingual household in Mexico City, and run our translation, interpreting and copywriting business, 
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9 comments:
Just a quick note to let everyone know that we've raised almost $400 in less than a day. We are incredibly grateful and teary-eyed.
Happy update from day #2 of the donation campaign: we are up to $960!
Another happy update from the end of day #2: $2,100 -- hard to believe. We are so extremely grateful.
Viel Erfolg und alles Gute für den Kollegen und seine Frau! Und für euch beide!
Thank you for doing this Judy and Dagmar, and Happy New Year to all of the wonderful translators and interpreters out there!
Linda from West Virginia
Thank you both for coordinating this effort. Our prayers are with Alvaro and his wife.
Thank you for helping this colleague and his wife in their dire situation. Needless to say I have joined your effort and hope my small contribution will help.
What is the total amount that needs to be raised, and how far are they?
Thanks so much for the nice comments, everyone! We will post another follow-up entry in the next few days.
@Angel: we are at $6,500 as of today, January 5. Incredible! We did not really have a goal -- we were just hoping for a few hundred -- but it keeps on going. The medical bills will probably be in the tens of thousands (they haven't all come in yet)...The money raised has thus far already helped avoid eviction from their apartment. Update coming shortly.
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