Budgeting In All Languages

Each May New Zealand celebrates one of the country’s official languages, New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). This year, the Federation of Family Budgeting Services has placed an introductory video in NZSL on their website, www.familybudgeting.org.nz, in time for NZSL Week (2 - 8 May 2011).

“We wanted to introduce the deaf community to the concept of budget advice,” says Federation of Family Budgeting Services CEO Raewyn Fox. “We intend to continually introduce other languages to our resources, and are excited to kick off this initiative with a video in NZSL on our website.”

“Deaf or hearing impaired people may not wish to visit a budget service face to face,” Mrs Fox says, “although our member budget services are very understanding of hearing difficulties. Therefore we created a number of other tools that work well for deaf or hearing impaired. We have a freephone telephone number (0508 BUDGETLINE) for those that use NZ Relay, as well as email and live online chat via our website, or fax. We also provide a number of budgeting tools on our website that clients can use on their own.”

The Federation of Family Budgeting Services offers free, confidential, non-judgemental budget advice through its 150 member budget services around New Zealand.

“Last year we offered budget advice to over 31,000 individuals and families, and helped them retire over $17 million of debt,” Mrs Fox says. “These clients included a significant number whose first language was not English. This has been an increasing trend in recent years and we will continue to add other languages to our website in the future. In addition our member budget services may have budget advisers who can speak other languages, particularly in larger centres.”

Most budget advisers are volunteers, experienced and highly trained through our New Zealand Qualification Authority (NZQA) recognised training courses.

“The NZSL video will remain on our website even after New Zealand Sign Language Week. We intend to use it as a stepping stone to creating more resources in languages other than English,” Mrs Fox says, “including Te Reo Maori in the next few months.”

ENDS

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