Corona Norco Free Medical Check-Up Interpretation

CAVA, which stands for: Chinese American Volunteering Association. We are, like the title say a student ran non-profit organization held by mainly Chinese American students. In CAVA, we volunteer to help, not just our community Eastvale, but also, the community that we all share, earth. To make this world a better place, we work hard to help other people, the planet, like doing beach clean ups and medical interpretations, with those in mind, we also help out various of musical festivals. There are also future schedules we are planning which involves with orphanages and nursing homes which we will be doing, so please look forward to our performances and guide us to be the best that we can be.

Let us talk about the medical interpretations that our volunteering club was invited to. CAVA (Chinese American Volunteering Association), on March 7th, was invited to a medical interpretation held at Corona High school with 16 people of the members invited. There, Corona-Norco Unified had free clinic for optometry, dental care, blood draw, std check, mammograms, pep-scan, and mental health. Our job was to translate for the non-English speakers that came from another foreign country, in this case, China.

We first were assigned to help at different stations, the vice-president: Kitty Zhao, was assigned towards to blood draw, and Eric Ai, our ERHS Representative was assigned to dental.

Then, as more Mandarin speakers came in, we went to take a journey with each Mandarin speaking patient for a couple of hours to translate. In optometry, they provided eye check, and new glasses pair, in dental, they put vitamins in your teeth and had a full examination, told you what you needed and where to go for further treatment if needed. Blood draw branched out to various of different tests, STD’s, health check, etc. And that’s what mostly, our members went and volunteered for. Some of us weren’t allowed in pep-scan, so details weren’t provided due to privacy of patients.

Each of the members received a short lunch break, and after they were done, they were to report straight back to work, and when the patients finished the check, they had free groceries, and free lunch at the exit. After all members were done, we had a small meeting about CAVA improvement and progress, also discussed about other volunteering opportunities that are open so we can help out at as many people as possible, with as much as efficiency as possible.

Through this opportunity, volunteers developed their skill to interpret Mandarin/Cantonese to English and vice-versa in the medical field. They've also learned about people's needs and how they can help. This was a amazing experience and concludes the March 7th Medical Interpretation!

Written by: Eric Ai-ERHS Representative

Edited by: Peter Cheng-President