Vivian Ho shares about her experience navigating language barriers and access to resources.
When I was younger, I learned a phrase before I understood what it meant. “Food bank.” I remember typing those words into Google Translate so I could explain them to my family in Vietnamese.
At eight years old, I often found myself translating things that the adults around me didn’t understand – school forms, resources and unfamiliar systems. I wasn’t just learning English. I was learning how to navigate a world my family had entered without a map. Years later, I proposed an idea to a school counselor: a supply package system that would distribute food and other essentials directly through schools. Many families, I explained, faced language barriers, transportation challenges or simply didn’t know where to find help.
She responded with a comment that stayed with me long after the conversation ended: “Students and parents don’t need that. They can just get help elsewhere.” At first, I was frustrated. But over time, I realized her response revealed something larger than a disagreement. What seems accessible from one perspective can be nearly impossible from another.
Food banks and community resource centers existed when I was eight. The problem was that I didn’t know what they were, and my family didn’t know where to find them. Resources can exist on paper while remaining inaccessible in practice. We often talk about access as if it is a simple question of availability. Is the service there? Is the program offered? Is the information online? But access is also language. It is transportation. It is awareness. It is whether a person knows where to begin.
Today, I work with schools to connect students and families with the resources they need. Yet I still think about that counselor’s comment. It reminds me that some of society’s biggest gaps are not caused by a lack of solutions, but by a lack of understanding. Sometimes, the difference between having help and finding help is a translation box and an eight-year-old trying to make sense of the words. With a Perspective, I’m Vivian Ho.
Vivian Ho is a high school student currently living in Texas. She works with Bay Area communities through advocacy in a nonprofit. She enjoys leading a youth-led nonprofit with her peers, creating content and art that inspire others to take action in their own communities and mentoring young people interested in starting nonprofits.