In recent years we have seen an increasing number of displaced people. For those that are suddenly moving away from their lands without speaking another language, asking for help may be challenging. In our aim to help in these dire situations we have created our “Point For Help” portable cards, where people can use their bodies to communicate what they need help with.
Point For Help: Aid Cards for Getting Help Breaking Through Language Barriers
The concept behind Point For Help is simple: if you cannot speak the language, use your body to point at an icon that represents what you need help with.
The Point For Help cards have two sides: one side contains general icons used for everyday needs (light, information, food, water, lodging), and the other side contains health related icons (headache, back pain, doctor, allergies). The iconography was purchased at The Noun Project (thenounproject.com). Icons were selected to be as intuitive as possible.
The cards are designed as double-sided business cards to be small, portable, and durable.
How to Use Them
The first question is why to use these cards at all if I have a powerful translator in my phone? Why are these cards useful?
Small Phone Without Translator. While many mobile phones allow for Internet browsing and translating applications, there is a wide range of devices that do not come with these features. In those cases, these cards may save you a lot of time making yourself understood or understanding a request for help.
Out of battery or Internet? There are many situations where our phone may become quickly available, such as our phone running out of battery, getting broken, or the Internet is not available.
Understanding a Request for Help. It may happen that someone approaches asking for help, and if you do not understand the language you may have a hard time understanding what they need help with. You can carry this card yourself to quickly understand the other person’s needs.
Combine Them!
The icons in the cards allow you to make more specific requests for help by combining multiple icons in a sequence.
Creative Commons License
We are releasing this initiative with a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. We invite you to download, print them, and distribute them (with consent from organisers) to volunteer centers and other organisations that may benefit from them. You can also keep them in your phone digitally in case of need.
