Two Central Coast men create app to translate emergency alerts into Indigenous language

MONTEREY COUNTY, Calif. (KION-TV) - With the community in their hearts, Greenfield native Benito Sanchez and King City native Benito Sanchez came together to develop an app called Envolveme for people whose languages don't get translated often.

Both men took their expertise in computer science and created an app that translates alerts and flyers from the county to other languages, including those that are indigenous, like Trique.

"The main goal is to, block a language is right for all, we want to, empower our community needs to have a voice and feel comfortable to going to events, going to town hall meetings, being, you know, collaborative in that sense," said Samuel Valdez, Co-founder.

The inspiration for this project comes after recent natural disasters in Monterey County, including the levee breach in Pajaro.

Benito says people there felt like everyone was getting updates on the situation, except them.

"After getting a better understanding, it seemed like, the information was there, but it just wasn't accessible. So that's what, triggered this idea to build an app to make everything accessible to everyone,"

In just the first month, Samuel and Benito say there have been over 200 downloads. For some, this app is the first place people could have articles translated into the language, Trique.

Not only is this helping with language barriers, but also people who are illiterate with the voice-over function.

"We show all the announcements happening in your city. You can tap on them and see the flier, and then we have a voiceover functionality with a play button," said Sanchez.

Benito and Samuel started working on Envolveme last December. Their goal with the app is to continue adding indigenous languages to the community.

"Across the Monterey County, we have a lot of, different, indigenous languages out there," said Sanchez. "But it's just, again, our, can it has the support, the capability to expand."

When users downloaded the app and enter your zip code, users were met with several fliers of events and meetings going on around the county, including a county budget town hall in Salinas.

Benito and Samuel say they hope this app reaches people at a national level.

Samuel and Benito are asking people in the community to download the app, test it out, and provide feedback back to them.