Building off an award from the Mayor’s Office, this Hispanic leader is using translation to uplift her Baltimore community

Marielis Jerez-Dilone’s love of translating was born, at least in part, out of necessity.

Jerez-Dilone, 18, immigrated to New Jersey from the Dominican Republic with her family when she was 7; shortly after, they moved to Baltimore. While she had to learn English in school, her parents still only speak Spanish, leaving Jerez-Dilone to translate for them throughout her life.

As a result, whenever Jerez-Dilone sees an immigrant struggling to communicate, her instinct is to jump in.

“It’s just an amazing feeling,” Jerez-Dilone said, “to be able to say, ‘Hey, like I was able to help that person understand what’s being told to them.’”

In October, the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and the Baltimore City Hispanic Commission gave Jerez-Dilone the Hispanic Heritage Emerging Leader Award, which is presented to a community member 21 or younger, for her mentorship at a nonprofit focused on young people.

“We have plenty of leaders,” MIMA Director Catalina Rodriguez Lima said. “But we really want to recognize those who are up-and-coming because they are the future of our city.”

Jerez-Dilone was nominated for the award by staff at Thread, a nonprofit seeking to “end social isolation and support young people in Baltimore,” where she is a participant who also helps new students who come from backgrounds like hers navigate the organization. Helene Kahn, the senior director of communities for Thread, said Jerez-Dilone has been an advocate for the increasing number of Spanish-speaking participants pouring into Thread.

“She this past year kind of took it upon herself to make sure that any young person who is invited into Thread could have a phone call with her or their parents so that they weren’t losing anything in translation as to what opportunity was being offered to them,” Kahn said. “Marielis embodies the most mature, caring, compassionate and driven adult I have ever met.”

Jerez-Dilone also translated Thread’s enrollment packet into Spanish after noticing flaws in the original translation.

Thread works with six schools in Baltimore, including Frederick Douglass High School and Patterson High School, to identify and assist students in the lowest 25% of ninth grade. According to a spokesperson, in 2023, 161 people signed up for Thread, its largest-ever cohort, with plans to enroll 208 students in 2024. There are 753 total participants and 127 alumni of the program, founded in 2004.

Participants are paired with volunteers to create a “Thread family,” which Kahn described as an additional support system rather than a familial replacement. Students have access to activities like after-school tutoring hours but can also contact volunteers for simpler tasks, like a ride home from school or a walk in the park to clear their head.

“What we’re asking you to do as a volunteer in Thread is stand shoulder to shoulder with a young person in Baltimore, who we know the odds are stacked against,” Kahn said. “That Thread family could do anything from weekly dinners, to do yoga together, to go for runs together, to be in the hospital when a baby’s born together, to mourn loss together.”

Thread is unique because students are in the program for 10 years, regardless if they change schools or even states, Kahn said.

Although Jerez-Dilone estimates she’s spent over 70 hours talking to parents and guardians about the benefits of Thread, she can’t officially volunteer, as she’s been a member of the program since 2020.

Just as Jerez-Dilone joined Thread, the onset of COVID-19 and the loss of in-person school and communication largely disrupted her education at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.

“Emotionally, it was very different,” Jerez-Dilone said. “I couldn’t like talk to somebody or tell somebody, ‘Hey, this is going on, I need help.’”

During her sophomore year, when classes moved online, Jerez-Dilone stopped attending school entirely, spending her time working instead. After a year, she returned and attended Saturday school and used other acceleration methods to graduate on time this past summer.

“I wanted to be able to say, ‘Hey, I’m the first to graduate high school in my family. Hey, I am the first to attend college of my family,’” Jerez-Dilone said. “So I pushed myself to really get back into school.”

Kahn said while she couldn’t speak to Jerez-Dilone’s specific situation, the loss of in-person classes meant she couldn’t get updates on Thread’s students in the hallways the way she’d been used to before the coronavirus pandemic.

Jerez-Dilone said she avoided Thread at first because she didn’t realize “how much they were actually trying to help and how much they cared about me.” She got back in touch when she returned to school and Thread volunteers alongside Dunbar educators checked in on her grades and on her as a person. Jerez-Dilone said that support was a tremendous help.

While living in Highlandtown, Jerez-Dilone is studying to be a paralegal at the Community College of Baltimore County Catonsville campus while working as a nail technician. Both in her future work in the legal system and her current work with Thread, Jerez-Dilone wants to see more people like her help open doors for the growing Latino population in Baltimore.

“I just think that having translators available all over is extremely needed because sometimes even I go into environments where there’s not even a single translator,” Jerez-Dilone said. “Sometimes, when someone’s trying to express their thoughts, feelings or anything like that, it can be difficult to be like, ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ if the person doesn’t even understand the language. I think [translation] is the main foundation to really build on further things to help the Hispanic community.”

This article is part of our Newsmaker series, which profiles notable people in the Baltimore region who are having an impact in our diverse communities. If you’d like to suggest someone who should be profiled, please send their name and a short description of what they are doing to make a difference to: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Editor Kamau High at khigh@baltsun.com.