The City of Fort Collins hopes to demonstrate that Fort Collins is a tolerant and inclusive community, through their project which displays positive, multilingual banners around town
The banners, which cost $3,606 to design and print, according to Janet Freeman, equity and inclusion coordinator for the City, read “We are Fort Collins” in English and “I am Fort Collins” in 14 other languages: Korean, Tagalog, Hindi, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Arapaho, French, Ute, German, Portuguese, Japanese and Vietnamese. The City Utilities department did not charge anything to put up the banners or for the space taken up by them.
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According to the Coloradoan, the languages were carefully selected to reflect past and present languages spoken in the city, and Todd Cornell, a local cultural competency consultant, worked for free to help the project.
The City also worked with Colorado State University, Poudre School District and the Islamic Center of Fort Collins to properly translate the messages.
Thirty of the richly colored banners will go up on utility light poles around the City in the coming weeks.
Collegian reporter Samantha Ye can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @samxye4.
