When she was only six years old, Maria Vertkin had to become the voice of her Russian Jewish family. She was the one who spoke English the best.

She remembers having to translate medical information for her parents — an enormous, potentially dangerous responsibility for someone so young. In hospitals and clinics, one word can be the difference between life and death. When that word is in a language the patient doesn’t speak, trained interpreters need to fill in the gap.

“If you’re a kid in an immigrant family, you are the de facto interpreter and translator,” Vertkin tells Mashable. “Because kids learn so much faster, and acculturate so much faster.”

Even that young, Vertkin understood the link between language and success. As Jews facing second-class citizenship and economic hardship in Russia, she and her parents uprooted for a better life in Israel and then the U.S., giving up the culture and language they always knew.

That’s why Vertkin launched Found in Translation, a social enterprise that offers free medical interpreter certificates and job placement to low-income, bilingual women in the greater Boston, Massachusetts area.

The mission is twofold — to break down language barriers in health care, while also tackling poverty and homelessness, two issues that affect women (especially women of color) disproportionately.