I'm a curious case in the 100 hours of Astronomy, because I'm part of the task group, but also a 100 hours national coordinator (in my case, I'm the co-coordinator for Portugal).
One of the first problems I bumped into when I started as national coordinator was the language barrier. For english speaking countries, this might not even make any sense, but to the rest of the world... English might be the international language, but if you're an average person in Portugal (and you can tell me what it's like in your country), you might not master enough (or any) english to easily navigate the global "100 hours of Astronomy" website.
To try and solve this problem, the webpage had an automatic translator for several languages. It was not that good, with people not understanding what was written in "their own" language. So it was discarded and once again only the english version was available.
Now, don't get me wrong. The good people responsible for the webpage made an effort to have, at least the instructions on how to register translated in several languages. But what about the rest?
My mother, who only after her retirement decided to learn english for the first time, might be interested in reading the News section, but doesn't know enough english.
Enter the national coordinators!
We develop our own national webpages, with registration available in our own languages. We can explain what 100 hours is all about, translate News, Resources, and FAQs to our native languages. This way, we can reach people that otherwise wouldn't even know what 100 hours of Astronomy are. It doesn't matter if you speak Swahili, Mandarin, Croatian or Farsi, if you have national coordinators, they will take upon themselves to make sure you get all the information you need, in your own language.
Just a glimpse of what national coordinators can do... The amazing poster for 100 hours, in my own language, so any portuguese speaking person in the planet can enjoy it:
Let me just finish by taking off my "national coodinator" hat, and placing the "task group" hat, to remind you all that the last day of 100 hours (a sunday), will also be a Sun Day.
