QUESTION
How have collaborative efforts improved services for immigrant communities in NYC?
0:34:06
·
5 min
The Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) has improved services for immigrant communities through enhanced outreach, including NYC Care program improvements and partnerships with community organizations and sister agencies.
- Services for immigrant communities have been reevaluated and improved through initiatives like NYC Care, focusing on facilitating services regardless of age.
- Additional outreach includes providing resources, information packages, and collaborating with various agencies to meet the needs of immigrant New Yorkers.
- The outreach team collaborates with city, state, and federal programs, ensuring real-time information and resources are accessible in multiple languages to build trust within immigrant communities.
- Efforts have been made to address misinformation among permanent residents about Social Security eligibility, and a new system within MOIA aims to enhance accessibility to hard-to-reach areas.
- Immigrant media roundtables were organized, collaborating with several NYC departments, to ensure effective information dissemination to the immigrant community through local media in their languages.
Alexa Avilés
0:34:06
I I wanted to go back to the cabinet for a quick second before I jump in.
0:34:11
You mentioned is value is in the collaborative space that the cabinet allows.
0:34:16
But can you give us an example of a tangible change in impact that came out of that space that you saw through?
Miguel Santana
0:34:26
Well, most recently, I mean, we've been focusing on this NYC Care in this and and the objective there is to better facilitate services to to the immigrant communities regardless of age.
0:34:39
And so This has given us an opportunity to reevaluate the the program itself and also figure out ways where we can improve upon it.
0:34:48
So I think that a tangible example of of a given, you know, program that we're working on.
Alexa Avilés
0:34:54
So what kind of changes did that include?
Miguel Santana
0:34:57
Well, that that just requires additional outreach that, you know, I'll I'll I'll allow my colleague to further expand on that in terms of reach and out to the community, providing resources, information, packages, and collaborating with just the agencies to ensure that we meeting the needs of of of immigrant New Yorkers, and I'll turn it over to my colleague here to speak more on the boots on the ground initiative.
Miosotis Muñoz
0:35:22
Thank you so much.
0:35:24
Well, the outreach team, which is part of our external hands on and make ensure that we're collaborating not only with our sister agencies, but with city, state, and federal programs.
0:35:37
1 of the positive nature of us participating is that our boots on the ground and our constituency services hotline is able to receive concerns and is able to relate that concern of the immigrant community so that we're able to provide real time information to not only our sister agencies, but a lot of the organizations that we partner with across the board So every day, we assist with referral and resources that are made available in the respective language and this is made possible because the boots underground, our outreach team, is in the community every day, helping build trust, and collaborating with community based organization.
0:36:25
The immigrant community is very unique community.
0:36:27
It's a community where you have to be very hands on on the ground, and this is why it is so critical for our services and external affairs to be working out there every day, being able to assess the needs in real time and being able to communicate those needs.
0:36:48
At the same time, our office also works with engaging other members like the United States citizenship and immigration services, Social Security, at virtual meetings, and working with other members of our sister agencies like the New York City Department of Aging to make sure that we are providing the resources, but also being able to do it in a way that is very sensitive to those particular communities that we are interfacing with.
0:37:24
So one example would be that there were a lot of permanent residents who were not applying for Social Security because they were under the impression that they have to be US citizens to so you could imagine all these permanent residents who've put in so much time 20, 30 years working and would not go out there and apply for Social Security.
0:37:54
And this is the kind of information that we're able to provide in the appropriate cultural setting.
0:38:02
We go out there.
0:38:03
We participate in events.
0:38:07
We even instituted a new system within Moia to make sure that we're even more accessible, too hard to reach areas.
0:38:15
In 2022, we redefined our community event request links that really enhances the ability to for trusted community groups to reach out to us and share with us, things that for the most part, a lot of immigrants don't feel comfortable disclosing because, of course, self identifying is optional.
0:38:37
And through these CBOs, we're able to identify find the areas of needs and the kind of languages and and and and sister agencies that we would need to bring with us to the field.
0:38:51
Our goal is to bring city hall to the community, and it's the only way we're gonna continue to expand and ensure that our immigrant workers are able to be prioritized as we can all understand in our in terms of our commitment.
Miguel Santana
0:39:07
I have one more example as well to answer your and our more leads immigrant media roundtables to ensure effective information dissemination.
0:39:17
The roundtables facilitate information low to the immigrant community via hyper local newspapers, radio, and TV stations in their language.
0:39:28
The roundtables also strength and relationships with immigrant focused media outlets.
0:39:33
In the last year, we have worked with New York City Emergency Management, New York the city NYCK Department of Youth And Community Development, NYC's most business services, mayor's office to end domestic, but domestic and gender based violence, office of technology and information and innovation, department of consumer and worker protection, and lawyers working with New York City agency to host a roundtable in support of older immigrants.
Alexa Avilés
0:40:01
Great.
0:40:01
Thank you.
0:40:01
That's very that's very helpful.