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DCWP outlines strategies for enhancing outreach and community engagement
1:22:24
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DCWP representatives discuss various strategies for increasing outreach and enhancing community engagement, including diverse approaches to information dissemination and language accessibility.
- DCWP emphasizes the importance of diverse presentation methods and community partnerships
- The department has implemented a preference for multilingual staff in the hiring process
- DCWP's outreach team now covers multiple languages including Spanish, Bangla, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Haitian Creole
- The department conducts roundtables to bring groups together and discuss specific issues, such as consumer protection and immigration services
- DCWP expresses openness to new ideas and approaches for community engagement
Vilda Vera Mayuga
1:22:24
Assistant Commissioner Ortiz leads the team that's outreached but I do wanna say that, for example, I mean, it's just we'd love to get bombarded with requests really to do presentations because we know that different people receive the information in different ways.
1:22:40
I can tell you that I recently attended an event also at Mixteca where there were community members that are charged as ambassadors to share information with their neighbors.
1:22:52
And I think those are very powerful ways to get the information out because, obviously, we can say it, but it's always going to be more powerful when fellow community members, neighbors share the data.
1:23:05
So to the extent that there's ideas that perhaps we haven't explored, we want to make sure that we do those, but certainly we don't have any one particular channel that we use, and we will adjust and share the the language in a different way so that it makes sense and is well received.
Carlos Ortiz
1:23:23
I would say that, in general well, I'd say on our outreach team, have five individuals.
1:23:29
In general, our model is to build into existing events that are happening in the community with core organizations such as Mixedecca, for example, or or others, plug into where they are and talk about the work that we do.
1:23:40
Mhmm.
1:23:40
On average, when we're fully staffed, we're we're hitting about 620 total events throughout the year, and I I think that work is gonna continue, if not increase as well.
1:23:49
Something that we've recently implemented certainly in the hiring process is, as we become fully staffed on that team, is high a highly preferred, second language capacity.
1:23:59
And now every single person on our outreach team speaks a second, sometimes a third language.
1:24:03
We cover Spanish, Bangla, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Haitian Creole.
1:24:08
And that, think, is, to your question, Chair, is is another way that we can build trust, access these communities through language access.
1:24:16
So the work is the work never stops.
1:24:18
I think it's a constant effort to figure out new ways to engage broadly but also in-depth.
Vilda Vera Mayuga
1:24:25
One more thing.
1:24:26
We also do like, enjoy doing roundtables.
1:24:31
So to the extent that that's, you know, helpful, we it's it's good for us to bring certain groups together so that they can hear together what we're doing, but also each other.
1:24:39
So we recently did one specifically to consumer protection and we are about to be convening other a number of groups to specifically talk about immigrants, immigration service providers and that type of issue because we know it's very, very much an active area right now.
Julie Menin
1:24:54
Okay, great.
1:24:56
Well, thank you so much.
1:24:58
Concludes, the questions we have.
1:25:01
We really appreciate it.
1:25:02
Thank you so much.
1:25:03
Thank you.
1:25:06
Okay.