150212_CE_Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT Moving from Exclusion to Belonging 247 about how to serve and communicate with the diverse community. The community liaison highlighted the importance of having a meaningful role for the committee: “We do not meet just to have a meeting. Why would we think new Americans have any more time than the rest of us do?”1211 Members of the committee are recruited from both the long-term resident and new immigrant communities. The community liaison says, “At first we focused only on new Americans for the committee; that was a misstep. You need people who have lived in the community for a long time who can share the changes they have seen, too.”1212 Even in situations where organizations that serve the broader community are involving immigrants in meaningful ways that go beyond token representation, different cultural norms about how to run meetings and events can create barriers to participation. Different values placed on time and punctuality by some immigrant groups are a huge barrier to working together. Organizations take different approaches to bridging these differences. One service provider talked about educating immigrants to help them understand the expectations of institutions that serve the broader community: “The U.S. emphasis on schedules and appointment times – people have to learn that it’s a cultural thing and it’s not going to change to a non-time driven system. … Sometimes we explain the monetary cost, the cost of an interpreter sitting and waiting, for example, and that sometimes resonates more.”1213 Other groups are successful because the immigrant participants “run meetings in their own way – they are not very institutional. Otherwise people may walk away and not come back.”1214 Cultural differences extend beyond schedules and punctuality. One service provider described the need for people to learn how to work with different group dynamics, because some “immigrant communities are very passionate and loud in meetings.”1215 Language also poses a barrier to participation, one that community groups often do not handle well. One person spoke of her experience attending a community forum in Minneapolis several years ago that had no interpreters: “A large percentage of the participants came from families that speak another language in the home and yet they had no one set up to interpret so I had to do it.”1216 An immigrant talked about how the churches in her community claimed that they could not hold unified services because Latinos would not participate: “How about bilingual services? Maybe 1211 Interview 190 1212 Interview 190 1213 Interview 64. 1214 Interview 128. 1215 Interview 64. 1216 Interview 110.