By Mary Jo Blackwood, American Red Cross Public Affairs Volunteer
This month, Hispanic Heritage month, we highlight a new initiative of the American Red Cross. This initiative will make every month and every disaster response one in which Hispanics, Latinx and other people who might not feel their needs are being met feel protected and cared for.
A major hallmark of the Red Cross is that we serve all people affected by disaster without discrimination based on nationality, race, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation or age. In the face of a disaster communities share “universal needs” but each may have unique needs driven by culture or conditions.
To identify, understand, and meet these individual needs in the Hispanic and Latinx communities, the Red Cross has engagement teams within disaster relief operations. These engagement teams establish and build trust and relationships to ensure that each community affected by a disaster can participate effectively in its recovery.
In this case, to best meet these communities’ disaster-caused needs, disaster leadership may deploy Latino Engagement Teams (LETs) to connect with primarily Hispanic communities.
With an estimated 58.9 million Latino/Latinx or Hispanic people in the United States (18 percent of the total population), many disasters affect their communities. There have been a number of historical barriers to offering equitable services to these communities:
- Perception: Communities may believe that the Red Cross is part of the American government.
- Fear of Consequences: Individuals and families may fear that seeking help will create challenges due to their immigration status or a perceived bias.
- Language Barriers: Language and cultural barriers may hamper engagement with Red Cross personnel.
To ensure that the Red Cross provides services to all, the deployment of Latino Engagement Teams helps build trust and increase access to services. These teams feature members who speak Spanish and have special training to make sure they are culturally competent in working with these communities to support equitable service delivery and build trust in under-represented and under-served communities. This practice may require the allocation of resources to focus on particular, resource-poor communities.
As an example of how the LETs adapt services to be more equitable:
Challenge
- A community fails to receive information due to a language barrier.
- Families lack transportation to a distribution site.
- People fail to access available resources/services because they fear their legal status may be revealed.
Adaptation
- Provide information in the dominant language of the community.
- Provide distribution sites within the community.
- Send representatives into a community to clarify Red Cross role or provide services.
Claudia Kirby was the first Colorado/Wyoming Region volunteers to complete the specialty track training for Latino Engagement. She is excited about what this initiative brings to disaster relief. “The collaborations are very promising in our efforts to build trust and relationships in different communities. We get involved in community outreach, working with our partners to get translators and communicate the impartiality that helps the Red Cross accomplish our mission to alleviate human suffering.”
She says that depending on the community, they have multiple ways to reach the Latinx community and know about Red Cross services. They might drop by grocery stores, churches, and other venues we are most likely to reach those populations. “Speaking Spanish is just one aspect. Being culturally appropriate is also a large part of connecting with vulnerable communities and delivering equitable services. Red Cross even has basic Spanish phrases spelled phonetically to make sure volunteers who are not fluent in Spanish can communicate appropriately and the pronunciation is accurate.”
And with multiple deployments under her belt for the Colorado Wild Fires and Louisiana Hurricane Laura recovery, the new initiative seems to be working. LET also helps volunteers build on past successes in their relations with the Latinx community. During the Lake Christine fire, the community’s Hispanic people came together to cook for people displaced. Having the LET training and principles in place will strengthen those earlier relationships.
Another goal of this initiative is to recruit Latinx volunteers to increase the diversity of our disaster response teams so that the faces of our missions reflect the populations we are serving. We also want to recognize and tap into use the strengths of the minority community, because they are valued contributors and can help make us aware of things we need to do to improve our services. Embracing the strengths of minority communities, their experiences and skills will make us stronger together.
To find out more about the training to be on a LET team for disaster relief, go to: https://www.redcross.org/volunteer/become-a-volunteer.html
Good information, nice article!