Success Story: Addressing the needs of our community. 

Title: Serving the Hispanic/Latinx Community – A virtual conversation & LEP efforts

Major Program: Community Leadership Development 

Plan of work: Assist in developing high quality educational programs and resources specific to your content area to address the needs of underserved and underrepresented audiences.

Outcome Type: Long-Term Outcome 

Success Story: Addressing the needs of underserved and underrepresented audiences, and LEP individuals.  

Issues: What is the situation? Who cares and why?

KSU Extension focuses on strengthening partnerships and improving the quality of life through Extension programing. We need to be able to provide these high quality educational programs and resources to the underserved and underrepresented audiences and LEP individuals in Louisville. This year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and moving to telecommuting, it has made it made it difficult to be able to reach these individuals. Although many changes such as virtual programing and usage of social media platforms were implemented, we were still not fully reaching our target audiences. 

Response: What has been done? Summarize your program, project, or response to the issue. 

Throughout the 2019/2020 year, I was able to develop collaborative relationships with a variety of community partners. Through this, I was able to create a virtual meeting served to showcase the KSU Extension program among community members that serve the Hispanic/Latinx population in Louisville. County based Extension professionals engaged in conversation and exchange of information with organizations that included: Kentuckianaworks, Jefferson County Public Schools, La Casita Center, Louisville Latino Education Outreach (LLEO), and Doors to Hope. Extension is committed to building authentic relationships and create partnerships that allow us to reach and strengthen underserved communities and families including our immigrant and Limited English Proficient (LEP) stakeholders. Meetings like these allow us to promote KSU, strengthen partners, and improve quality of life through our Extension programs. I also created a Spanish Facebook Group Page, containing Extension information. Along with creating weekly newsletter that are shared in English and Spanish.  

Results/Impact: How has your response affected the user/stakeholders involved with the issue?

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to transition to teleworking. This made our job of being able to reach our underserved and underrepresented families and LEP stakeholders more difficult. By being able to bring the KSU Jefferson County Extension team and community partners together for conversations like the one we had, we were able to create an exchange of information between KSU Extension and the individuals that work directly with underserved and underrepresented communities and families and LEP individuals. The KSU Extension team highlighted a variety of programs that we can offer to our community partners. In exchange, our community partners provided us with ways that we can utilize during our telecommuting work period to reach these underserved and underrepresented communities and families and LEP individuals in Louisville. We gathered that the best way to reach these individuals would be by providing pre-recorded lessons. I also created a Spanish Facebook Group page that I use to share Extension information on and can also be used to share other programmatic efforts. We currently have 17 official members. I have also developed weekly newsletters in English and Spanish that I share with my stakeholders.