Engaging immigrant boomers for L.A.’s future
The California Community Foundation, in partnership with three Los Angeles area nonprofits, is working to engage immigrant boomers in community problem solving as part of its involvement with Community Experience Partnership (CEP). The Foundation is implementing a place-based strategy focused on three communities and three different nonprofits that work with populations of older immigrants.
They include:
- The Pico-Union area of metro L.A. and Centro Latino for Literacy, which will train Latino older adult promotores—community advocates—in leading an outreach and advocacy effort to bring much needed Spanish literacy programs to more community sites. The promotores will reach out into the community to connect residents to available resources, and serve as classroom mentors—assisting students who are studying to become literate in Spanish (a first step in learning English). Many of the promotores are newly literate or still in the process of learning to read and write.
- Historic Filipinotown and the Filipino American Service Group, Inc. (FASGI), which is supporting Filipino older adult promotores in leading a multi-generational consumer education and advocacy campaign and working with a community stakeholder network to persuade family-owned Filipino restaurants to add heart-healthy items to their menus.
- The San Fernando Valley and Jewish Family Service of L.A. (JFS), which is training, placing and supporting Iranian immigrants in paraprofessional volunteer roles within a network of service providers to improve service access for the Iranian community by building providers’ competence in working with Iranians as both service recipients and paraprofessional volunteers, as well as instituting a consumer education campaign in the Iranian media to break down cultural barriers against seeking help for issues such as domestic violence.
Each agency is culturally and linguistically skilled and has earned the trust of the immigrant community with which it works. Each targeted immigrant population also has a sizable, significant presence in Los Angeles County. Moreover, the issues identified by the nonprofits build on their experience, reflect the needs and issues within the selected communities, and are well-suited to engaging immigrant boomers for civic good. For these reasons, a multi-site approach was adopted to learn what works best in diverse communities.
