Community Forum Report

An important component of the Action-Oriented Community Diagnosis (AOCD), as outlined by Eng and Blanchard (1991), is to present findings from the AOCD research to community informants who were interviewed, as well as to others who were frequently mentioned by insider and outsider interviewees. The team decided to present these findings in a community forum open to all people living in or working in Fuquay-Varina.

Planning in Cooperation with a Committee

The community forum was planned in cooperation with a committee of community members and service providers who expressed interest in helping to plan the forum. A core group of nine people, in addition to the team of five students, attended planning meetings. This core group consisted of two service providers, four Latino community members, one African-American community member and two Caucasians who have frequent interaction with Latinos. Migrant farm workers also attended meetings on an irregular basis.

Meetings were held every Tuesday night from 7:00-8:30pm for the seven weeks preceding the forum. They were conducted in Spanish, with translation provided by students as needed for English-speaking only participants. Bilingual meeting agendas were provided each week, and ideas discussed during meetings were written in both languages on a flip chart. The student team solicited the committee's input on various aspects related to the logistics and content of the forum, such as expectations and hopes for the forum; who to invite; how to get people to attend; barriers to community member participation and how to minimize them; where and when the forum should take place; the design of flyers for advertising; who should make opening remarks at the forum; which themes should be discussed; the techniques for bringing about discussion in small groups; and getting donations for refreshments and door prizes from local businesses. Two days after the forum took place, the committee met again to debrief the event and to initiate plans for implementing the action steps.

Early in the forum planning stages, the committee decided that they would continue to meet as a group after the forum in order to address the challenges facing the Latino community, while student participation would diminish. The committee chose the group name of Uniting Communities Toward Change, or in Spanish, Unificando Comunidades Hacía el Cambio, and created a logo with four adjoining hands of different colors (See Appendix H).

Invitations and Advertising

Approximately 60 card invitations with the committee logo were sent to every person the team interviewed, in addition to a number of other service providers (See Appendix D). To attract other forum participants, flyers were posted in downtown Fuquay-Varina businesses, Latino-owned stores and restaurants, neighborhoods with high numbers of Latino residents, and La Pulga (See Appendix D). Flyers were also given to ESL teachers and school counselors for distribution to their students. The forum was advertised by word-of-mouth at La Pulga, by announcements and the distribution of flyers at church, and by going door-to-door in neighborhoods with many Latino residents. A reporter working for the Fuquay-Varina Independent newspaper also wrote a story about the AOCD process and upcoming forum. Contact with a Spanish language radio station as well as a local English language radio station were made, and announcements on the air were requested.

Agenda and Logistics of the Forum

Adhering to the goals of the AOCD process and addressing committee member expectations, the determined purpose of the forum was to:

• Provide an arena to bring together Latino, African-American, and Caucasian community members of Fuquay-Varina
• Present the major findings of the community diagnosis
• Offer an opportunity for discussion on the themes presented
• Increase communication between diverse groups to facilitate working partnerships
• Educate service providers about Latino needs
• Begin to identify action steps to address issues

The forum was held at the Fuquay-Varina Early Learning Center (ELC), on Sunday, April 28th from 2-4pm. This setting was chosen because the center's staff is hoping to reach out to the Latino community and recruit Latino preschoolers to attend; at present, there are no Latino children on the roster. The day of the week was chosen based on responses from interviewees who stated that Sunday may be the only work-free day for Latinos. The forum was conducted in Spanish and a professional interpreter did simultaneous interpretation using headsets for English-only speakers during large group presentations.

Roughly sixty people attended the forum, approximately 20 of whom were service providers and 40 of whom were community members. Upon arrival, participants registered and were asked to write/draw on a banner why they had decided to come to the forum that day. Then they entered the large meeting room and got refreshments from the food and drink tables (food generously donated by local businesses, including Latino restaurants and stores), and looked at the themes and quotes posted on the walls. The agenda follows:

• Introduction and Welcome (Latino committee/community member)
• Purpose of the Forum (Latino committee/community member)
• Description of project methods (students)
• Description of five themes/discussion topics using quotes to help explain (students)

Small Group Discussion

The following five themes were presented:

1. People are unaware of public services, perceive that they do not have access to the services, or think that they cannot afford them.
2. Not having a car as well as the lack of public transportation limits participation in daily activities.
3. Housing available to low-income community members is frequently of poor quality.
4. a) Outside responsibilities, such as translating for family members and working, make it difficult for Latino youth to reach their full potential.
   b) Gaps in communication and understanding between schools and Latino parents and students make it difficult for Latino youth to reach their full potential.
   c) Not being able to participate in recreational or after-school activities makes it difficult for Latino youth to reach their full potential.
   
5. Speaking a different language and having a different culture makes the interaction of Latinos with businesses, public services, and the health care system difficult.

After the presentation of the themes, participants divided themselves into small groups to discuss a single theme. The ORID method, developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs (1985, 1991), and explained in Figure B, was used by the students to structure small group discussions. This method involves posing questions at four different levels in order to produce group reflections and decisions based on all of the available information (Roundtable Associates).

Figure B: Focused Levels of Discussion of the ORID Method

(Institute of Cultural Affairs, 1985, 1991)

Since both English speakers and Spanish speakers were present in every group (except for the housing and public services groups where there were only English-speaking service providers), the students translated into both languages with the assistance of bilingual participants, if present. Role-plays and stories reflecting the experiences of Fuquay-Varina Latino community members were used as discussion starters, and questions based on the ORID method were posed to small group members (See Appendix D). Student facilitators elicited a list of action steps from the small groups; and this attempt was achieved with varying amounts of success (See Table E). For the housing small group, which consisted of one service provider and one African-American community member, the small group time was spent describing findings related to the housing theme; no action steps were determined.

Table E: Action Steps for Themes

Following small group discussion time, there was:

• A report back of action steps to the large group (individual from each discussion group)
• Concluding remarks and inspiring quote from Cesar Chavez (student) (See Appendix D)
• Raffle of door prizes

Time constraints limited the large group discussion and feedback related to action steps.

Outcome of the Forum

Many positive outcomes resulted from the forum planning process and the forum itself. A huge achievement was that the forum brought people from different races together and provided a medium for dialogue across languages, through translation and facilitated discussion. Connections between outsiders with decision-making power and insiders with local knowledge were made. Non-Spanish speakers were given the opportunity to experience what it is like to participate in a meeting not conducted in one's first language, which may help to highlight the need for learning to speak Spanish and serve to increase understanding for Latinos who do not speak English.

The most important outcome of the forum planning was the formation of the committee, Uniting Communities Toward Change, which will continue to meet in order to address issues of concern to the Latino community. The committee announced the date of their next meeting (Tuesday, May 21st at 7:00-8:30pm, at the SRC) and invited everyone at the forum to attend. Several community members and service providers who had not previously been involved made verbal commitments to the committee members that they would try to attend.

Before the planning committee met initially, many of the committee members were already part of a group from St. Bernadette Catholic Church who are hoping to open a Latino center in Fuquay-Varina. The new committee, Uniting Communities Toward Change, represents a different perspective for addressing Latino issues and extends beyond working only within the Latino community and a single church to working with an ethnically diverse group of both community members and service providers. In this format, community-wide concerns such as inter-racial relations and accessible recreation opportunities for youth may be considered comprehensively.

After the forum, the SRC provided a key to a member of Uniting Communities Toward Change to continue to use the facility for monthly committee meetings. This demonstration of trust from service providers to community members is a crucial step in making changes happen. In addition, the group was invited to present at a Wake County Human Services leadership meeting to discuss the community diagnosis experience, lessons learned and action steps for the future. It is hoped that Latino committee members will assist in this presentation, for it is their community and their future.

Methods

Conclusions and Recommendations