Webinar - Barbershop Banter and Language Links: Increasing Awareness of Public Engagement Among Immigrant and Newcomer Communities

Barbershop Banter and Language Links: Increasing Awareness of Public Engagement Among Immigrant and Newcomer Communities

This webinar focuses on what was learned during a project to reduce barriers to participation/engagement with immigrant and new Canadian community members within the City of Edmonton. The project used a number of tactics to gather input from immigrants and new Canadians, such as:

• Leveraging relationships and sharing information with community organizations that represent marginalized voices.
• Providing translation services at engagement events.
• Ensuring communication materials were written at and not above a grade 1 reading level.
• Providing compensation to community members who hosted engagement events at their barbershops and salons.
• Offering food, often cultural, at each engagement event.
• Offering short, take-home document formats for participants with time constraints so they can conveniently provide and submit feedback on their own time.

The input gathered told a story about how immigrants and new Canadians want to provide input to the City. Key learnings that will be shared include:

• Utilize existing City resources, build on pre-existing relationships, be honest about your project, outcomes, and approach. Internal surveys and interviews, met with internal partners
• Why do you want to engage? Tangible resources, ample time, engagement budget
• Meaningful change as a result of engagement. Impact on engaged communities that is meaningful and tangible
• Prioritize lived and living experience. Attended community events, have representation within and outside of project
• Trauma-informed community conversations. Soft skills, trained professionals, provided food and gifts
• Meaningful interactions. Attended community events, warm hand intros, phoned, coffee meetings
• Translations. Recruited internally as appropriate, external partners, 1st grade reading level

Time Zones

• 01:00 pm - 02:15 pm Eastern
• 12:00 pm - 01:15 pm Central
• 11:00 pm - 12:15 pm Mountain
• 10:00 am - 11:15 am Pacific

About the presenters:

Lyndsay Ward has over 15 years of experience within public participation and engagement with a Bachelors in Communications, Diploma in Public Relations, Certificate in Facilitative Mediation and numerous IAP2 coursework. She has been working at the City of Edmonton building and transforming the engagement capacity of the City for the past 11 years.

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