Bridging Cultural Gaps: Bilingual Services and Community Empowerment in Talbot County (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: And the first thing I realized is that I had a quite unique asset. I'm bilingual. And it became very obvious to me, especially because certain work I had done in access to justice, that there was a huge gap when it comes to bilingual services. And I got connected doing community work, primarily because I was bilingual. Not so much because I was a highly educated person, but because I was bilingual. Again, connected to language and connecting to the idea of doing something unique and wonderful for the community. All the heads of the departments of public agencies in Talbot County were asking themselves the question, how can we provide excellent services to everybody? That means also when we have to do it in a language that is not our own. And when we have to work with people that have a culture that is different from ours. They came up with a plan and they said, we want people who are providing these services to be very professional. We'll give them the tools so they can do their job properly and feel more comfortable in their shoes. Because believe me, interpretation is not the same as just being bilingual and improvising and doing the best of yourself. But you see, when you're connecting somebody who needs a service to the other person who is an expert in that service, you have like three different cultures in place. And we didn't want to forget about those people that are providing that service. So we spoke with them for the span of the last two years. It was a beautiful conversation. It was called Closing the Gap and it was a presentation on cultural competence. It was really the service providers, people from the Department of Health, public schools, social services, Eastern Utilities, the Talbot County Police. There are many more. Everybody sat and had a moment to think of what it is to have your own culture. What makes me unique? What defines you, David? What is important to you? And where do we meet? Where do we clash? And why? It was in the words of the participants, a very eye-opening, interesting, non-threatening conversation through which they really enjoyed even learning about themselves, learning about others, because the first part of the presentation was a dialogue and everybody loved sharing from grandma's meatballs to memories of maybe trauma, experience during childhood. I mean, actually this afternoon, we will be working with emergency responders from Caroline County. We will have two sessions for them. Today is going to be the first one. And in a couple of weeks, we will go back and work with them again. Well, the other shift, if we round that up, we can say that almost 1,000 people from the Eastern Shore has had that conversation. The leadership of this community is very welcoming, that we believe in greatness. We believe in communities where we help embrace each other, empower each other, because if you do well, the whole community does well. So my personal journey and my professional journey right now also includes sharing our work, our mission, and our passion with people so that we can really spread this message that we are doing something differently here in Talbot County. And actually, this goes for the whole mid-shore region. We are working together to promote a community where people succeed, where people thrive, and where cultural diversity becomes an asset of the community.