Raising Awareness Through Public Education
Getting your message out to the people who need it most can be difficult. But Hispanic Federation has spent more than a quarter decade providing Latino communities with information to help their families, build their neighborhoods, and confront serious challenges. This year, we have been very busy providing some millions of people with important information about immigration, education, citizenship and health care.
One of our most successful education campaigns this year has revolved around immigration and naturalization. In May, Hispanic Federation partnered with Telemundo to inform immigrant New Yorkers about their rights as part of a month-long public education campaign. This included a “Know-Your-Rights” phone bank, with Telemundo promoting HF’s hotline, 1-866-HF-AYUDA, and trained HF volunteers answering callers’ questions and connecting callers with essential resources.
In addition, Hispanic Federation continued its partnership with NaturalizeNY to help immigrants determine if they were eligible for naturalization and get the help they need to become citizens. NaturalizeNY was launched last summer to assist eligible immigrants living in New York State to become U.S. citizens. The free services include eligibility screenings, application assistance and exam preparation. So far this year, Hispanic Federation has conducted two one-week long NaturalizeNY campaigns, one with Telemundo and another with Univision.
Taken together, our immigrant public awareness and information campaigns alone have reached 400,000 individuals through combined media placements, PSAs, and editorial content.
In the aftermath of the Pulse Nightclub Massacre, our Proyecto Somos Orlando initiative has been a vital source of information for Central Florida’s large Latino LGBT community. And this year we have been working with our media partners to report incidents of harassment, bullying and intimidation and carry out a comprehensive media outreach and anti-homophobia and pro-immigrant communications campaign that highlights the negative impact of hate crimes, homophobia and immigrant bullying. This campaign is modeled after HF’s award-winning anti-bullying social media campaign.
Earlier this year, we also launched the Bridge Project, a public education campaign to help Puerto Ricans living on the island who aim to migrate to Central Florida as well as those who are recent arrivals to the area. The exodus of Puerto Ricans coming to Central Florida continues to grow, and we’re grateful to have the opportunity to ensure our brothers and sisters from the island are offered the support they need to succeed in their new home.
