New Routes Projects

The 8 New Routes projects are underway. Each project, along with its partnering organizations, is listed from west to east:

Domestic Worker Safety & Dignity Project
Regents of the University of California at Berkeley
La Raza Centro Legal
Underground Advertising

San Francisco, CA: The Domestic Worker Safety & Dignity Project will address the work life of immigrant Latina domestic workers, with the vision of transforming the conditions within and the perception of this industry from undervalued women’s work to a respectable component of the economy. Through a San Francisco-based social marketing and media campaign, the partners will: educate and engage workers in addressing working conditions; strengthen domestic worker organizations through leadership development; and change the perception of domestic work.

Abriendo las Cajas (Opening Boxes)
Community Technology Foundation of California
La Clínica de la Raza
Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC)

Oakland CA: Abriendo las Cajas (Opening Boxes) seeks to reduce incidences of domestic (familial) violence amongst the Latin American immigrant population in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland. This digital storytelling campaign will take family members through a progression of self-expression, peer sharing, and family healing to community empowerment and change. Participants will produce tangible products (digital stories) that will be put to immediate use by a statewide network of health educators.

Navigating Health Care in the U. S. for Chinese American Seniors: The Basics
Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness Research and Training (AANCART)
Chinatown Service Center
LA-18

Los Angeles, CA: Navigating Health Care in the U. S. for Chinese American Seniors will enhance the ability of Chinese American seniors to overcome cultural, language, and navigational barriers in order to communicate effectively with their adult children caretakers and health care providers; and improve their ability to navigate the U.S. health care system. Education and information will be disseminated through practical and actionable consumer-driven learning media vignettes to be broadcast on LA-18, a television station broadcasting in multiple Asian languages.

Egal Shidad: Stories of Somali Health for Radio, TV and Classroom Use
Minnesota Counties Research Foundation – ECHO
Confederation of Somali Community
Saint Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN)
KFAI Community Radio

Minneapolis and Saint Paul MN: Egal Shidad: Stories of Somali Health will strengthen Somali immigrant families through video, radio and print stories about healthy lives. Somali media producers and health providers will develop six new health education units for Somali audiences that will also be used for cultural competency training with health care providers treating Somali patients, and will be designed for use as an English as a second language learning tool.

Salud: Healing through the Arts
National Museum of Mexican Art
Latinos Progresando
RadioArte

Chicago IL: Salud: Healing through the Arts will collaborate on programming that engages a predominantly Latino immigrant youth population. Partners will create a series of theatre productions and radio programming that has a message of making better health decisions for the community. The partnership will use arts programming that addresses and breaks down cultural health taboos that impede access to services and resources that foster healthier, more prosperous lives.

HEARMe (Health Education via Airwaves for Refugees)
Emory University
Clarkston Community Center
Sagal Radio

Atlanta, GA: East African refugees – now New Americans – and their Atlanta neighbors will collaborate to create on-air, on-line, and on-stage productions promoting health and cultural competency in their community. HEARMe, or Health Education via Airwaves for Refugees, melds African storytelling with American dramedy: listeners learn from the struggles and triumphs of realistic characters, written and voiced by community members in their own languages, as they work to become healthy, integrated members of their metro Atlanta community.

Twa Zanmi (Three Friends)
Institute for Community Inclusion
Haitian American Public Health Initiative
Haitian Media Network

Boston, MA: The Twa Zanmi project will nurture a new Haitian immigrant community production team to produce and market a “telenovela” program. The objective is to familiarize the Haitian community with the real experiences of immigrants living with depression and anxiety as an understandable result of acculturative stress. The Twa Zanmi Project will generate a community dialogue about mental health, with the goal of developing health ambassadors in the community, decreasing stigma associated with mental health, and promoting service access.

Media Partnerships for Community Engagement in Southeast Asian Immigrant Health
Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania
Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition
Wider Horizons/WHYY

Philadelphia, PA: Media Partnerships for Community Engagement in Southeast Asian Immigrant Health project aims to engage immigrant Laotian and Vietnamese seniors in the process of health needs identification, first-person storytelling, video production, and community discussion about health. They will create short videos using recorded narratives of immigrant health experiences, design workshops using the videos to engage communities in discussions led by immigrant seniors, and educate health professionals and the general public about health disparities and barriers faced by immigrant seniors.

Topics: Building Community, Community Media, Health Care, Immigration