Metro is a great government organization in Portland that does so much for the city. Besides overseeing the Oregon Zoo and the Oregon Convention Center, they are in charge of the city’s waste disposal, of managing regional parks, and they coordinate the growth of the metropolitan area. In their efforts to make Portland a green city, they’ve partnered with us to help them reach out to the Latino community.
Latino Outreach – Metro
When we were planning how to reconstruct the Metro campaign in Spanish, we let Metro know that we could not translate any materials word for word. We believe that different cultures have different needs, and if we wanted to teach Latinos why they should help make this a green city, we had to focus on specific parts of the Metro campaign that would spark their interests and connect with them on a more personal level.
One aspect that was very important to us was the fact that we had to teach Latinos about recycling starting from the basics. For other cultures, Metro’s efforts were just reinforcement or a friendly environmental reminder of what people have grown up knowing already about being green. We have to understand that for most Latinos, the whole concept of recycling and being environmentally friendly is their first time doing it which is why we focused most of our efforts on education. Throughout the year we have been going to community events to talk to families about the importance of recycling and creating green cleaners from things you can find in your own homes. We educated children with fun and interactive games. For example we played a bucket game where we had bean bags with pictures of different types of garbage and/or recycling materials and children and parents had to guess where each of those bean bags went- whether the picture showed the material being trash, recyclable or a hazard waste item.
We also encouraged and educated people to start walking, biking, how to dispose of hazardous materials, and different transportation alternatives through the Drive Less Connect campaign.
We have to recommend Metro for their efforts to reach out to every person in the city and we are very proud to be representing them among the Latino community.
We also reworked the materials Metro had created. We made sure that it wasn’t only translated but that the message would resonate with our community.
