Facilitating and Celebrating Honest Conversations About COVID-19 and Other Health Topics in RIM Communities

Honest Conversations Banner

The National Resource Center for Refugees, Immigrants, and Migrants and IDEO.org have collaborated with Canal Alliance to develop Honest Conversations: a modular kit to build communication campaigns that amplify candid, health-related stories and concerns of people in RIM communities.

Health concerns change often and are usually colored by the reality of the moment— what's in the news, popular culture, and people's hearts. RIM communities have a lot of wisdom and experiences to share, and rebuilding trust with the system means creating a space for listening and meeting people where they are, both physically and emotionally.

This campaign playbook supports you in connecting your communities to health guidelines and resources in a timely, relevant, and compelling way, focusing on re-engaging people and rebuilding trust.

At the end of the webinar, participants will be able to:

  1. Articulate the value of community-driven work

  2. Amplify community voices with authentic and creative storytelling techniques

  3. Use open-source materials and templates to create an Honest Conversations campaign for their communities that lasts three to four months.

Arun Headshot

Ridhi Arun, IDEO.org

As Program Manager, Ridhi brings her experience in design program management and passion for refugee health and rights to support the development of community-led solutions for refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities related to COVID-19.

She previously worked across global health projects at IDEO.org, supporting partnerships and design teams. Prior to IDEO.org, Ridhi worked with Partnerships for Trauma Recovery, a non-profit which provides mental health services for refugees and asylum-seekers who have resettled in the Bay Area, where she developed a monitoring and evaluation study for their clinic and was trained in trauma-informed research practices.

Ridhi graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a BS in Neuroscience, and the University of California, San Francisco with an MS in Global Health Sciences.

Claudia Sosa Lazo

Claudia Sosa Lazo, IDEO.org

As a Business Design Lead, Claudia blends tangibility with inspiration to help teams create meaningful solutions that scale, and leads the Vaccine Confidence program work at IDEO.org with this lens.
 
Claudia previously worked as Head of Design and Research at Wave Money, a fast-growing fintech based in SE Asia. Her commitment to implementation stems from a background in product management. She’s worked on solutions at all stages of the product lifecycle and across sectors as varied as blockchain and agriculture.

Claudia holds an MBA from Yale School of Management and a BA in Philosophy and Creative Writing from Columbia University.


Syreeta Wilkins

Syreeta Wilkins, NRC-RIM

Syreeta is the communications strategist for the National Resource Center for Refugees, Immigrants and Migrants (NRC-RIM), where she leads the communications efforts for the center as well as guides the creation and dissemination of health communications materials.

She has more than a decade of experience in strategic communications, specializing in internal communications, digital media, and diverse and multilingual communities. Before joining the team at NRC-RIM, she led communications for K-12 public schools, most recently focusing on crisis communications and other efforts related to her school district's COVID-19 response.

Syreeta holds a master's degree in linguistics from New York University, where she explored socioeconomic influences on Spanish-speaking immigrants' speech patterns. She holds a bachelor's degree from Macalester College.

laura jimenez diecks

Laura Jiménez Diecks, Canal Alliance

Laura Jiménez Diecks is the Senior Manager of Health Services at Canal Alliance. She has been with the agency for 6 years and has a background in social work. She has been in direct services for the past 5.5 years working with our underserved, under-resourced community of the Canal in San Rafael, CA. Now, in this new role, she hopes to elevate the voices of those who are lacking equity and inclusion and augmenting their access to health services . She is hoping to engage anchor community organizations in crafting a county wide plan for equitable pandemic recovery.