Northwood News ♦ February 2018

Bilingual Volunteers Needed

By Laura Hussey

At a recent NFCCA Board meeting, the discussion turned from the routine business of Board meetings — agendas and speakers for upcoming meetings, topics for newsletter articles — to a more fundamental conversation:  how can NFCCA better serve all of the residents of our community?

If you think about the size and demographic diversity of our neighborhood, you will understand how tall an order that is.  According to various demographic data sets, including voter registration, census data, and data collected by the Urban League, our neighborhood (or the smallest region within the data set that includes our neighborhood) is more diverse than Montgomery County as a whole.  For example, according to state voter registration data available at http://planning.maryland.gov/ Redistricting/Documents/2010data/GreenReport_web.pdf, about 17 percent of Montgomery County registered voters self-identity as Hispanic, while in our voting district (precinct 13-11), that figure is more than 25 percent.

Recognizing that our community has a large number of Spanish speakers, the Board is seeking some bilingual volunteers to work with us to make NFCCA more welcoming and accessible to Spanish speakers in the community.  If you are bilingual (English-Spanish) and can give up an hour or two to assist with translating at an NFCCA meeting or in other ways, please contact an NFCCA Board member.   ■