5-Media
Andrew Young
(online and physical), flyers, posters, hosting social events, etc.
I'm taking the liberty of breaking out Lap Siu's response to Rina and
starting discreet discussions on each. I'll keep my notes brief and
try to direct some of the conversation.
We're working on the Census 2010 (http://sites.google.com/site/
mdagreensboronc/census-2010) and having a predictably tough time
compared to reaching a mainstream American audience. Not impossible,
but reaching the community with a single message ("On Question 9,
check 'Other Asian', write 'Montagnard'") is very time consuming and
expensive. Print and online media have a very limited reach right
now.
The most effective messaging comes through face-to-face information,
literally conveying the who, what, where, and when of an event to an
individual or group. Here in North Carolina, it is just barely
possible for an individual to get a message across the I-85 roadway
connecting Charlotte to Greensboro to Raleigh (180 miles) through
direct meetings, phone calls and follow up US post mailings to pastors
and deacons representing (I'm guessing) about 30 congregations.
Through MDA's ESOL classes we can convey a lot of information to the
Greensboro community by announcing events to student-clients. The
public school system isn't really organized or inclined to convey
messages to parents via school kids about Montangard issues.
Effective communications between the Montagnard and mainstream
community is a significant -- maybe the biggest -- problem on the
table, I think. Any grants we go after must include a pretty big
investment in time to build trust amongst all parties, interpretation
and translation (another historic obstacle), transportation (literally
paying people's costs for their time and mileage), media, and media
training. This is not just a Montagnard-side issue; the American
mainstream has been spectacularly ineffective bridging the
communications gap.