Audio clip
Ansel Peak
As the face of Chattanooga changes, leaders of nonprofit organizations said they want to extend their reach through the use of bilingual volunteers.
“Nationally, Big Brothers Big Sisters recognizes the need to expand and offer our services both to bigs and littles,” Ansel Peak, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Chattanooga, said. “We have (started) by translating our brochures, especially of our main programs, to Spanish.”
Big Brothers Big Sisters also is hiring a bilingual case manager.
“It’s important that we try to understand and recognize that people are approaching things from a different standpoint,” Mr. Peak said.
About 67 percent of Big Brothers Big Sisters volunteers are white, he said, compared to 33 percent minority, predominantly black.
“It is very hard to find minority volunteers, (specifically) African-American men,” he said. “We don’t have the Latino representation, either.” Both, he added, are important for the richness of the community.
Hamilton’s County immigrant population comes from 81 different countries, with immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala comprising about 17.8 percent of the foreign-born population.
Gradey Wade, counselor and chairman of the recruitment and marketing committee for SCORE, Counselors to America’s Small Businesses’ local chapter, said the group should reflect the community it serves. The increasing diversity of the community over the last 20 years means services organizations have to change as well.
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Staff Photo by Meghan Brown -- Richard Edgerton is a counselor for the Chattanooga chapter of Score, an organization that helps small businesses get started. Mr. Edgerton, who has been with Score since 1984, speaks Spanish with his Latino clientele.
“Part of our self-evaluation indicates we are not reaching all the people if we don’t have ethnicity represented,” he said.
Mr. Wade said none of the 25 SCORE counselors are from an ethnic minority. Only one, Richard Edgerton, is bilingual.
Mr. Edgerton, who lived in Central America for more than 20 years and is fluent in Spanish, said speaking a client’s native language might make them more comfortable, but the most important thing is the quality of the counseling.
“If we have a Hispanic client that has specific needs that are not my expertise, he should probably see one of the other counselors who specializes in that,” he said.
But Anderson Guzman, a Colombia native who used SCORE’s services to start and expand his marble renewal company, said he has a lot of business friends who don’t speak a lot of English who would benefit from organizations such as SCORE.
“It would help a lot of people if more organizations offered their services in other languages,” he said. “I have told friends about SCORE and the first thing they ask me is if they speak Spanish.”
Mike Feely, director of the St. Andrew’s Center, said finding people with a combination of language skills and a volunteer spirit is hard.
“There are ample folks around who have the language skills,” he said. “What can be a challenge is to find folks who also have a real sense of compassion and cultural understanding.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
* Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Chattanooga: call 698-8016 or visit www.bbbschatt.org
* SCORE: call 553-1722, e-mail at score.cha.tn@comcast.net, or visit www.scorechattanooga.org
* St. Andrew’s Center: call 629-9872, e-mail revmike@st-andrewscenter.org, or visit www.st-andrewscenter.org
Perla Trevizo joined the Chattanooga Times Free Press in 2007 and covers immigration/diversity issues and higher education. She holds a master’s degree in newswire journalism from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Texas. In 2011 she participated in the Bringing Home the World international reporting fellowship program sponsored by the International Center for Journalists, producing a series on Guatemalan immigrants for which she ...
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