Building Cultural Bridges
Portfolio: Photography Services
Willmar, a rural Minnesota town, primarily of Scandinavian descent is home to the largest number of Latino’s in any Minnesota city other than Minneapolis / St.Paul, with 15.9% of the non white population identifying as Latino. It is also home to a growing number of Somali residents with some other smaller populations. Changing Communities Willmar funded by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, was a community wide initiative on cultural competency. Serving as Project Lead through the Center for Cross Cultural Health, I both managed the project which included creating the project vision; performing a community assessment; developing and managing the implementation plan; forming a local coalition of diverse community members; recruiting 43 emerging and existing leaders to represent their cultural group and/or agency in cultural competency leadership development series; raising $30,000, developing and delivering “Skills to Action” Cultural Competency Leadership Development Program, marketing, communications and directing the project team. Independently, as a photographer, I photographed the unfolding story and utilized the photographs to raise visibility of the project.
