Support from many community partners led to successful recruitment and engagement in the pilot. Such a response – 6,000 total applicants – also demonstrates what our community is capable of accomplishing when we come together with a common purpose.
To reach eligible individuals, the UpLift team’s primary recruitment strategy was to work through the established networks and relationships of community organizations and those they serve. Partner organizations received appropriate resources and materials needed to tell their clients about the pilot. To ensure all interested eligible individuals had the opportunity to apply and to include experiences of diverse community members, recruitment materials were made available in 10 different languages: English, Spanish, Swahili, Burmese, Pashto, Somali, Nepali, Karen, Arabic, and Vietnamese. Interviews with organizations and data from community partners informed the selection of languages. To bolster support and engagement with the effort, the UpLift project coordination team held information sessions with partner organizations’ staff that gave an in-depth look at the pilot’s design and its recruitment process.
This allowed local community-based organizational partners to be ambassadors themselves for the study and help build trust among their clientele regarding the effort. A secondary recruitment strategy utilized advertisements in other media forms, such as newspapers, radio stations, and social media platforms across the tri-county study area, with the goal of reaching community members who were not well connected with social services and community resources. Multicultural radio stations and social media accounts were also used to expand the reach of recruitment messages into diverse racial and ethnic communities.
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