18 Jul Week 5 – Latino Outreach

These past couple of weeks I have been working on a variety of small projects, helping the Office of Communications and Legislative Affairs become more efficient in their outreach efforts to the Latino community in the greater Denver area. We are updating our list of potential partners often, to make sure we are including all opportunities to partner or share information with Latino organizations near us. I also created a separate spreadsheet naming all of our contacts and email addresses. This will most likely be used when we have opportunities like the Latino Heritage Internship Program that we want to share far and wide. Having this type of information on hand and easily accessible is essential in helping us diversify the National Park Service (NPS) workforce, and providing opportunities to young adults of all backgrounds – in this case, Latinos/as – to get involved with the NPS. During the “Looking Ahead” webinar in our weekly webinar series we heard from LHIP alumni, several of whom now work for the federal government in the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife. They talked about how they felt their presence at these sites was important, because it allowed Latino visitors to see someone working there that they could relate to. They also commented on how this internship opened up doors for them to enter the federal workforce, something they may not have either known about or had the experience for. Opportunities like the Latino Heritage Internship Program are great for exposing people to the work the NPS does. Other organizations like Conservation Legacy and the Student Conservation Association also host internship programs where students and young adults can gain experience in a variety of career paths within the federal government. Providing opportunities is half the battle; the second half is getting the word out!