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Stories
In the last three decades, the cities of Fremont, Union City and Newark, California have experienced a tremendous demographic shift. What once was a region where roughly 8 in every 10 residents was Caucasian has morphed into a veritable melting pot of ethnicities and nationalities.
As nearby Silicon Valley solidified itself as the hub of the technology universe in the 1990s, the area exploded with an influx of foreign born workers seeking high-paying jobs at cutting-edge companies. And these workers brought their families — children, parents, grandparents — in a wave that effectively changed the face of Fremont and the surrounding area. These days, 56% of homes in Fremont speak a language other than English, and there are an estimated 120-150 languages spoken by students in the city’s public schools. “Our community is exceedingly diverse,” says Ray Grimm, co-coordinator of the Pathways to Positive Aging Partnership built by the City of Fremont Human Services Department and Tri-City Elder Coalition, and many other partners.
The changing face of the region has brought its share of challenges for agencies and organizations that work with the local community. Indeed, the Partnership was presented with the unique task of trying to serve a fast-growing and increasingly heterogeneous population. As a result, the Partnership had to rethink its approach to working with the aging population, including considering significant organizational changes to better reach the city’s diverse community.
Before making those changes, however, the Partnership had to have a greater understanding of Fremont’s aging population. It needed to not only discover what ethnic and cultural groups made up the aging population, but also to find out what was needed from those groups. “We asked ourselves how we were going to develop relationships with and get services out to somany diverse groups,” says Grimm.
The cultural dilemma Digging into these new populations was a challenge. The Partnership began by spearheading a needs assessment of the region’s aging population. But the survey, conducted in 2000, raised one significant red flag: A full 87% of the assessment’s respondents were Caucasian. By the early 2000s, just 30% of Fremont’s population was Caucasian — offering a clear sign that the Partnership was missing out on a significant chunk of the city’s aging citizens. “The assessment just didn’t reflect the community at large,” says Grimm. “We needed to build relationships with different ethnic communities.”
But how to tap into tightly knit immigrant communities to learn about their elders? How could the Partnership cross the cultural divide to deliver its message to each and every one of these groups? By the early 2000s, Asians and Southeast Asians from China, Taiwan, India, Pakistan and elsewhere had become the dominant demographic group in Fremont. The city also had burgeoning Middle Eastern and Hispanic populations — all groups with which the Partnership historically had relatively little contact.
Step one was tweaking the Partnership’s infrastructure: It began hiring staffers fluent in languages such as Farsi, Urdu, Hindu and Mandarin. Those staffers acted as translators to facilitate direct communication, but also helped the Partnership bridge the culture gap, easing the introduction to these communities.
The Partnership targeted groups one by one with outreach programs. That outreach included focus groups that gathered the aging members of the communities to better identify their concerns and issues. “We started with the leaders of those communities, and that opened the door for some significant changes in how we moved forward,” says Grimm. “One of the key factors is we didn’t wait for the communities to come to us -- we sought out the communities.”
The staff had to learn to navigate different social and cultural dynamics in the various groups. Some were tentative about letting in outsiders — a reaction based on histories of poor dealings with government services in their native countries. And simply running a focus group required a tailored strategy for each group. For example, a Chinese group of aging citizens may have responded well to a quiet roundtable discussion, but a group of Afghan seniors preferred a more free-form discussion among all the participants. “We learned a lot from those initial dialogues about how to communicate with those cultural groups,” says Suzanne Shenfil, human services director for the City of Fremont. “Each group had a very different dynamic. But by the end of the day, they answered the same questions and got to the same place.
Those communities reacted positively to the focus groups — particularly because the Partnership trained leaders from different ethnic and cultural groups to facilitate and present. “They did the presentations in their own languages,” says Shenfil. “And the groups felt very honored that someone would ask them what their needs and opinions were.”
Upon gaining access to these communities, the Partnership began tracking the concerns of their aging populations, which ranged from basic health issues to questions about how to use transportation resources. Some lived with their extended families while others had lived alone and had weak support networks. Housing affordability and accessibility was an issue, as was an understanding of Fremont’s basic social services infrastructure.
“A lot of elders come from cultures where, if they stayed in their own country, they would have been highly respected and been the head of their household,” says Shenfil. “Now, they come and live with a son and daughter-in-law who both work. They don’t understand the bus system, don’t understand how to get around and don’t have contact with other elders.”
Taking action The Partnership responded to these issues by bringing together issues and concerns from the various groups and developing community-wide solutions. That was a clear shift from the previous plan to build solutions specific to each group, but the Partnership shifted its thinking because it wanted to develop a broader region-wide approach. “We saw the wisdom in that and shifted our focus,” says Grimm. “We brought in representatives from each community to talk about what their communities needed, and integrated those needs into a larger strategic plan for the area. It was sort of a building process where the pieces became part of a larger whole.”
To help these communities of aging adults get better acquainted with each other and with their local areas, the Partnership developed transit training groups that helped participants get to museums, shopping centers, restaurants and local parks. A community ambassadors program was developed in conjunction with geriatric programs at Stanford University and San Jose State University, which trained volunteers from seven ethnic and faith-based groups about resources their elders might need.
The Partnership also tackled several health issues in the various communities. Its Afghan Health Promoter program, in which volunteers were trained and worked with the county public health department, did targeted health care work with the Afghan community, helping to educate aging adults about such things as diabetes management. And since many in that community suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders, a mental health component — which included creation of a mobile mental health team — was developed to work with those citizens.
The success of the Partnership is rooted in the collaboration between the City of Fremont Human Services Department, the Tri-City Elder Coalition, and its many partner agencies, businesses, churches and organizations. “With a Partnership, I think you get a better product,” says Shenfil. “It takes a lot of energy and effort to collaborate, but you have people with multiple perspectives, and in the end you get a much better result.”
What’s more, the Pathways to Positive Aging Partnership of the tri-city region has taken a leading role in leveraging better services to the aging adult community, which previously had been underserved — especially as the city’s population grew and became more diverse. “Because demographics have changed so much, people often think that government will fix everything,” says Shenfil. “But sometimes, government can’t fix it. It’s important to help build capacity in these communities, especially among the newer groups. You can engage them in civic life and tell them they have a voice and can stay effective in the community. We’ve done that with this Partnership.”