My work ▸ MinKwon Center
Challenge
Get immigrant communities to register for a Covid-19 vaccine.
Solution
Improve vaccine equity and curb misinformation by designing multilingual resources that better meet the needs of immigrants.
Impact
Expanded access to reliable vaccine information and held outreach events that engaged 600+ people in NYC.
The MinKwon Center for Community Action is a nonprofit organization that serves the needs of Korean and Asian immigrant communities in NYC.
Based in a city where nearly a quarter of Asian adults lived in poverty in 2020, many of MinKwon’s community members have limited resources, or are undocumented.
My journey with MinKwon started in the spring of 2021, when I joined an all-volunteer team to help people register for a Covid-19 vaccine. This was during a time when vaccine access was highly inequitable: fast internet, digital literacy skills, English proficiency, and more were necessary to schedule your first dose.
The urgent need to improve access and education led me to say “yes” to the most challenging job I’ve ever had: MinKwon’s first Covid-19 vaccine outreach associate.
My part-time role was tied to a grant, and we only had two months to make a measurable impact. So, time was very much of the essence.
Volunteers talking with a community member at an outreach event.
While talking with local community members and studying up on health inequities in immigrant communities, it became clear that misinformation and the lack of access to reliable resources in Korean and Chinese were key causes of vaccine hesitancy.
That’s why I partnered with the communications team to lead the launch of a new, multilingual web page: minkwon.org/covid. (Please note that the current page has content I didn’t design.)
The web page became a go-to resource for reliable and relevant vaccine information, and builds on MinKwon’s long history as a trusted community hub.
I also designed new pamphlets that addressed common safety concerns and benefits of the vaccines, and repurposed them into shareable social media posts. The content and vibrant design was geared towards families because multigenerational living is common among Asian immigrants.
Since MinKwon held events in Queens, the most linguistically-rich neighborhood in the world, our volunteers helped us translate the pamphlets into the most-used languages in our outreach areas: Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and Bangla.
By expanding language access, we were able to meet the needs of more people—especially Spanish-speaking communities that were disproportionately hit by the pandemic and had lower vaccination rates.
Spanish and Korean vaccine pamphlets at laundromat waiting areas.
Another group with low vaccination rates across the nation: people under 18. NYC public schools were reopening for in-person classes next month, so I worked with media partners to plan, script, and translate a vaccine Q&A video with a bilingual pediatrician. The Q&A was tailored to caregivers of young students and shared on YouTube to help curb misinformation.
Concurrently, I quickly organized a peer-to-peer youth text banking event. The goal was to help student participants initiate empathetic vaccine conversations with peers who weren’t vaccinated yet. (In retrospect, I can’t believe I had the audacity to entertain a group of teens!)
Some of the brave students shared their vaccination stories for a social media post.
All throughout July and August 2021, I led and organized multiple tabling and canvassing events in Flushing and Jamaica, Queens that reached more than 600 people.
As someone whose career revolved around online communities, it was refreshing (and terrifying) to engage with my local community on the streets where we’d normally walk past each other.
My most memorable win was escorting a Spanish-speaking community member to get vaccinated at the nearest site, and using the Google Translate app to explain how to get his vaccine incentive. This made all the sweating worth it.
🌲 For a deeper case study, send me an email.
Thanks to
The many volunteers who showed up for their community and helped translate our outreach materials. Lots of love to the MinKwon team for growing my commitment to collective care, and for giving me a chance to pay it forward to the city where I was born and raised. 💗
Covid-19 Vaccine Information Pamphlet
Available in Korean, Chinese, Spanish, and Bangla.
← View all work or ↑ Back to top
