PARTNERS
Tidwell
2020 - 2021
Challenge
During the COVID-19 pandemic, stress, violence, and misinformation spread through many communities. Already facing racism, xenophobia, and being relatively new to the US, resettled refugee communities experienced exacerbated challenges, barriers, isolation, and the spread of misinformation. Tidwell, a trusted organization providing trauma-informed mental health services for refugees and immigrants in Idaho, needed a way to digitally reach the communities they serve - and needed a way to share critical mental health information about the pandemic and where to get help with people across languages and literacy levels.
RC’s Response
RC collaborated with Tidwell’s team of social workers, case managers, and therapists to collect, distill, synthesize, and craft key mental health and resource messaging for resettled refugee communities. These messages were paired with and interpreted into a series of easy to understand illustrations that depicted a multicultural range of refugee communities to reach a wide audience at all literacy levels. With these materials, our team crafted a small social media campaign for Tidwell which combated misinformation about COVID, shared tactics for coping with stress and isolation, showed resettled refugees where they could go for support, and spread the message that they were not alone.
Impact
The messages and media of the campaign were translated into multiple languages and shared widely with refugee communities in Idaho. Receiving positive feedback, Tidwell was asked to pass along the campaign materials to their extended national network of refugee service providers in the US, who in turn shared the visuals with their communities.