Jump is continuing to expand, with new schemes launching across the UK: from St Helens in the North West, to Torbay in the South West, and Hammersmith & Fulham closer to our London headquarters. Enabling our schemes to succeed in culturally diverse areas can be challenging, particularly when planning and delivering door-to-door campaigns.
Key to our approach to door-to-door engagement is a recognition of the barriers that may come up when engaging with residents. In particular we always employ team members with language skills that are reflective of the local demographic.
In Autumn 2015, we worked with Rochdale Borough Council to communicate the introduction of a new food waste collection service to their residents. With a large South East Asian population in parts of the Borough it was essential that our door-to-door team were able to understand residents’ concerns and communicate effectively – whether that was in English, Urdu or Punjabi! Our team also had a good cultural understanding of food waste within the Muslim community and this helped us encourage residents to use their new food waste service effectively.
Recently we also carried out a door-to-door project for Westminster City Council to inform residents about recycling electrical items. Like Rochdale, we sought to employ people with knowledge of the local area and relevant language skills – this time conducting some resident surveys in Arabic! Whilst for our scheme with East End Homes, Tower Hamlets Community Points, local recruits Fahim and Apia enabled us to engage with the mainly Bangladeshi population of the estate in their native language, and reach those that may have otherwise been missed out!
Understanding the demographics and cultural background requires careful research and consideration, and the teams we employ are key to providing an understanding of the context we operate in and help us to deliver the best possible service for each local authority we work with.
| Sarah Plant Community and Outreach Manager Local Green Points |
