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ABOUT THE LANGUAGE ACCESS TOOLKIT
Background
In May of 2021, United Way of Waco-McLennan County and the Child Well-being Movement partners released a report called "Are the Children Well?" which detailed the current condition of our community and its children. In response to the findings from the report, a Community Action Plan was created by residents of McLennan County and released in August of 2022. The plan includes community solutions and strategies that form a road map to address and improve current county conditions and increase positive outcomes for children and their families. One of those actionable steps was to "create a language justice plan which identifies prominently spoken languages of the community, details community needs, and provides ideas for implementation within local organizations to implement strategies." As such, this toolkit was developed with the support of United Way of WacoMcLennan County and the Hispanic Leaders' Network to satisfy that action step.
To learn more about the McLennan County Child Well-being Movement and Community Action Plan please visit: www.mclennancountychildwellbeing.org
Acknowledgements
Purpose
This toolkit has come together with the primary purpose to provide easy, actionable steps for businesses and organizations to implement that will not only meet the needs of the community by increasing language access for non-native English speakers, but to help make your organization more competitive and profitable as well. We are hopeful that by implementing these steps to increase language access, you will be able to increase both client and employee recruitment and retention rates and expand internally while building productive relationships with employees and customers. We invite you to come on this journey with us as we support local efforts to advance language access throughout McLennan County.
Throughout this toolkit we will refer to ways organizations can increase language access; however, this term is intended to encompass businesses, companies, nonprofits, and the like.
in partnership with and This toolkit was developed by along with hundreds of McLennan County residents who shared their needs and aspirations for more language access in our community.
