Article
Best Practices for Multilingual Outreach – Philadelphia
AAPI Research Leads Jacqueline Chen (MPP 2026) and Katherine Waltman (MPP 2028) spoke with local government practitioners to glean best practices for supporting immigrant communities through language access initiatives.
The population of Asians in the United States has more than doubled since 2000 including within U.S.-born and immigrant populations. And according to the Pew Research Center, 63% of U.S. Asians speak a language other than English at home. Rajawali Foundation Institute of Asia AAPI Research Leads Jacqueline Chen (MPP 2026) and Katherine Waltman (MPP 2028) spoke with local government practitioners to glean best practices for supporting immigrant communities through language access initiatives.
Language access in local government is shaped in part by Section 203 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which requires certain jurisdictions to provide language assistance for voting when a single language-minority community meets population size, limited-English proficiency, and illiteracy thresholds—criteria that frequently applies to Asian and immigrant communities. As of 2021, more than 330 jurisdictions nationwide were covered under these requirements. While Section 203 applies narrowly to voting, it has also helped establish language access as a broader civil rights and democratic participation issue, prompting many cities to extend multilingual practices across public services that immigrant communities rely on most.
Charles (Charlie) Elison is the Executive Director of the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (OIA). His team supports immigrant, refugee, and diaspora communities across the city and oversees Philadelphia’s language access program (Language Access Philly), which spans dozens of departments and hundreds of front-line staff. He previously worked at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and at FEMA in community outreach and stakeholder engagement. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you start by describing your role and explaining how language access is structured in Philadelphia?
Charles: I lead the Office of Immigrant Affairs, which is responsible for “all things immigrant, diaspora, and new American” for the City of Philadelphia. Our goal is to make sure new Philadelphians can fully participate in the city’s economic, civic, cultural, and artistic life.
Our office also oversees the citywide language access program. Every department is required, by our governing framework, to have its own language access plan and to designate a language access coordinator. We centralize the big contracts for interpretation and translation, but day-to-day implementation lives with each department.
Our team includes a program director who runs strategy and operations, and a full-time translation quality specialist who focuses on the accuracy and cultural appropriateness of materials and interpretation. We act as in-house consultants: helping departments design plans, use the contracts correctly, and troubleshoot when gaps or problems surface.
What are the biggest obstacles you face in providing multilingual outreach?
Charles: Like most governments, the biggest constraint is resources. In a perfect world, we would provide high-quality translation and interpretation for every program, in every language where there’s a need. In reality, we have to make tradeoffs.
We know what languages are spoken in Philadelphia overall, but English proficiency data is not always precise at the neighborhood or block level. We don’t have perfect, real-time metrics telling us exactly where the unmet demand is, so we rely heavily on community feedback, such as residents, community-based organizations, and our various mayoral commissions that represent diaspora communities.
The challenge is deciding where limited dollars will have the greatest impact while still honoring communities that are underserved or newly emerging.
How do you decide which languages to prioritize and where to invest?
Charles: Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods. We certainly look at citywide data, our top languages overall, Census and ACS [American Community Survey] figures, but a lot of our real insight comes from the field.
We know, for example, that certain neighborhoods have a high concentration of West African French speakers. Others have strong Karen refugee communities. If a department is planning outreach in a specific area, they’ll either know from experience or check with us and local partners: “If you’re going to this neighborhood, these are the four or five languages you really need.”
When we co-host events with community organizations, we ask them directly: Who usually comes? What languages are most common? Where is English proficiency lowest? That feedback shapes which languages we prioritize for flyers, interpreters, and follow-up.
How do you ensure materials are not just linguistically correct but also culturally appropriate?
Charles: One of our gold-standard tools is a formal language access grievance process. Any resident, or even a city employee, can flag a translation or interpretation that is inaccurate, confusing, or culturally off.
Those grievances are treated as urgent. We aim to start reviewing within about 24 hours. If it’s digital, we can often fix it quickly. If it’s printed, we’ll recall and correct it.
Our language quality specialist plays a key role. He reviews translations, tracks recurring issues, and works closely with vendors to improve quality over time. Recently, a Russian-speaking resident flagged an antiquated term that reflected an older, regional usage. While technically correct, the phrasing was not how anyone in contemporary Russia would phrase it. That level of nuance matters. We corrected it and brought it back to the community.
The broader point is that community partnership is the quality control system. The government cannot catch every nuance alone: we need residents and CBOs to tell us when something doesn’t land right.
What tools or processes does Philadelphia use to provide real-time language support?
Charles: We rely on a mix of tools so that residents can get help in their preferred language in different settings:
- “I Speak” cards: Our office distributes cards in 24 languages that say, essentially, “I speak [language] and I need help.” A resident can bring that card to any city office, hand it to a staff person, and that triggers the next step.
- Telephonic and video interpretation: Public-facing staff can call a language line and have an interpreter on the phone within minutes for common languages like Spanish, Arabic, Cantonese, Haitian Creole, Indonesian, Korean, or Karen. For less common languages, it may take a bit longer, but our contracts have standards for response times.
- In-person interpretation and equipment: City Council, for example, purchased its own language access equipment. Residents can request interpretation in advance for hearings; interpreters and headsets are ready when they arrive. Our office also maintains equipment and schedules in-person interpreters for events we host.
- Health department integration: Our health department is one of the biggest users of video interpretation. They often pre-schedule interpreters for appointments and have pathways for walk-ins to be connected quickly as well.
The key is that front-line staff know who to call—their department’s language access coordinator—and that the coordinator has a clear route to the right vendor and modality.
How do you measure translation quality and overall success?
Charles: On the technical side, we track the grievances we receive and how quickly we resolve them. But we also know many residents don’t yet know this process exists, so grievances alone are not sufficient as a metric.
For me, success looks like this:
- Community members know that city services are available in the language they’re most comfortable using, and they actually use that service.
- Community organizations and trusted messengers tell us, “This information was clear, it was in the right language, and people showed up.”
- English-speaking residents also feel safer because they know their non-English-proficient neighbors can, for example, call 911 in their own language and be understood. One of my team members has said he literally feels safer knowing his neighbor can report a fire in their home language. That’s the kind of ecosystem we want.
- When we go to events and hear positive feedback directly from residents: that they felt seen, respected, and informed, that’s the most meaningful indicator we have.
What does a “gold standard” in multilingual outreach look like for you?
Charles: A gold-standard system is one where:
- The majority of limited English proficient residents and community organizations actually know that language access exists;
- They feel confident they’ll be treated with respect when they ask for it;
- The service is consistently available and not just during a special campaign or crisis.
There’s also a consistency piece: residents shouldn’t experience a patchwork where sometimes materials are in-language and sometimes they’re not. When people see continuity, such as flyers, meetings, follow-up calls, and emergency alerts all available in their language, that’s when trust really builds.
If a city or campaign is starting from scratch, what are some quick wins to improve language accessibility?
Charles: I’d think about three big starting points:
- Choose your procurement model.
Some cities centralize contracts, like Philadelphia does: the city negotiates large interpretation/translation contracts, then departments draw on those. Other places let each department write its own contracts. For smaller municipalities, it might be more efficient simply to contract directly with local community organizations that already have bilingual staff, rather than going to a big national vendor.
- Invest in multilingual hiring.
When you hire for public-facing roles, like public information officers, outreach workers, front-desk staff, explicitly value multilingual skills in the job description. If your community has three major languages, try to ensure those are represented across your outreach team.
- Plan for crises on “blue sky” days.
My FEMA experience really reinforced this. Don’t wait for a disaster to figure out how to pay for interpreters or how to get messages out to a specific community. Run tabletop exercises with CBOs, build relationships, and put contracts in place now so you can “flip the switch” when something happens.
Even small steps—like creating a simple “I Speak” card, training staff on how to access a phone interpreter, or holding one community meeting with interpretation from day one—can send a strong signal that language access is not an afterthought.
What lessons or unintended consequences should practitioners keep in mind?
Charles: One big lesson is that diaspora communities are not monolithic. As a community grows, internal differences,—ethnic, regional, religious, or political—can become more visible in the new context.
If a city consistently uses one dialect or one subgroup as the default, other subgroups may feel invisible or even marginalized. The same outreach strategy that builds trust with one part of a community can inadvertently alienate another.
That’s why advisory commissions, steering committees, and trusted messengers are so important. They can help you understand local dynamics before you design a campaign or pick a vendor, and they can flag issues early — long before a word choice or spokesperson decision becomes a flashpoint.
Finally, how do you keep language access work from fading once a crisis or big initiative ends?
Charles: After a major event, whether it’s a disaster response or a big outreach campaign, do an after-action review. If a contract, tool, or partnership worked well, keep it on the books, even if you’re not using it at full scale year-round.
You can turn contracts “on” and “off” as needed for specific exercises or smaller outreach pushes. That lets you maintain readiness without having to fully staff a large multilingual operation every single day.
And remember: the communities that need language access most during a disaster are usually the same communities that need more support on ordinary days. If you’re only showing up in their language when something is burning or flooded, you’re missing the chance to build trust and resilience the rest of the year.
Example Resources and Campaigns from the City of Philadelphia:
Overall City of Phila Language Access Program: https://www.phila.gov/programs/language-access-philly/
Language Access Team within the Office of Immigrant Affairs: https://www.phila.gov/2025-06-23-strong-language-access-stronger-communities/
Most City Office’s Language Access Plans: https://www.phila.gov/documents/language-access-plans/
City Language Access translation/interpretation date: https://philly-stat-360.phila.gov/pages/language-access
Past Projects:
https://www.phila.gov/2019-03-11-video-10-things-to-know-about-our-language-access-services/
https://www.phl.org/newsroom/language-tools
https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-languages-spoken-services-dashboard-20221220.html
https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-multilingual-alert-system-office-emergency-management/
Recent Win: Language Access support at City Council public meetings and hearings: https://phlcouncil.com/language-services/
Jacqueline Chen (MPP 2026) is an AAPI Research Lead for the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia.
Katherine Waltman (MPP 2028) is an AAPI Research Lead for the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the Ash Center or its affiliates.