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The essential link for North Carolina’s Latinx Community

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A critical informational void

1.1M

10.7% of the state population

Latinxs

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A critical informational void

1.1M

30%

One in every 9 workers and over 24,000 DACA-eligible youth are undocumented

Latinxs

Undocumented

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, North Carolina’s Latinx population in 2019 was just over one million, representing nearly 10% of the state population. With this population having increased by 28% since 2010 (and notably faster than this population’s growth rate nationwide).

Just over 30% of Latinxs in North Carolina -- one in every 9 workers and over 24,000 DACA-eligible youth -- are undocumented.

Though overwhelmingly concentrated in five of North Carolina’s 100 counties (Mecklenburg, Wake, Forsyth, Guilford, and Durham), this population’s fastest growth is seen in the state’s rural (and significantly smaller and less populated) counties such as Duplin, Sampson, Lee, and Montgomery. This trend towards Latinx rural population growth is, in part, due to the rural dispersal of employment opportunities in the state’s agricultural and construction sectors, which are heavily dependent on immigrant labor.

North Carolina has received the most workers of any other state under the H2A temporary visa program (between 14,000-17,000 annually), a characteristic that drove us to respond to this audience segment through our podcast for farmworkers.

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A critical informational void

1.1M

150K

30%

Over 10,000 H2A visa holders

Latinxs

Undocumented

Farmworkers

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A critical informational void

1.1M

150K

30%

Latinxs

Undocumented

Farmworkers

6

Spanish newsrooms

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A critical informational void

1.1M

150K

30%

Latinxs

Undocumented

Farmworkers

6

Spanish newsrooms

1

Podcast

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Communities affected

Our stories reach first and second-generation immigrants, undocumented folks, and farmworkers for whom the informational void is greater and represents a severe threat to civic participation.

Local news about Latinx community lacks dimensionality. Our local community needs to be represented beyond the numbers & statistics at the national level. They have stories and lived experiences to contribute too.

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Latinos en la Pandemia & De Sol a Sol

This is how we started:

We started our podcast project at the onset of the pandemic. Our deep rapport with the community (as well as our audience’s wide use of mobile phones) made us confident that a podcast was the right product to bring essential coverage of the pandemic to isolated and vulnerable segments of our audience. At the time, there were no Spanish-language podcasts in the state (existing radio shows lean heavily towards entertainment content), and no other news organization in our local media ecosystem was bringing Spanish-only news to a community disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 crisis.

We produced what we thought would be two short-run podcasts: Latinos en la Pandemia (directed at the larger Latinx immigrant community in the state, but a particular focus will be given to the undocumented community) and De Sol a Sol for the state’s farmworkers. As we developed subsequent seasons, we realized there was room for stories beyond the public health crisis.

And this is what we seek to build on. Covering a wider range of community stories in one Enlace Latino NC Podcast.

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Latinxs: Beyond the numbers

Local news about Latinx community lacks dimensionality. Our local community needs to be represented beyond the numbers & statistics at the national level. They have stories and lived experiences to contribute too.
Latinxs need a local reference point that motivates them to seek the resources they need to improve their daily lives.
Our podcast is a reservoir of stories that not only serves to document the history of Latinxs in the state, but that also links people to themselves (their culture, identity), to each other and to the resources they need.

What is the Community Issue you seek to address?

Why does it matter, and how do you know it’s an issue for your community?

In the past 20 years, NC has become 10% Latino. Still, the state is primarily understood through the black and white binary. Coverage and voices of our community is muted in mainstream coverage.

Datausa.io (for data on population)

What do the current numbers show?: Immigration statistics and people who are disproportionately affected. But there’s more to us than migration…

What other dimensions will this podcast show?: how are kids faring in public schools, the reality of raising bilingual children, guidance navigating the healthcare system, buying a home, etc. Examples of what we’ve already done!

14 independent newsrooms in the state, 6 of those are in Spanish. Even fewer focus on hyperlocal news, missing out on critical stories contextualize the North Carolina Latinx experience. Our podcasts represent the first time North Carolina’s Spanish-speaking community has had access to this type of news product, and we intend to keep this accessible in order to provide fully dimensional stories about our community, and in doing so, giving people access to this dimensionality.

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A sonic snapshot of Latinxs in North Carolina

A podcast that informs and empowers North Carolina’s community of Latinx immigrants to access the resources they need to positively impact their lives.
Stories that feed into an interactive network and resource map that allow listeners to identify who to connect with, where to go, what to do next.
Community events to further promote stories and link audience and community members to one another.

The last two points are what we want to complement it with.

Refer to farmworker guide: show picture, an example of a resource map (add slide)

Example of events: present different platforms through events, linking audience to coverage and each other (show photos of forums and hurricane events, add slide)

The first two podcasts allowed us to witness how community stories and information in this format was effective in informing and empowering our community, and most importantly, that they wanted to hear more. This is why we want Enlace Latino NC Podcast to evolve, to take it to the next level of impact by sharing even more stories and information, and mapping these out in a way that links them to other community members and resources that listeners can seek out. We want to transform the podcast into more than just an episode; we want to produce episodes that lead our audience to next steps that improve their lives through connection.

We will do this through:

An interactive resource map
Community events

A podcast that resists the single story of Latinxs in the state
Weaving together a latticework of stories, people (allies) and resources
Stories that give access
Focus areas: politics, education, health, community affairs.

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Example: resource guide for farmworkers

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What we need:

	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3
Production & Editing	$20,000	$20,000	$20,000
Contract fees: Host Community engagement coordinator	$30,000	$30,000	$30,000
Technology, Equipment, Events, advertising	$15,000	$15,000	$15,000
Annual Total	$65,000	$65,000	$65,000
Three year investment needed:			$195,000

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How we will measure success:

Our goal is for our episodes to be shared and generate dialogue in different spaces (digital, physical), ultimately linking our audience to community resources and each other.

We aim for +20,000 listeners per episode
We will host one community event per season, bring people together to promote interest in different topics and provide a space for dialogue and connection
We will conduct quarterly audience surveys to evaluate the podcast and take stock of new and evolving informational needs

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Our track record

4K

8K

40K

Average listeners per episode

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Our track record

4K

8K

40K

Average listeners per episode

Total listeners for our special Sueños Migrantes series

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Our track record

4K

8K

40K

Average listeners per episode

Average listeners for election-focused episodes

Total listeners for our special Sueños Migrantes series

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Enlace Latino NC Podcast in higher education

Professor and anthropologist Hannah Gill, who is also the director of the Latino Migration Project, uses Enlace Latino NC Podcast as an educational tool in her Spanish courses at UNC Chapel Hill.

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Why Enlace Latino NC?

Enlace Latino NC’s deep rapport with the community, rigor in developing products to meet our audience’s needs, and the precedent we’ve set for reaching the most vulnerable members of our community make us uniquely suited to build on the momentum of our podcasts’ pilot seasons.

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The essential link for North Carolina’s Latinx Community