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Spanish Speaking Community Consultation

Did you know there are over 20,000-30,000 ‪‎Spanish speaking‬ people living in ‪‎Edinburgh‬?

The consultation

Now, you may wonder why a social innovation charity gets involved in consulting the Spanish speaking community in Edinburgh. Back in 2014, three Spanish social researchers met in Edinburgh and started to think about how the Spanish Community could contribute to Edinburgh and what they could learn in return. They produced a research report that was formally launched in February 2015 at the City Chambers in Edinburgh. The report titled “The new Spanish community in Edinburgh: Situation and needs” identified a range of issues and solutions to take into consideration for the Spanish community’s integration in Scotland, but particularly in the City of Edinburgh.

After the presentation of the El Puente team’s report, many organisations agreed on holding another event involving Spanish speaking people, Scottish people, organisations and stakeholders to consider the report and how to support everyone in the process of integration.

People Know How agreed to host the event and started to contemplate the next steps towards the future gathering.

Our aim

After the release of the El Puente team’s report many issues came up as discussion points within the Spanish speaking community. People Know How was delighted and privileged to be able to take the initiative and started contacting a range of individuals, organisations and groups as we sought out those most interested in being part of an event. The main objectives of hosting an event were to:

  • Identify solutions to assist and support Spanish speaking people’s integration.
  • Gather people together in order to identify and share existing resources with those in need of them.

Our method

  • Designing a survey

  • Contacting organisations

  • Workshops

  • Banner & flyers

  • Social media and website advertising

Conclusions

We asked everyone if People Know How was to implement ideas discussed at the event, which ones they would most like to see taken forward: The answers were as follows:

  • Spanish volunteers teaching Spanish in schools.
  • Create a website to gather all the information provided by Spanish organisations in one place, and organise collaboration between organisations to publish and advertise resources for the Spanish Speaking community in Edinburgh and Scotland.
  • Work with the ESOL organisation.
  • Help to remove the language barrier.
  • Ask children and young people their views about this area.
  • Solutions to help Spanish speaking people to integrate with a particular focus on celebrating the shared heritage and history of Spanish Speaking and Scottish people.

Our report

Download our final report to find out more about this consultation

Download!