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Samiullah Dawoody runs his own tax business, but some members of the Sacramento Afghan community call him a caseworker.
With his fluency in Pashto, Farsi, Urdu and English, Dawoody said he has helped hundreds of people apply for food assistance, healthcare and driver’s licenses. People bring him questions on issues ranging from job training opportunities to school paperwork.
The City of Sacramento’s Community Ambassador Program recognizes the role Dawoody serves in breaking down language and cultural barriers to accessing information and resources. He’s one of 18 people the program selected this year to support and train so they can more effectively share city resources as well as community concerns.
Compared to when he immigrated to Sacramento in 2017, Dawoody said Afghans who moved here after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 were less prepared for the cultural shift. City government topics such as the budget and the 2040 Parks Plan affect them, but Dawoody said they need interpretation in order to give feedback in workshops.
“As an ambassador of [the] Afghan community, I can pass and convey the message that every male and female has the right to participate in such activities,” Dawoody said. “With providing them the information or the tools that they need, I think we can remove part of these barriers.”
The program pays ambassadors for translation and interpretation services as needed, said Lynette Hall, the city’s community engagement manager. It also gives them an annual stipend of $6,000 and allows them to apply for up to $1,500 for a project or event. Funding comes from Measure U, the city’s 1-cent sales tax.
The city has long relied on community members to spread the word about opportunities, but Hall said compensation is one way the program tries to make those relationships more two-sided. Instead of just emailing out information, Hall said the Neighborhood Development Action Team asks for feedback and works with ambassadors who have different levels of experience with technology.
All ambassadors meet together with staff for three hours each month to eat dinner, discuss city programs or initiatives and go over questions. Staff also check in with ambassadors between the meetings and hold mandatory training every three months. They don’t tell ambassadors how to communicate the information, Hall said, because they are the experts on their own communities.
Community Engagement Manager Lynette Hall speaks to community ambassadors at Sacramento City Hall on Wednesday, April 24, 2024.Kristin Lam/CapRadio“A lot of the things that we do in community engagement starts with trust and building trust and so ambassadors are already trusted messengers in their communities,” Hall said.
O’Shay Johnson participated in the program last year, but said he still shares city opportunities like grants and job postings. He lives in and grew up in Strawberry Manor, has a large family in the area and is the director of I Am ManPower Academy, a youth development program using sports to teach anger management, conflict resolution and financial literacy.
While his neighbors might see a city employee as a suspicious outsider, Johnson said people know him personally, both from before and after he served 27 years in prison. Johnson said his family and youth football and basketball teams provide a platform for him to bring information about city resources directly to families.
As an ambassador, he brought flyers from city trainings to events and took notes on people’s questions, including about delayed responses to the 311 customer service line regarding abandoned cars or trash on the streets.
“The ambassador program allows us to take that back to the city in real time,” Johnson said. “I think that it doesn't work if we just takin’ information to the community but the city doesn’t have no feedback.”
O’Shay Johnson at Hagginwood Park in Sacramento on Thursday, April 25, 2024. Johnson served as a 2023 community ambassador.Kristin Lam/CapRadio
Wanting to get community feedback drove the city to create the program in 2022, Hall said. It began as a pilot project focusing on the Stockton Boulevard Plan and Aggie Square because the city found cultural and language barriers prevented people from feeling engaged or understanding the surveys.
The program recruited six ambassadors fluent in languages spoken in the area, Hall said. Since then, the program has expanded city-wide. Some ambassadors have participated for multiple years, but Hall said staff encourage new people to apply, too.
“We can't expect that one African American or one Latino represents that whole community, right?” Hall said. “There's a lot of differences even within those communities and so bringing in new voices helps.”
Linda Ng, an ambassador in 2022 and 2023, agreed it’s important for the program to reflect the diversity of ethnicities and dialects in Sacramento. She works as the president of OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates, a non-profit advocacy organization for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Ng is fluent in Cantonese, but not Mandarin and said she and the ambassadors she served with could only reach part of the city’s Asian population. Sacramento has more than just Vietnamese, Hmong and Chinese communities, Ng said.
“Almost every single Asian culture is here, but we are not reaching out to many people,” Ng said. “We are limited.”
Ng added serving as an ambassador isn’t a full-time job. If the city budget allows, Ng said she would like to see expanded efforts to increase outreach. But the hiring freeze related to the $66 million budget deficit has prevented the city from employing a language access coordinator. The city needs to work with unions on conditions to fill the role, City Manager Howard Chan said at a recent budget hearing.
The proposed budget doesn’t include any cuts to the ambassador program. Those interested in applying for the 2025 group can fill out a notification form on the city’s website.
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