How Government Can Use Strategic Partnerships to Serve Millions – with Adriana Argaiz

by | May 6, 2019 | Podcast | 0 comments

This week, John met with Adriana Argaiz, Consul for Community Affairs at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. Adriana is shaping the Consulate into an innovative resource center for the LA County Mexican community, which numbers in the millions. I met her at her office, where thousands of people visit every week. Adriana discussed how she has identified the Consulate as an invaluable access point to the local Mexican community and how she has experimented with partner organizations to provide non-traditional services to an under-served population.

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Episode Transcript

 

John Bwarie:    Hello, this is John Bwarie and welcome to another episode of Community Intelligence where we explore how leaders engage and build community. For this episode, I met with Adriana Argaiz, consult for community affairs at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. Adriana is shaping the consulate into an innovative resource center for the LA County Mexican community, which number’s in the millions. I met her at her office with thousands of people visit every week. Adriana discussed how she has identified the consulate as an invaluable access point to the local Mexican community, and how she’s experimented with partner organizations to provide nontraditional services to an underserved population.

Tell us, what does the Mexican Consulate do in Los Angeles, and what is a consulate?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well, the Mexican consulate is a official representation of the government of Mexico abroad. We have 50 consulates spread throughout the U.S. We have 10 in California, 11 in Texas. Well, the main reason we are here has to do with serving our population, serving the Mexican population, and of course, we have that many consulates in California and in Texas because we have that many population. The Mexican consulate here in LA is the biggest consulate we have in the world. Actually, we are more than 150 employees here, and our main purpose is to provide documentation services to the Mexicans living here. As you may be aware, we have more than a million and a half Mexicans living in LA County, Mexicans born in Mexico, out of wage.

Around 500,000 are undocumented people, so they are vulnerable, so we not only provide them with documentation like passports or matriculas or consular IDs as most people know them, but we also provide with their registration services. We have power of attorney services. We have legal services. We have community services. We do provide migratory advise for the people. We have a wide array of services that a lot of people really don’t know of, but the main purpose of the consoler is to provide documentation services and to be a point of connection between Mexicans living here and Mexico.

John Bwarie:    How do they find you? We’re located here just west of downtown, and the Westlake MacArthur Park district is where your headquarters is, a multistory building. 15% of LA County is what you’re talking about. That’s just LA County, let alone Ventura, Orange, all the other counties around that may be trickling in and out in terms of numbers. How do these folks find you? How do they know to come to talk to you?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well, everybody knows where we are. Word of mouth, that is important, but not only do we operate here, but we also have three mobile units that travel throughout LA County. Our jurisdiction is limited to LA county. However, there’s consulates also in Santa Ana. We have consulates in San Bernardino. We have consulates in Oxnard, and we have a consulate at San Diego and in San Diego on a central valley in Fresno, so we’re all over.

John Bwarie:    Got it.

Adriana Argaiz:  It’s never enough, of course, but we as I was telling you, we also have three mobile units that travel throughout LA county to bring the consulate services to the people, because just imagine if you live in Palmdale, you don’t really want to travel an hour and a half or two hours to come all the way down to downtown if you only need a matricula or a passport or a voting ID. If the consulate goes to you, that’s way easier and you don’t lose that much time. We have three mobile units that’s parked say for a month or two weeks in a community center or a church or a special place that is loaned to us for a month or two weeks.

We go there and provide the basic services that the consulate provides the most basic services we can give them there. The widest array of services are provided here in this office, in this big building. However, we also go to other places to provide other basic services that the people need.

John Bwarie:    How many people do you see in this building a week or a month or a day?

Adriana Argaiz:  We provide around 200,000 documents a year.

John Bwarie:    Wow.

Adriana Argaiz:  Say, we receive around 500 to a thousand people a day here.

John Bwarie:    Just five days a week?

Adriana Argaiz:  That’s five days a week. Every two weeks, we Open on Saturdays for the people that got work throughout the week and cannot lose a day, but our mobile units, we operate them Wednesday through Sunday. Of course, a lot of people cannot skip a day of work, but they can go to the mobile units on Saturday or Sunday. Basically, we’re open Monday through Sunday.

John Bwarie:    You represent an area or a region that includes about 1.5 million you said, and then you’re seeing a couple hundred thousand of them every year.

Adriana Argaiz:  Exactly.

John Bwarie:    They’re coming through your doors thousands at a time. That’s a lot of people to interact with. What is that experience? How do you manage the people part? I know there’s documents. I know there’s an official process, but how does the humanity part work?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well, this a process we have been learning over the years. We have been trying to improve our processes many years ago. Well, this has been an experience of learning of course. Many years ago, this was a very tough process for the people. Many people used to get online since 2:00 AM in the morning to wait for their appointments because their appointments were not really well managed, and people would sail their appointments. It was a very complicated thing, but nowadays, you can book your appointment either online or through a phone call, and be in and out of the consulate in an hour.

We have been working a lot in streamlining our processes and trying to do this fast for the people so that they don’t have to lose that much time.

John Bwarie:    You’ve talked about a lot of the process here, but your job is somewhat unique in my perspective. You’re not stamping passports or providing documents personally. Tell us about what it means to be the console of community. Is that the rough translation of the title?

Adriana Argaiz:  Community outreach.

John Bwarie:    Community outreach. What does that mean? We talked about the fact that the 1.5 million, they know about you word of mouth. They know what the consulate does. They know that you’re a resource for them. Why do you need to have outreach, and what are you doing every day?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well, our people not only needs documents. They need to integrate better into the society. Many of them or most of them are not going back to Mexico, or maybe they’re not going back to Mexico soon, or if they are going back to Mexico, they want to know the better ways of going back to Mexico or they want to be better equipped to go back to Mexico on a better way. What we want to do in the community outreach area is to prepare people to better integrate into this society. What we want to do is make the consulate become a resource center.

When people are waiting, we have these different people coming every day, and they won’t be back to the consulate if they don’t lose their voting ID or their passport. They won’t be back until five years later. We have different people coming every single day. What we want to do is when they are waiting there in the waiting area, we want to offer them different services that are useful for them, and then we’ll help them better integrate into this society. What do we offer them? We offer them education services. We offer them health services. We help them navigate into the health system. The health system in Mexico and the health system in this country are completely the opposite and so different.

John Bwarie:    Give me an example. I know our U.S. system because I’m a part of it, but what’s it like in Mexico?

Adriana Argaiz:  We have the popular insurance system in Mexico. Everybody’s eligible for instance, not here. At least in California, we are lucky, because in LA, you have My Health LA. Everybody’s eligible. At least it’s a basic coverage, but you can be eligible. We have all these low cost clinics. We have free services. We actually have a mini clinic here in the consulate that provides basic screenings. What do we do? We get these people that are sitting in the consulate for 60 minutes waiting for a document, and we get their attention. We let them know what we’re doing.

We let them know what’s our offer or services. We let them know how to navigate through the health system. We offer them to enroll them in My Health LA. We offer them to get some basic screenings. We get STD screenings. We get glucose screenings. We get cholesterol screenings. We have even basic ultrasounds for free. Sometimes when we have some special awareness month, we have mammograms or we have other different screenings. We partner with different institutions, nonprofits or community centers that provide different services, and we bring them to the consulates.

We provide educational services now in the consulates. We are giving English classes nowadays in the consulates. We are lucky because we are in California first, and we are lucky because we have space as well. We have noticed that people feel safe in this building. We speak their language. We don’t do much problem for them to enroll in something. Last year for instance, we started with some courses. We started doing GED preparation in Spanish. It was a huge success. We started giving English lessons in partnership with the community college. It was a huge success.

We started doing some vocational training for childcare. It was a huge success. Now, we’re doing some elder training. It is a huge success as well. We’re doing all these things in trying to bring better opportunities to the people.

John Bwarie:    You just mentioned three or four different types of partnerships. How do they go about? Are you sitting here with your staff say, “How do we find someone?” Does the community come to you and say, “We really need GED. We really need the English language?” I guess the two questions is how do you find out what your community needs, this community that’s visiting you? What’s the way to determine that, and then how do you start those partnerships once you find that out?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well, it is a long process. It works both ways. We go out and people come in. There’s many studies letting us know what the Hispanic community looks like in this country. They are vulnerable. They are underserved. They have low educational levels. They have low English proficiency. They are dropouts from high school. They do not stay in the university once they are there. We pretty much have an idea of what their needs are, so we start trying and it’s a hit… We try and attempt to do things. Sometimes, we fail of course, but sometimes we really hit the jackpot.

I think we’ve been lucky, at least, with our educational initiatives. Some of them have been really successful. What we’re doing now has been really successful for instance, and we’re trying to do different things to bring the community together and to offer them alternatives to better improve their quality of living. Some other things we’re doing and something that we started a few years ago, two years ago actually is mental health services. We’re noticing through our partnerships and through the collaborations that we already have with different civil society organizations, we were noticing then that the community was really restless when the new government started, all these talking and all these things going on, all these news.

We’re putting our people on a very nervous state of mind, so we decided to do some mental health activities in the consulate. We started doing some group therapies. Then we had been working on health for a long time, and we have a very successful model on health, on prevention, but we didn’t have mental health. We started working on that. Unfortunately, it’s been really successful. Why? Because there’s a huge need for mental health services for the underserved population. We have a mental health model now serving the community. We have been-

John Bwarie:    Is that here or are you going out to their…

Adriana Argaiz:  It is here. We do not have the resources yet to go out unfortunately because everything costs money and our budget is close to zero or zero, but we’ve been lucky to be able to partner with different institutions and academic institutions that need their students to do their practices. That’s the way we started. We brought some students to do some consultations being supervised, so we started offering some advice. We started doing some groups, and now we have a mental health model. We have some institutions coming and offering consultations here in the consulate. We see a big need, and we’re trying to establish a model here in the consulate for that for instance.

We have financial literacy services. We now are a vital center. We offer free taxes. Tomorrow, we finish the tax season, and we have done at least 400 tax preparations as of today. No, we’re finished next week actually on the 15th. It’s next week. We’ve been lucky to offer all these services to the community. The way we announced them is we know you have all these people sitting there, every hour, different people sitting there. They cannot check their cell phones, so we use that time to let them know what we’re doing to offer them more services, and we bring them over.

John Bwarie:    Every time you answer a question, you reveal more of this partnership and this work. Do you know how many partners you’re working with right now, if you could do the summary?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well, I know the numbers. For instance, on our health module, we have 150 different with partners and this is between different nonprofits, hospitals, community clinics, associations, different groups. We also work with hometown associations. These are the immigrants clubs. We have 400. We worked two different levels with different groups, of course. There’s 400 registered here. Then we have, I don’t know, financial institutions. That’s the most difficult I would say, but we work with around 20 to 30 different financial institutions.

We participate in a lot of forums. We try to go out and meet people. I think connecting is very important. That’s when you see the work of others and try to bring it here or try to go somewhere else.

John Bwarie:    When you’re out connecting, what does that look like? Are you being specific? Are you responding to invitations or are you trying to create the space for you to meet the people you need to meet? What’s that like?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well, we go out and we invite people over. That’s the way we go. We work a lot, for instance, with community colleges. We believe that is a very important area of our work because many of our Hispanic students, they don’t know if they want to go to college. They don’t know if they can go to college, so we give them community colleges as an option so that they can start thinking about college. For instance, we visited the community colleges. We offer them the consulate as a space where they can promote their services.

We invite them over. We do community college day at the consulate. We have donated at least two or three years in a row now. We invite the community colleges of all the LA district. We have a very good collaboration with them. They come over. They give the classes that we have in the consulate for instance. It is not us giving the classes because we do not have the resources to give that classes nor the knowledge of course, so we bring them over. We work with different partners, and we go to them, and then they come to us because we are a valuable resource for them too.

We have a captive audience that changes every single hour of every single day for the next five years. Unless you lose your matricula, you won’t be back in the next five years. I think we’re a valuable place to come over.

John Bwarie:    You mentioned that you do a lot around education, a lot of health, mental health. You mentioned something very briefly about older adult and child caregiving. What does that partnership look like?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well, this is part of our collaboration with East LA College. For instance, we started with childcare training last year, and it was a huge success. We needed to do some vocational training. We wanted to train people for work, and we decided to do this childcare training course and it was a huge success. We had 120 people registered. We couldn’t fit them all, so we only had 80 people. That’s the ones we could fit in the room. They came for five weeks in a row, and it was an intensive course. They made a hundred hours, and 74 graduated.

John Bwarie:    That’s a great percentage.

Adriana Argaiz:  We even had a lady that came every single day from Bakersfield. Can you imagine that?

John Bwarie:    Wow.

Adriana Argaiz:  She opened her daycare in January, I believe. We had a lady that was working as a nanny in San Francisco. They paid her to come over for the five weeks. It was funny, because the course was in Spanish. We didn’t put any restrictions. We were like, “You want to come over, come over. We don’t care who you are, what you do. You’re welcome.” We removed the obstacles, and I think that’s very important. We removed the obstacles. We don’t make you go to a community college. We don’t make you go find an office. We don’t make you feel intimidated to go to these huge building or anything. We just need an email or we just need a phone call.

The course is in Spanish. This was something that we ask the people that started this course with us, “Why did you come in?” They were like, “Because it’s easy, because it’s in Spanish, because it was easy to come for me.”

John Bwarie:    They got credit for is it’s just education?

Adriana Argaiz:  It’s a no-credit course but they receive a certificate. What we saw after that course is that they do receive the certificate and everything and they can get started with their own business and everything, but we needed to get going and do something else because once they finish, some of them will start working. Some others won’t, but we needed to prepare them more. We needed to put some other factors into the equation, for instance, a financial component. After we finish this course, we started this other one because we wanted to give a more comprehensive education.

We started this course with at home elder training. It’s nonmedical, and it’s still five weeks. We did it over a term, but now we’re mixing up the financial literacy component as well. We’re coaching as small cohort of students, and we’re helping them plan for their business. We’re helping them learn what’s the economic equation behind taking care of an adult, how do they have to charge, how do they have to do their taxes, how can they start their business? Because we believe that way, when they finish the course, they want to go back home and just go back home, but they can start their own business.

We’re trying to do some extra stuff. We’re also doing a CPR course for the students as an extra part for the course. We’re trying to be more and more and more holistic, if that’s a word that can be used in this aspect. We’re trying to be more comprehensive in a way. This has been also very successful. It’s been running since January, and it will finish in early May. We’ve had 55 students, and we’re planning to do the childcare course again and complimented with the financial part as well.

My idea with the community resources or the community outreach thing is to make the consulate be not only a place where you get documentation done, but a resource center, a place where you can come and ask for information on other things, not only your documentation thing from Mexico or your matricula or your passport, but a place where you can ask about your education. Something we always say, we focus a lot on adult education because what we say is that many of our immigrants, they put their dreams on their kids. They say, “I’m going to put all my dreams, all I couldn’t do is put on my kid.”

Of course, we can still do things. We see it on these ladies. They’re 50 or 60, and they’ve been working all their lives but they can still do things. This is exactly what they’re doing. They’re learning that they can be empowered, that they can work, that they can earn money, and that they are intelligent because they came here when they were really young and they’ve been working nonstop for years, and they haven’t had a chance to study. We’re trying to give them that chance, and they are really enthusiastic. That’s our idea of doing all these in the consulate.

John Bwarie:    You said that your approach to community in these programs and partnerships is trial and error. Sometimes, we talked a lot about your success, but what about that error? When is the time where you tried something and then it didn’t work?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well-

John Bwarie:    There’s so much to learn from what doesn’t work just as much as from that does.

Adriana Argaiz:  Definitely. For instance, we have had some initiatives. There’s this law that is called is Senate bill 1159. It is a very important law that was published on 2016. This law allows you to obtain a license on 43 different professions with only an ITIN. You don’t need a social security number. There’s 43 bureaus, professional bureaus that now issue licenses without the need of having a social security number. We started organizing these forums with the different bureaus, and we started having a huge success because what does it mean?

It means that you no longer have to be documented to be able to have your contractor license. If you’re a contractor with a license, now you can be bonded and insured, and that gives you a whole different type of security as a person and as a worker, even though you’re undocumented. We had the contractor bureau come all the way from Sacramento. We started having the cosmetology bureau coming all the way from Sacramento, and we had hundreds of people coming over, but then we had an experience that wasn’t that successful, which was the medical bureau. It was such an experience from which we learned a lot.

What it brought us was that not all the processes are the same and not all the processes are as easy. Medical professions, for instance, psychological professions, psychiatric professions are so, so difficult. Being a contractor is complicated, but it’s straightforward, but some other professions are so difficult. These forums that we had, these sessions that we had, we had 300 people and everybody left happy and satisfied and willing to do their process and everything, but the medical bureau, we had 50 people or 60 people showed up, and they were really disappointed because the process is so, so, so, so, so complicated.

It means that no matter how old are you, you really have to come to states and become a doctor again, pretty much, pretty much. It’s not like that of course, but pretty much. What we learned is that sometimes we really have to go through everything, study a little bit more, talk to the whoever actors are taking part in the process, and study the process again and again and again. We’re doing it again with the nursing profession because there’s a lot of Mexican nurses that have come over and don’t know how to do it to either revalidate their studies or to get their license here.

We’re trying to do it again, but now, the way we are doing it is that we’re having some previous conversations with the people from the bureau so that we don’t do the same. It is a process of learning. Some things are easier. Some others are not. Also, promotion of events, sometimes you expect you’re going to have 500 people and you have 50, and you put so much effort on it. It happens, but of course, we do not have a budget. We rely on PSAs. We rely on word of mouth. We rely on luck, and that’s it. I mean, we’re poor. That’s it. It doesn’t matter.

John Bwarie:    You do all this stuff on a shoestring, budget.

Adriana Argaiz:  It’s always like that.

John Bwarie:    So that partnership is essential. If you don’t have the partner, you can’t really do anything.

Adriana Argaiz:  We rely on partners for everything, absolutely everything. Our budget is close to zero, but we know we have a lot to offer. We know we have a lot to offer because we have a name. We have the community. We have a reputation, and we work hard. I think that’s sometimes enough. There’s a lot of organizations that want to serve our community, and it’s useful for everybody to have a educated and a healthy and a wealthy community. It serves everyone. I think we provide the opportunity for many agencies, for many organizations, for many nonprofits, for many different people to come and serve their purpose here.

We invite many institutions to come over to do their work and to serve their purpose here. W work with them. We invite them to be part of our projects.

John Bwarie:    You talked a lot about the people who serve your population. I’m aware that LA County has a lot of councilor offices from other countries around the globe. Do you have any interaction? What’s that like within your community? You’re a special person and that you’re a resident of Mexico that comes here and works, and your job is to represent the government. You’re a government official of another country in the middle of 10 million people just… LA County’s huge, right? Then there’s this other community, if you will, of New Zealand and France and et cetera, et cetera.

It goes around the globe. What kind of interaction do you have with your counterparts, or do you share success and trials with them to try to learn from each other? Do they even do this kind of work?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well, we share our experiences a lot, especially with our central American brothers. If we lack resources, they lack them even more. They need space and they need resources much more than we do. We are very lucky because we have had these community for the longest time ever. We’ve been living here forever, and this consulate has been here for the last, what, 40 years. We’ve been here since the early ’80s in this beautiful building, big building. We’ve been lucky to have a gorgeous space, a very big space.

We’ve been lucky to have a policy that has taken into account our immigrant populations since the last 20 to 30 years. There’s a diasporic policy in place, and some other countries do not have this. Sometimes, they limit their operations to just issuing passports or matricula. Some other countries do not even have a matricula or any document they can issue their nationals. We share experiences with some other consulates, mainly central American consulates. We share a lot of our experiences in terms of community relations and legal protection because that’s also an area where we really thrive.

We are really well equipped, and our ministry really, really tries to do its best to help every Mexican that is abroad that has a problem. We really try to be there for them. We’d really try to share our experiences and our expertise with them.

John Bwarie:    In collaborating with them, oftentimes, you’re sharing your experience so they might be able to learn or you bring them along with work that you’re doing, because the capacity of some of your, again, the central American consulates that are local may not have the experience or the resources. Even though you have limited resources, they have even less.

Adriana Argaiz:  Exactly. For instance, if there’s a partner that is looking forward to work with the other the consulates, we can tell them, “Guatemala has a good space. Maybe they can fit you in. Why don’t you talk to the consulate general there. He’s really interested in doing this or that or that.” We really try to refer them to our partners there, because I mean they do need that. Their populations also need that. Even though our population is really vulnerable, I would say other populations are even worse. Of course, we’re always happy to help if we can.

John Bwarie:    Do you have a formal process to get that non-Mexican input for the local community? Do you have a local community advisory board?

Adriana Argaiz:  One very common practice that we have here in the consulate is to meet with our partners every three, four months with the partners on education, with the partners on health.

John Bwarie:    So you bring all the education partners together?

Adriana Argaiz:  Yeah. We try to meet every once in a while to see how we’re doing. What do you need? What do you need us to do or what do you need from us? What else can we do? We also meet with community leaders, the leaders that we usually work with. Every time we get somebody from Mexico also, we meet with community leaders here. We organize meetings because sometimes they bring projects over, and we offer them these projects. That’s a way we keep in touch with them, and we get the pulse of the community as well. We keep in touch often with them.

Some other consulates, for instance, Santa Ana, that is in Orange County, they meet with the leaders every month. For instance, different consulates do it on a different fashion, but for us, it’s like every three, four months, we meet with the leaders. Every three, four months, we meet with the health agencies, with the education agencies, and with the financial literacy agency. That’s the way it works, and that’s the way we keep the pulse of the community.

John Bwarie:    If there’s a nonprofit, a government agency or even a business that wants to connect and serve the population you’re serving, that 1.5 million Mexican immigrants or others, I think we’ve talked in the past, it could be up to three million actually that are somehow connected to the consulate here in the county.

Adriana Argaiz:  3.5

John Bwarie:    3.5. What’s the first two steps that you suggest if they want to get to know and build a relationship with that community? Maybe what they could do maybe on their own. What advice do you give them?

Adriana Argaiz:  Well, to know their community, to know who they’re serving and what exactly they want to do. I mean, I think there’s a lot written about the Hispanic community here. This city and this county, I mean, it’s Hispanic. It’s Hispanic. I always say that when I came here, I thought my English was going to improve and it’s gotten worse and worse and worse because you don’t have to speak English. I mean, you just have to go around a little bit, travel a little bit east, a little bit north, south, west and you can see how it works. We’re all over. I mean, Hispanics are all over.

I think you just have to go around a little bit to see what’s going on. You don’t have to travel far. You just have to walk around a little bit to see what’s going on, to read a little bit, and to visit some stakeholders. There’s a lot of organizations working with the community depending on what exactly you want to do. The way we usually forge these partnerships is we meet. We tell each other what we’re doing, and we see different ways to connect. There’s many avenues of collaboration between partners. They don’t necessarily have to do with either money or with presence.

It’s always useful to meet people because you never know when you’re going to recommend them for something or when they’re going to recommend you for something. That’s a way we always want to keep our options open. Every month, we have 40 to 50 different agencies coming to the consulate to offer their services. Every single day, we have different nonprofits coming to offer different services to the community, and that’s the way we roll.

John Bwarie:    Great. Adriana, we’re ready for our lightning round. I’ve got a couple of questions here. Just tell us what comes to mind. What’s your most memorable experience working in the Mexican Foreign Service?

Adriana Argaiz:  Seeing people, 70 or 80 years old, learning to read and write.

John Bwarie:    Wow. What are some of the local communities that people should visit beyond their radar that you’re working with as you’ve discovered here in Los Angeles?

Adriana Argaiz:  I would say Huntington Park.

John Bwarie:    Why? It’s my prerogative to follow up. Why Huntington Park?

Adriana Argaiz:  It is a little Mexico for me, and I would say downtown also. It is a great surprise, the piñata sewn…

John Bwarie:    On Olympic.

Adriana Argaiz:  I really love it. I mean, it’s like walking in any market in Mexico. For me, it is really exciting.

John Bwarie:    Cool. What’s one simple thing nonprofits can do to better reach your community?

Adriana Argaiz:  Speak in Spanish and do good translation.

John Bwarie:    What advice would you give a 25-year-old you? Go back in time.

Adriana Argaiz:  Oh my gosh, that’s an interesting question. Get a better self esteem and be more confident.

John Bwarie:    What was the best career decision you ever made?

Adriana Argaiz:  I would say do social work.

John Bwarie:    Last one, what so far has been your proudest professional moment?

Adriana Argaiz:  I don’t know if there’s some moment, but I think I’ve been able to accomplish a lot of things, especially in the last four years here that have made me proud. I would say it’s been a lot of really hard work that many people wouldn’t recognize, and maybe it’s work that doesn’t show that much, but I’ve been really proud of myself.

John Bwarie:    Great. Well, thanks for taking the time to talk about your work in the community here in Los Angeles representing the Mexican consulate. Thank you so much.

Adriana Argaiz:  Thank you.

John Bwarie:    Thanks for listening to Community Intelligence. For more information on this and other episodes, visit our website at stratiscope.com. At Stratiscope, we provide Community Intelligence services to businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies. Let us know how we can help you.