Hometown Hero: Lourdes Treviño Bailon launches STLJuntos to assist the local Spanish-speaking community during Covid-19
In March, with the Covid-19 pandemic just starting, Lourdes Treviño Bailon noticed a gap in language access for the St. Louis Spanish-speaking community. She knew the importance of letting her community know that the virus was here and not just in other states and cities.
Since then, Treviño Bailon has been leading the charge and providing language translations through an organization she co-founded with Gabriela Ramirez-Arellano called STLJuntos.
"All the information we share is provided in Spanish as we are working on filling the language gap to give our Spanish-speaking community equal opportunities to access resources and information in our region," she said.
Treviño Bailon is doing this by managing the organization's website and social media platforms to ensure that the group is sharing consistent and verified content in Spanish about the pandemic, including information about appropriate health and mental health resources.
At the same time, Treviño Bailon began to see food insecurities rise in the community. She partnered with Appetite 4 Humanity and several other small businesses and churches to provide meals to local children and families.
This summer, Treviño Bailon helped provide more than 60,000 meals to children and an additional 385 families. The second phase of the food distribution program started in September and has already provided more than 14,000 meals, as well as 20,000 masks, over 300 books and served more than 30 families in need of diapers.\