Meet Shayla Rodriguez

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shayla Rodriguez.

Hi Shayla, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Not being able to understand the different resources in your community due to a language barrier is completely real and it is a struggle, or being racially profiled because of how you look and speak is something minority communities have to suffer daily. This is what drove me to begin Bridging the Gap ATL. I founded this non-profit organization my sophomore year of high school and have been working on it since.

The purpose of my organization is to develop and promote the involvement and empowering people of color to create a safer, healthier and more educated community. I knew that the only way I could possibly do this was by first volunteering with our city, then I stepped up by managing events, people began to see my face, my community relied on me to represent our minority communities, especially the LatinX community. After almost six months, I met with “big people” such as the urban planner, city councils, even city manager to propose the idea of translating the newsletter to Spanish this would allow for non- English speaking families understand use the different resources they had in their community, after many different meetings it was eventually approved, since I was the one proposing it, I had to do the translating myself.

After six months, people that lived in my community began to call me and ask for different information I had no clue on, therefore I implemented a new program called “Charla con La Raza” which means “Talks with the people”. The mission of this program is to create a non – judgmental zone for minority people to get together and discuss different social issues we suffer. My role was to manage, organize, and promote these workshops. I would bring different lawyers, experts, and activists to discuss the social issue that the workshop was about. We discussed topics such as voting, census, health, and education. I wanted to make sure that people knew that just because they might not speak or understand English, there are still ways to make sure their voices are heard.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
No, not at all, I think knowing how to balance a community organization while being a full-time student is a big challenge, sometimes it was not just about having the workshops but the work behind each workshops, promoting, creating and canvassing was not easy especially being one person. Additionally, there were people who did not believe in my work, they thought that this was going to be a project of two months or less, but here we are fighting and increasing the engagement of LatinX in our state. Despite the different challenges, I would do it all over again!

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
During a global pandemic, my organization had to go into emergency mode because we knew and understood the financial struggle, therefore, we did food distributions every week at an apartment complex where families would come and pick up a medium size box full of vegetables and fruit for over six months aiding over four hundred families every week. While also doing this, we helped various families pay their rent, providing them one to three month worth of rent. Before schools started, we were able to give out free supplies to kids around our communities, we helped over two hundred families with school supplies.

Since originally we are a civic engagement organization, we had to get to work for the presidential elections. We knocked on seven thousand doors, sent one hundred thousand text messages reminding minority voters to go vote, and hit over thirty different apartment complexes. We did the same thing for the senate runoffs. The work never stops, there is always something new, now we are currently offering free virtual English/Spanish classes while also preparing to launch our new free financial literacy classes. The most proud moment of all of this would have to be seeing the positive outcome of everything, seeing the relief on people’s faces, assuring them that they have an organization that understands and speaks their language, having representation here for them.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Patience is key, do not get frustrated easily, especially if you are new to this industry. My biggest mistake was not knowing how to wait on the outcome, I expected the outcome the moment I did something and that is not how this works. It is a long process because people did not know who I was or why I was doing what I was doing, especially with no cost. It took me up to a year to bridge the gap between myself and other community members. Secondly, always put yourself in other people shoes, it will help you view and understand things differently. Do not be discouraged by anything that comes your way, for example, if you plan a event and only two people come, do not give up because those two people that came are grateful and you made a difference in their lives, continue to do what your doing in a fearless and never let your passion die down.

Contact Info:

• Email: info@bridgingthegap.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bridgingthegapa/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BridgingtheGapH/