We recently connected with Juliana Lopez and have shared our conversation below.

Juliana, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with talking about how you serve the underserved, because in our view this is one of the most important things the small business community does for society – by serving those who the giant corporations ignore, small business helps create a more inclusive and just world for all of us.

In late 2020 I received an Instagram DM from the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. The next thing I knew I was applying for a grant that would provide thousands of dollars to OKC Latina so we could put on fishing clinics of all things. Suddenly I was Aquatic Education certified and along with my incredible partners at the ODWC we were putting on Spring and Fall sessions of Camp OKC Latina. We were the first organization in Oklahoma to receive funding from the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation’s Vamos a Pescar program.

There are about 29 million registered anglers in the United States and only about 4 million of those anglers are Hispanic/ Latino. We’re so underserved when it comes to outdoor recreation programs. This is not because we have no desire to spend time outdoors. The Latinx community as a whole tends to spend a lot of quality time outside. From carne asadas to birthday parties and more, we’re outdoors in large numbers. Often times our lack of participation in programming is due to a lack of proper marketing to our communities. With Camp OKC Latina we use both English and Spanish in our marketing and aim to reach people across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This gets our messaging in front of a multigenerational audience. We reached 45,000+ accounts from 2021-2022 with our posts about OKC Latina. There is such an interest in free programs like ours. I think organizations simply need to try harder to access our communities.

OKC Latina serves our community by providing access to free programs for the entire family. Time spent fishing can help with improving mental health and overall wellness. This is a program that doesn’t need to pander to an underserved community to make it successful. We are the community and we choose partners who are aligned with our overall mission to reach folks in a genuine way.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

OKC Latina is a community for Latinx/e people in Oklahoma City and beyond. We exist to take up space and show the power we have in numbers. We achieve this by putting on events, fundraisers, meet-ups and more. We don’t put on a lot of culturally specific events because we recognize that others in our city do those extremely well. We put on events for Millennials and Gen-Z to come together and enjoy taking up space in the predominantly white spaces of OKC. I want to bring us out of our neighborhoods and into the larger OKC community. Putting on highly successful events like Latinx Karaoke night in the heart of OKC shows the venues and the event organizers that we’re here and they need to start programming for our community in a way they haven’t thought to before.

I started OKC Latina in late 2019 because I felt that something was missing from my life. That something turned out to be community. I needed to be around people who just understood the little things about myself that were hard to explain to outsiders. Because I do this work as essentially a passion project some things fall through the cracks. It’s sometimes hard to keep going when I get overwhelmed We have so much potential but I want folks to know that this work is hard and taxing and the way we can keep going is by having people continue to show up for us. When we put on events, show up. If you can’t show up, please share about us on social media.

Since 2019 we’ve partnered with state organizations, professional sports teams, national and local Latinx-owned brands and more. We are constantly looking for new community partners. If you’d like to work with us on a campaign or event please reach out via email at [email protected]

How did you build your audience on social media?

To build community on social media you have to spend time interacting with your current audience and reaching out to potential community members/ followers. That’s what we did to build our audience during a pandemic when the feeling of community was in short supply. I spent time interacting with community leaders, brands, and allies in the community. These people connected us with more people in the community who believe in our mission and grew our audience by word of mouth.

Some things you can do is comment on peoples’ stories to get into their primary inbox and out of the DM requests. This helps build relationships online so they hopefully translate to an in-person event attendee. One of the most important things you can do is create a content plan and stick to it. This will create a sense of consistency for your audience and help you stay on track and accountable.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I started OKC Latina in late 2019 with the intention of having an in-person event focus. This of course became impossible when a pandemic hit. To keep our community safe I had to pivot. This was an incredibly difficult thing to come to terms with because I thought my dream of creating a community was over. What I didn’t know was that everyone else’s need for community would be at an all-time high due to the extended separation caused by Covid-19.

I used my social media expertise to constantly crank out content and started featuring Latinas from around the OKC metro. This connected my audience in a way they so desperately needed. Because of our social media presence, we were offered opportunities for in-person (safely distanced) events like a partnership with the OKC Thunder and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. We let it be known that there is a huge community of Latinx folks who are such an untapped research here in Oklahoma.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/okclatina
• Facebook: facebook.com/okclatinacommunity
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/okclatina
• Twitter: twitter.com/okclatina

Image Credits
Juliana Lopez OKC Thunder