Polyglot Global Partners with SCRGP to Expand Outdoor Access for All
Background
Tucked away in Northeast Metro Denver is a special place for taking calm morning walks, enjoying fresh air, and basking in warm sunlight. It is a wilderness rich with wildlife, birds chirping, a babbling creek, and children laughing. It reminds some of their childhood, happy times spent with a grandparent or loved one. For others, it is a place to forget the stress of the city and remember who they are and who they are becoming. Like many urban green spaces, the Sand Creek Regional Greenway helps reduce stress, promotes mental and physical well-being, and fosters connections between community members and nature.
Established in 2000, the Sand Creek Regional Greenway Partnership (SCRGP) is a non-profit that protects, maintains, and enhances the Sand Creek Regional Greenway, a nearly 13-mile public trail and natural area. The small team of dedicated staff works tirelessly to create equitable access for all while promoting curiosity, environmental awareness, and community health.
Polyglot Global is a professional translation and interpretation company based in Denver, serving clients in the Rocky Mountain Region and across the nation. Since 2019, they have helped businesses and individuals break cultural and linguistic barriers by providing language solutions that connect the world, allowing every person to communicate seamlessly and instantly. Polyglot Global is purpose-driven and high-touch, specializing in rare and exotic languages for prescheduled or last-minute requests.
In 2022, SCRGP sought to activate the trail through a lens of equity to enhance social and environmental change efforts for communities surrounding the Greenway. To establish community engagement and foster collaboration and service, they created the Community Vision and Equity Program (CVEP). Through a series of CVEP scaffolded experiences supported by Denver University’s Center for Community Engagement to Advance Scholarship and Learning, SCRGP formed strong relationships with the community, a critical step to establishing a strong, equity-centered design process in 2023 and 2024.
SCRGP received a technical assistance grant from the National Park Service — Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance program. They also received funds from Adams County Open Space and The Colorado Health Foundation to support their community engagement strategy. This initial funding led to a grant for future physical Greenway improvements from The Colorado Health Foundation.
The Challenge
With funding secured and a strong engagement strategy in place, SCRGP shifted its focus to planning and implementation. Activating the trail equitably required high stakeholder engagement, so they began hosting “visioning workshops” with residents representing diverse identities, experiences, interests, cultures, and languages. Some residents had recently moved to the area; others had lived there for over 20 years. SCRGP quickly realized they were facing a challenge of language access, something essential to creating inclusive communities.
Language access builds trust, empowers participants, and increases participation among underserved populations. However, creating language access — which means providing reasonable access to the same services for people with limited English proficiency as for English-speaking individuals — is not always easy.
The Solution
SCRGP needed a partner to bridge language and cultural gaps within the community (in this case, English, Spanish, and Swahili), so they connected with Polyglot Global.
"We wanted to be as accessible as possible, and we acknowledge that our Greenway has a lot of languages spoken. So, we figured if we did the engagement right, we would need some assistance," said Monique Fair, SCRGP’s Executive Director.
Soon, Polyglot Global and its team were playing an integral part in the process, from translating marketing materials and surveys to sending interpreters onsite for workshops and events that required simultaneous and consecutive interpretation. They even offered an on-demand service to connect with interpreters quickly for immediate needs, such as outreach calls to potential event attendees who may need childcare or transportation to attend an event.
“Since we’ve been working with Polyglot Global for so long, we have a decent amount of folks from their team who have come out to a lot of our programs. They’re basically like an extension of our staff. They can rattle things off on their own without us having to coach them,” said Fair.
The Result
A highlight of the partnership occurred in August 2024. SCRGP hosted its annual fundraiser, “A Night on The Greenway,” in English and Spanish with the support of Polyglot Global. All guests were given a receiver to listen to a simultaneous interpretation. One guest speaker spoke for 15 minutes entirely in Spanish, and another spoke entirely in English. For that night, every attendee was equal — regardless of their language needs.
“All of our English speakers had to have the earpiece to understand, and when our English speakers had the earpiece in, our Spanish-speaking attendees were able to participate fully,” said Fair. “We got tremendous feedback from attendees. The only reason this became a reality is because we partnered with Polyglot Global to build more Spanish-speaking support.”
“SCRGP is doing a really good job of bringing more people to the table and getting more people involved. All of that has been done by making a concerted effort to connect with community members in their language,” said Andrew Johnson, Senior Project Manager for Polyglot Global. “We’ve helped put Spanish and English on equal footing so that it’s not just the Spanish speakers who have to sit in the corner and listen. Everyone is equal.”
Contact Information
To learn more about how Polyglot Global can help your company succeed, call +1 (720) 882-6718 or visit www.polyglotcolorado.com.
To learn more about programs offered by the Sand Creek Regional Greenway Partnership, visit www.sandcreekgreenway.org or send an email to scrgpstaff@sandcreekgreenway.org.