OUR WORK ON VACCINATION!
Since February, RWCA has been conducting proactive work towards increasing the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine in the Turkish and Kurdish-speaking community.
In collaboration with the Bridge Renewal Trust, Healthwatch Haringey, Haringey Council and others, this work has taken place through online streams, TV and radio broadcasts, translation and distribution of public health information in Turkish and Kurdish, social media promotion and in-person community outreach to assist those who require practical assistance to get vaccinated.
In the first 6 weeks of this project, uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine among Turkish-speaking over-70s increased from 65% to over 80% – the highest increase of the top 5 non-English speaking communities in Haringey. By the end of April, we had achieved nearly 80% vaccine uptake across all Turkish-speaking age groups, well above the local average.
In the run-up to the Super Sunday mass vaccination event at Tottenham Hotspurs Stadium on 20th June, RWCA volunteers handed out over 1000 Turkish and Kurdish-language leaflets to hundreds of shops and community members in the local area. We encouraged all our non-vaccinated members to attend and spent the day itself out on the street, directing everyone we saw to the Stadium for their vaccine.
While the work is far from over and we will not rest until vaccine uptake is at 100%, we at RWCA are immensely proud of our contribution, and look forward to improving our impact on public health and service engagement for the Turkish and Kurdish community in the future.
