The Santo Domingo Pueblo, Kewa WIC Program provides nutrition and health education within the tribal community. The Kewa WIC program operates within the Santo Domingo Pueblo, New Mexico, with a population of approximately 2,300 community members. Due to ongoing COVID restrictions the tribes many programs are still working remotely. As a result, the Kewa WIC program has been printing and mailing required nutrition/health information to tribal families within the community.

Required outreach activities have challenged us to use other means of promoting the programs goals and objectives such as the printing and mailing of informational flyers outside the tribal community in order to reach more potential clients. Promotional outreach for the program has generated an awareness of what the Kewa WIC Program is and what it has to offer urban communities as well as other local tribal communities. This means of communication has created an opportunity to reach far beyond the smaller tribal communities and extend our mission of outreach for program enrollment purposes. This opportunity has resulted in an increase of Program participation for the much financially struggling families of New Mexico. COVID restrictions in a way has opened up a more extensive use of communication for this tribal community to accomplish its outreach goals. The Kewa WIC program will continue down this path of communication as it has proven its positive results reaching more families and increasing our program participants/clients.

In addition, to the Kewa WIC Program outreach activities outside the tribal areas promoting awareness of the program goals and objectives has been reported as a positive achievement recognized by the tribal Government. Using direct mailing has helped accomplish our program outreach goals by promoting the benefits of enrolling in the Kewa WIC Program. Many families as well as tribal community families are not aware of what Kewa WIC has to offer. This program is a free service providing not only nutrition/health information but also provides free nutrition food packages and baby formula for low-income families. Using direct mailing has been an important avenue in reaching vulnerable populations within and outside the tribal communities. The response has been favorable, and we hope to continue this important outreach goals. The Program has also come to the realization that social media does not work as well as direct mail for our older clients. Printed materials has been an effective tool for promoting the benefits and ongoing nutrition and health information. The Program has been able to design more culturally appropriate printed educational materials that are widely accepted within the tribal community.

The program is also looking into many projects that will require printing and using direct mail. One or the projects involves a nutrition/health calendar for the tribal community and distributing it to the many community members as well as to other tribal programs. We understand that printing for such a project can be costly. We are also looking into printing pamphlets and other educational materials for distribution. We would greatly appreciate any financial help to help achieve our much-needed nutrition/health goals for the tribal community. Thank you for your consideration.