Southside Community Resources Center
4100 Hull Street Road
Richmond, VA 23224
Fax: (804) 646-8872
The Office of Immigrant and Refugee Engagement - OIRE
**Formerly known as Office of Multicultural Affairs
The City of Richmond provides free interpretation and translation services to residents when accessing city services. To learn more, call our office at 804-646-0145 or email us at askoire@rva.gov.
In 2016, the City of Richmond established the City's Language Access Plan which details the internal standards and procedures to provide services for Limited English Proficient (LEP) residents. The Language Access Plan was developed pursuant to an agreement with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and signed by the Chief Administrative Officer.
For the implementation of the Language Access Plan, OIRE designed the iSpeak Richmond campaign with a series of training courses and handouts as a tool for City employees and residents. See below for handouts.
You may view the Language Access Plan and its exhibits by clicking on the links below.
Click here to view Language Access Plan.
Is the City’s initiative and official portal for promoting information on how to access tools, services and resources in English and in other languages. The City of Richmond is committed to implement and ensure meaningful, affirmative, inclusive and purposeful access to City services to persons with Limited English Proficiency (LEP). We invite you to navigate this portal, where you will find information, tools and relevant resources about this initiative.
• iSpeak Richmond Language Identification Guide
If you have any questions about iSpeak Richmond or the Language Access Plan, please contact the City's Language Access Coordinator, Roxana Talavera-Denson, at 804-646-0932 or by email roxana.talavera-denson1@rva.gov during office hours.
If you wish to submit a complaint related to language access, please download and complete the form in the link below and submit it to askoire@rva.gov
Click here to view Language Access Complaint Form.
OIRE provides interpretation and translation services in Spanish free-of-charge to all City Departments as well as some trainings listed below.
- Language Access Services. OIRE staff provides Spanish/English interpretation during office hours. Interpretation in other languages and after-hours Spanish interpretation are available through United Language Group
- “Let’s Talk About” lecture series. OIRE hosts a monthly lecture featuring a guest speaker who will talk to City employees about his or her native culture.
- Workplace Spanish course. A 3-month course designed to help employees gain basic language skills in order to interact with Spanish-speaking City residents.
- Cultural Awareness Training. This is a course offered by OIRE designed to enhance employees’ ability to effectively serve Latino City residents.
- How to Work with Interpreters Training. This OIRE course is designed to instruct City employees in the protocols and ethical issues involved in providing services to Limited English Proficiency (LEP) residents using interpreters.
- iSpeak Richmond Orientation – This course is designed to increase awareness of and compliance with the Language Access Plan (LAP), HUD-COR Settlement Agreement, interpretation protocols, tools and documentation of interactions with LEP residents.
The following are tools for City employees to provide service to LEP customers.
- Click here to view the LEP Community Outreach Plan template
- Click here to view Language Access Service Request Form
- iSpeak Richmond Language Identification Guide
- iSpeak Richmond Card (Spa)
