Government Services Delivery
MoCoPAAN advocates for equity in the county
government’s policies and practices as they relate to Asian American communities.
Asian Americans are largely an immigrant community and one of the fastest-growing populations in Montgomery County, now 16% of county residents. The county works to support a thriving community, and sustaining that community relies on community members to support and to effectively advocate for their community's needs.
MoCoPAAN envisions a county where immigrants – regardless of their language, community, political connections or power or wealth - can navigate a system built on transparent, accessible information and decision-making.
To foster that vision, MoCoPAAN calls on the county government to take an equity lens toward the following five areas: 1) funding 2) data collection and analysis 3) community outreach 4) programs and services coverage and 5) language access.
Funding
Asian American community serving organizations are woefully under-resourced, leading to a lack of infrastructure for Asian American organizations to organize and form coalitions and to grow advocates to speak out for community needs.
U.S. institutional funders and foundations give 34 cents to Asian American organizations for every $100 of grantmaking, according to the Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP).
MoCoPAAN encourages funders to evaluate their grant portfolios with respect to Asian American communities, consider population growth and differentiated needs among ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Specifically, funding to grow community serving organizations, develop professional staff, forge coalitions and carry out advocacy is needed.
Transparent & Disaggregated Data
Asian Americans are not a monolith — the community spans many distinct ethnic groups with different languages, resources, and challenges. Comprehensive data allows policymakers and advocates to identify community needs and barriers, target solutions, and track progress.
For example, data can reveal utilization rates of county programs and services, the ratio of county grants to needs specific to particular ethnic or socioeconomic groups, and whether there is sufficient support staff for immigrant families navigating schools, courts, or the social services system.
But Asian American data can be difficult to pinpoint.
It's often merged with data on white residents, aggregated in ways that obscure differences across ethnic and socioeconomic groups — despite Asian Americans having the widest income gap between high- and low-income members of any racial group — or simply not collected or published at all.
MoCoPAAN has used presentations, hearings, and training sessions to call on the county government to collect and publicly share more complete data on Asian Americans, disaggregated by ethnic and socioeconomic group.
Outreach to
Underrepresented Populations
County outreach has not yet deeply reached Asian American communities where they are. Communications aren't offered in the languages people speak, don't reach the ethnic media outlets and social media platforms people actually use, and aren't culturally competent or framed in terms that resonate with the audience.
Strong, cohesive communities rely on a shared understanding of the news around them.
At a sensitive time when underrepresented communities are under attack, the trend needs to be toward stronger ties — not fragmentation and fear-driven retreat into ethnic enclaves. The speed and reach of mis/disinformation only heightens this threat to community stability.
MoCoPAAN has testified about the need to reach communities that don't rely on the county government's traditional modes of communication. MoCoPAAN is also a thought leader in an action roundtable of community leaders — convened by Leadership Montgomery — that has identified communication as the key lever for improving civic participation among groups that haven't traditionally been engaged.
Programs and Services Coverage
Given the Asian American community's rapid growth in the county — now 16% of the total population — has county service delivery kept pace? Key questions remain open: whether funding for community organizations that provide social services is sufficient, whether there are enough navigator staff across county government and nonprofits to help immigrants find social, legal, and health services, and whether the county is collecting the right data to evaluate whether all communities are receiving programs and services evenly.
A persistent risk is the model minority myth — the idea that averaged socioeconomic data across Asian Americans signals the community doesn't need help, when in fact significant pockets face real hardship. Left unexamined, this myth can quietly shape how the county allocates funding and delivers programs, overlooking need rather than addressing it.
Ultimately, equitable service delivery is where funding, data collection, outreach, and language access all converge. MoCoPAAN is in conversation with allies about whether county programs and services reach all residents at rates commensurate with population growth, and whether they're funded and delivered adequately to meet actual need — not determined by who has political power, connections, wealth, or advocacy clout.
Language Access
Montgomery County is home to a fast-growing Asian American community that speaks more than three dozen Asian languages.
While the County Executive adopted a Limited English Proficiency (LEP) policy in 2010, the plans adopted by county agencies and any progress reports on the plans’ implementation are not public. Of particular interest is the means by which the county has made the language access resources known to the communities who are stand to benefit from the LEP plans.
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Further, if county services, forms, and communications remain available only in English or a limited set of translated languages, the gap leaves residents unable to fully understand their rights, apply for benefits, communicate with schools, or navigate the courts and social services system — often forcing them to rely on informal translation from family members, including children, or to forgo services altogether.
Without adequate interpretation and translation, equity in access to government programs remains out of reach no matter how well-designed those programs are.
MoCoPAAN advocates for the county to strengthen language access by expanding translation of vital documents and public-facing communications and making residents aware of their language access rights.