This project launched in February 2018 and is ongoing. MPR News Somali is growing our audience among people who speak the second most common language in Minnesota by combining content from the BBC World Service with translated local content from MPR News and by engaging the Somali community online, through partnerships and via social media.
MPR is supposed to serve the state of Minnesota, but we haven’t done much to serve the growing Somali-speaking population in the Twin Cities and across the state. As this growing part of our population that was increasingly targeted by misinformation and hate, we were compelled to launch this initiative as a way to increase awareness about Minnesota within the Somali-speaking community and use this opportunity to listen to this community about what matters to them and how MPR News can best meet their information needs.