New Arrivals

New Arrivals is one of many Success Stories that have been locally nominated for recognition in celebration of CDBG's 30th Anniversary.

Success Story Details

Success Story Description

The outcome-focused Minneapolis Multicultural Services (MMS, also known as New Arrivals) has as its mission to make all services offered by the City of Minneapolis accessible to all residents, including those who do not speak English, and who are of low and moderate income. MMS helps the City of Minneapolis achieve its goal of delivering consistently high quality services at a good value to its residents through this program. This effort helps achieve the city goal of making its services more accessible and user-friendly and to ensure equitable city service delivery for all communities.

In 2003 MMS worked with all city departments as well as the Municipal Building Commission and Minneapolis Public Library to improve city services for limited English-speaking residents. In addition, MMS logged over 3300 client encounters.

Staff is engaged in actively developing and maintaining positive working relationships with immigrant and refugee community-based organizations. Minneapolis is providing culturally sensitive bilingual assistance for Latino and Somali residents with city related issues. MMS also works with city departments on cultural competency issues and to streamline city services and processes to improve accessibility. In addition, MMS and the City Coordinator's office are developing and implementing a Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Plan for the City and each of its departments. MMS has a $350,000 budget, of which 34% is funded with CDBG dollars.