Mixte only had two goals when we joined forces with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ) in Riverside. It was to establish CCAEJ as the go-to environmental justice experts in the Riverside area through Mixte’s media knowledge, all based on principles of Riverside PR. CCAEJ aims to make a safer place to live, work, learn and play for people in its low-income communities of color. Mixte employed these strategies to help this important social justice organization tell its story:

• Creative Theme. We listened to staff and community members about the language that represented them best and designed a creative theme titled, “Our Voice. Our Power.” This included language, messaging and imagery designed to deliver our message, as CCAEJ’s Riverside area PR team, more effectively to residents and decision makers.
• Email Outreach. Emails kept community members connected with the latest in CCAEJ’s work, provided updates on key advocacy opportunities, celebrated the voices and victories of community members and earned end-of-year donations.
• Print Outreach. Each issue of our new Voice of the Month print newsletter highlights the voice and experiences of a community leader, framed by CCAEJ’s creative theme, to explain a key issue. The information was presented in a first-person narrative format to inspire more community leadership and communicate tangible, relatable impacts on community members in the Riverside area.
• Website and Blog. With Mixte’s knowledge in Riverside PR, CCAEJ increased its monthly readership from 145 unique visitors to 625. This was done through proper use of search engine optimization, blog building and web development.
• Social Media. The regular updates and engagements on CCAEJ’s social media accounts, like Facebook and Twitter, lead to a spike in its followers and subscribers. To be more specific, Facebook subscribers increased by 11.9 percent while CCAEJ’s Twitter followers increased by 24.5 percent.
• Mass Text Messaging. Our Riverside PR team identified the most useful and cost effective services for reaching community members through text messaging.
• Media Relations. Of all the Riverside PR work, we’re proudest of the results from our media relations campaigns. In only ten months, CCAEJ earned more than 50 pieces of news coverage, including feature newspaper articles and op-eds, statewide radio interviews and regional TV reports. Through strategic framing and always leading efforts with the voices of community members, we witnessed:
  • Historically ignored communities, like Bloomington, earn a statewide audience.
  • Voices from CCAEJ’s community framing public discussion and setting the narrative, like in coverage of the removal of the Omnitrans tanks from Westside San Bernardino.
  • Issues explained in the media with proper regard to the patterns of systemic racism and classism that caused them, rather than traditional coverage that leaves out the context of historical prejudice

“Mixte is responsible for taking CCAEJ’s communications to another level. They helped us to understand our own narrative, embrace the power of media relations and tell our story from the perspective of our community members and our staff. After just one year working with Mixte, we have grown so much and we see the potential for communications to play an important role in our fight for justice.” Jean Kayano–CCAEJ associate director.

Mixte can do this for you, too, if you just give us a call.