Kosciusko Leadership Academy cadets learned about diversity initiatives in Kosciusko County from several speakers at a session on Tuesday, March 8, at the Parkview Warsaw YMCA. From left: KLA Curriculum Director Heather Lardino, KLA PR Head Liz Dewart, KLA cadet Miriel McFarland, speaker OrthoWorx Manager, Communications and Projects, Nichole Rouached, speaker Northern Indiana Hispanic Health Coalition Marketing and Events Coordinator Alexandria Sanchez, KLA Board of Directors Secretary-Treasurer Alice Hitchcock, KLA cadet Ryan Coble and KLA Advisor Nathan Conley. InkFreeNews photo by Leah Sander.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WARSAW — There is a need to address diversity issues in Kosciusko County.

That was one of the subjects addressed at Kosciusko Leadership Academy’s session on Tuesday, March 8, at the Parkview Warsaw YMCA.

The leadership academy allows participants, known as cadets, to learn about issues of importance in the county through a number of sessions. They also complete so-called White Papers, which suggest ways to improve the community.

Speaking on the topic to the cadets gathered Tuesday were OrthoWorx Manager, Communications and Projects, Nichole Rouached and Northern Indiana Hispanic Health Coalition Marketing and Events Coordinator Alexandria Sanchez.

OrthoWorx is an organization that helps support the local orthopedics industry. Rouached shared about the organization’s Diversity Committee and its work.

As part of the need for addressing diversity locally, Rouached cited a statistic from the Anti-Defamation League that 51% of Generation Z, the youngest generation in the workforce, are non-white.

OrthWorx in connection with several other entities conducted a study in 2019 which gauged how welcome different groups, including those of different races, felt in Kosciusko County. As one example from it, she noted that while those in the Latino/Latina community that responded to the survey reported being happy to live in the area, they reported being uncomfortable with expressing that culture to other people at lower rates.

She said a number of organizations are working to help meet the needs specifically of the Latino/Latina community in Kosciusko County. Those include churches Our Lady of Guadalupe and Warsaw Community Church; Grace College and Ivy Tech; Warsaw Community School’s English language classes; and Latino/Latina employee resource groups HOLA at Depuy Synthes and Juntos at Zimmer Biomet.

Another one of the organizations working to help Latinos/Latinas locally is the Northern Indiana Hispanic Health Coalition.

Sanchez works locally for NIHHC, which is based out of Elkhart.

“We’ve provided over 22,500 health screenings to over 5,600 patients,” she said. The organization has also done much work to help people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among them are that it ran a local 24/7 hotline in Spanish to help answer COVID-19-related questions.