WUWM's community engagement coordinator Rafa Muñoz-Echavarria is leaving the team after a year and a half. He is joining City Bureau's Documenters Network as their network coordinator.
While at WUWM, Rafa met with many community organizations, built partnerships and produced content focused on underrepresented and underserved Milwaukeeans via Instagram live and interviews. He says he's most proud of WUWM's Voter Guide, which won several awards, including a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award.
Rafa shared some highlights from his time at WUWM with general manager David Lee.
David: Part of your role was making external relationships and coalitions, but what has been your favorite part of building internal relationships at WUWM?
Rafa: Understanding where WUWM was and where we wanted to go was essential. So I met individually with most, if not all, of our newsroom, and most, if not everybody, in Lake Effect to get a grasp. Community engagement would never have the impact that it could if it was just me going out to events or if it was me trying to build external partnerships. It always mattered how much internal work we could do to ensure that all of our reporters and content included community engagement values.
The most fun I had was with our outings, like most recently at Juneteenth. Getting to spend that time with our reporters and our producers and seeing them engage with the public differently and helping them, giving them tips and pointers and a framework to work with because their day-to-day is in a studio usually like we are right now, and yes, they do interviews out in the community. Still, it's a different type of engagement. So it's been fun seeing our team open up to those experiences and getting more comfortable with them.
David: What's the one thing you're to miss about working with the Milwaukee community?
Rafa: The people, and I know everybody says, "I'm gonna miss the people," but I really do think the people here at WUWM, the community members, the friends and family that I have here are just kind of a testament to the strength and the resilience of our community, especially like living here through the beginning of the pandemic.
I worked in the service industry for many years before I did this type of work, and it was really heartbreaking to see restaurants close — not just because they had to, but closing because they couldn't come back — and seeing friends and coworkers being affected by that was really hard.
So the food I will miss first and foremost, and the local connections I've made here — like the people I've met here in media, neighborhood organizations, associations and local nonprofits. Every time I would go out and do an outing or, you know, talk to these folks, it's always reenergized me. Through their work, I know there's so much hope for the city to get better because we all care and want it to get better.
