Engagement & Insights Lead
Fiona Fernandes is Engagement & Insights Lead at Hearo. She writes about multilingual communication, inclusive feedback, and practical ways organisations can hear from more of the people they serve. Her focus is on making surveys and community engagement easier to take part in, easier to understand, and more useful for everyone involved.
18 August 2026
Halfway through a consultation you realise that most replies have come from one or two language groups, and the families or residents you were hoping t...
18 August 2026
You press send on a translated survey and then someone replies with their life story in the free-text box — in a language nobody on your team reads.
18 August 2026
You ask a parent in the school corridor to help translate a letter and suddenly their kindness becomes extra unpaid work they did not sign up for.
18 August 2026
You think a one-sentence consent line is simple until it gets mistranslated and suddenly sounds like permanent permission.
18 August 2026
You set up a stall in the community centre expecting a steady trickle of residents, then a few people arrive who clearly want to take part but hesitate...
18 August 2026
When someone can answer in their home language and by speaking, you often learn more in two minutes of audio than you would from a page of written answ...
18 August 2026
Collecting responses is only the start; the right follow-ups turn answers into trust and usable insight.