Sacred Heart Community Service
Overview
Sacred Heart Community Service (SHCS) is a nonprofit organization in San Jose, California dedicated to building a community free from poverty. The organization addresses both immediate and long-term needs by providing essential services such as free food and housing assistance, job training and educational programs, and advocacy for social justice.
Sacred Heart’s energy and water assistance programs are an important part of the services offered to help communities become self-sufficient.
As an Energy Assistance Coordinator, I audit and process applications for the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP). I also assist outreach efforts, designing communication materials to help ensure critical resources reach local community members.
My contribution
Communication Design English to Chinese Translation Visual Design
The team
Timeline
August 2025–January 2026
Process
Valley Water Rate Assistance Program
The Valley Water Rate Assistance Program (VW WRAP) is a water bill assistance program in partnership with Santa Clara County Valley Water and Sacred Heart Community Service. The program provides up to a maximum of $1,000 for water relief to Santa Clara County households with low income with a current or past due residential water bill.
For this program, I designed the following materials:
- An infographic outlining the application process
- A statistics sheet highlighting Program Year 2025 achievements
- An outreach flyer
- A program business card
- A thank you card
I created an informational presentation for social services agencies and translated multiple program materials, including the WRAP application, from English to Chinese.
Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP) is a federally funded program to help income-eligible households with their energy bill. The program pays partial energy bills for income-eligible Santa Clara County households.
For this program, I designed the following materials:
- A program business card
- An outreach flyer
I translated program materials, including the HEAP application, from English to Chinese. I created an informational video for the energy help desk at Sacred Heart's Welcome Center.
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Reflection
Key responsibilities:
- Designing accessible outreach materials for multilingual audiences
- Researching and selecting appropriate fonts and layouts for different languages
- Collaborating with coworkers to proofread and validate translations
- Auditing and processing energy assistance applications in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese
- Supporting community outreach and engagement efforts with primarily elderly and Chinese-speaking populations