When You Listen First, Community Shows Up
In a community room in Chicago, the first answers were two or three words long. People sat close to whoever they came in with. Dinner was on the table before any questions were asked, and that turned out to matter. By the end of the night, no one wanted to leave.
This is what MAF found in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago at the end of 2025: that in a moment when many people are afraid to leave their homes, go to work, or walk into a bank, the only way to understand what communities are experiencing is to listen, and to make listening possible.
For immigrant and low-income communities across the country, trust in institutions has been declining for years, and the current political climate is accelerating that erosion. ICE enforcement is spreading fear across cities. Federal policies are actively excluding longtime residents, including green card holders and legal permanent residents, from Small Business Administration loans. There have even been proposals to require banks to verify citizenship status before allowing someone to open a checking account. Each of these sends the same message: you don’t belong here.
It was in this context that MAF CEO José Quiñonez opened our first webinar, Listening First: Building Trust Through Community Conversations, with a warning:
“Without trust, this whole system can collapse.”
This post reflects on what our team shared during that conversation, and why we believe the practice of listening is one of the most important things organizations can invest in right now.
Why We Did This Work, and Why Now
When MAF and the Remitly Foundation began planning community conversations at the end of last year, we had to sit with an honest question: would people even feel safe enough to show up?
People were scared to go to work. Scared to send their children to school. Our Director of Research and Development, Arvind Bala, described the team’s deliberation openly during the webinar. Trust in institutions was deeply fragile.
And yet, the answer to whether this was the right time was because of the moment, not in spite of it. If we want to be able to respond when communities are in crisis, we need to understand what they are actually experiencing.
Over two months, we held one-on-one conversations with individuals, facilitated focus groups, spoke with partner organizations in each city, and ran user testing sessions with families engaging with MAF’s digital tools.
We reached families carrying fear, financial pressure, and uncertainty about the future. What we brought back from those rooms has shaped how we think about our work and how we think about trust itself.
Making It Possible to Show Up
Running community conversations in the middle of an immigration enforcement crisis meant that logistics carried real weight. Every practical decision was also a trust decision.
Our Partnerships Director, Efrain Segundo, described it this way:
“We didn’t just invite people. We made it possible for them to show up.”
In practice, that meant holding sessions in the evenings, at locations our partner organizations already operated, spaces where community members felt safe and familiar. It meant welcoming children, because many families cannot choose between their kids and a conversation. It meant providing dinner.
Before a single question was asked, people were already sharing a meal, which turned out to be one of the most disarming things we could have done.
Every barrier we removed was a signal. It told participants that their time mattered, that their circumstances were seen, and that we were there to be with them, not to process them.
Trust Has to Be Communicated, Not Just Intended
Getting people in the room was one thing. Earning their trust once they were there was something else.
I was in those rooms and helped facilitate these conversations, so I want to be honest about what it actually takes. People walked in with skepticism and fear that was completely reasonable. We could not assume they trusted us because we had good intentions. We had to be clear and honest up front about why we were there, what we were asking, and what we were there to do. Were we leaving room for people to opt out, to say nothing, to simply observe? Were we communicating that showing up at all was enough?
There is a lot an organization can control in these settings, and a lot it cannot. The uncertainty of that is exactly what pushes you to be more intentional. As I shared during the webinar:
“Communicating trust is about consistency between what we’re saying and how we show up. People pick up immediately on those things. If what we’re saying and what we’re doing doesn’t align, trust breaks pretty quickly.”
What Happens When Trust Is Present
Every session followed a similar arc. At the beginning, answers were short. People stayed close to whoever they came with. The room was cautious.
Then responses grew longer and more layered. People started building on each other’s ideas. They disagreed, which, as Arvind noted, takes its own kind of safety. In Chicago, a conversation about the risks of AI took an unexpected turn when one participant described it as almost romantic, something that would always tell you that you’re right. The room laughed. A much more honest conversation followed.
By the end of each session, people did not want to leave. We had to remind them that the time was up. They stayed after, kept talking, finished their food, and connected. Efrain described the shift as the difference between “a room full of strangers and a room that became a community.”
When trust was present, people shared things that were genuinely hard to say out loud. One participant talked about raising three children in San Francisco, the pressure of covering rent and bills, the weight of not knowing what the coming months would bring, and the fear of what enforcement actions could mean for their family. Others shared that they’d been targeted by financial scams, and instead of judgment, they were met with stories and resources from people in the room who had been through the same thing. They were showing up for each other.
The Difference Between Learning From People and Understanding Them
One of the moments I keep returning to from our webinar was a distinction Arvind drew between learning from communities and understanding them.
Research often starts with learning objectives and questions to answer. The implicit frame is transactional: what will this person give us? But when the goal shifts to understanding, the dynamic changes. It becomes a shared experience. The person being heard leaves feeling seen, not studied.
Arvind said it clearly:
“We should ultimately aim with our research not to take from our communities, but to give to them in the process.”
That shapes who gets invited, how questions are framed, and what an organization does with what it learns. It is also part of why, in every one of our sessions, people stayed long after we told them they were free to go.
What This Asks of All of Us
The question that closed our webinar was the most grounding one: given how much trust has eroded, what is our responsibility?
Rebuilding trust cannot happen through messaging alone. It shows up in how we act, and whether those actions are consistent over time. It means listening before acting. It means being honest about what we can and cannot change. And it means treating people as people.
Efrain offered something anyone in this sector can hold onto. It does not have to start as a large, multi-city project. It can be a single listening session. A conversation with the people you serve. The point is to start.
“Trust is built one conversation at a time. One moment at a time. One relationship at a time.”
What I keep returning to is that trust does not only benefit the organization doing the listening. It creates something for the people in the room. They leave feeling less alone. That is not incidental to good research. It is the work.
Keep the Conversation Going
This webinar is part one of a three-part series. On May 13th, we will co-host a conversation with the partner organizations that made these community conversations possible, hearing their perspective on building trust in the communities they serve. On June 4th, we will share what we learned about how immigrant communities are navigating digital financial technology today.
If this conversation resonated with you (whether you are a practitioner, a partner, a funder, or someone who simply cares about this work) we hope you will keep showing up alongside us.
Watch the full recording of Listening First: Building Trust Through Community Conversations below: