Cross Cultural & Diversity Quotes

Posted by: Priya Senroy on July 21, 2011 3:09 pm
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In this blog I would like to share quotes about cross culture and diversity. As a counselor and practitioner working with diverse population, these quotes have become ‘teachable moments’ for me whenever I face challenges, roadblocks or dilemmas while interacting with my clients.

Here are some quotes that I found that are both inspirational as well as eye openers for me.

 “A Senegalese poet said ‘In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.’ We must learn about other cultures in order to understand, in order to love, and in order to preserve our common world heritage.”
–Yo Yo Ma, White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy

“Strangers in a new culture see only what they know.”
-Unknown

“We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors. But, they all fit nicely into the same box.”
-Unknown

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*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

Back to Basics

Posted by: Priya Senroy on June 22, 2011 2:03 pm
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I found an interesting read in the article written below about Cultural Diversity and Successful Counseling By Jewell Hankins.

Immigrants of today seem to differ from past generations in that they seek to retain many of their cultural values and are less interested in becoming homogenized within the U.S. culture. (Rubaii-Barrett & Back, 1993) This distinctness can create a potentially complex situation for both the client and therapist who may differ substantially in their own cultural values. For successful therapy to take place, it is important for therapists to be culturally sensitive of clients and avoid stereotyping. Stereotyping is detrimental to the client/therapist relationship involving certain religions, or pertain to specific races, ages, or genders, and still others can relate to non-verbal cultural gestures that may mean different things to different cultures. Although therapists cannot possibly be experts on all cultures and their specific customs, it is important for therapists to recognize potential biases that cultural differences can create in the assessment process. (Ayonrinde, 2003)

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*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through the Arts

Posted by: Priya Senroy on May 27, 2011 10:55 am
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This 2010 video highlights the project which was done with a partnership between the International High School at LaGuardia Community College in the US and employed theatre educators, oral historians, musicians and hip hop artists to teach and direct immigrant and refugee youth in performance and writing about their lives.

Cross-Cultural Dialogue through the Arts, developed and created collaborations between disparate communities. Conceived and directed by Judith Sloan, Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through the Arts (CCDTA) is a training and mentorship program for high school students to work under the direction of professional artists. The program offered a unique hands-on opportunity for graduate and undergraduate college students to work in teams as mentors and performance collaborators with new immigrant teenagers through a multi-media arts and theatre project at the International High School at LaGuardia Community College in Queens. Students from 50 different countries, speaking almost as many languages and dialects, populate the international high school.

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*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

You Are Not One Of Us

Posted by: Priya Senroy on May 6, 2011 8:54 am
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A few years ago, I was trying to set up a focus group of lesbians for a counselling project and yes I did face many challenges in getting this project going. Working in a Scarborough community, after months of doing outreach, we finally got a group of four women interested. That number does not accurately reflect an estimated 450,000  gay or lesbian residents of the GTA. When trying to find out from this core group of women as to what was stopping the lesbians in Scarborough to take part in a focus group-my preconceived answer was met with the statement- “You are not one of us.”

Here I was thinking about society stigma, taboo being the reason but I had never thought my personal gender orientation would become a barrier in delivering a much needed service in the area.

Trained as a Creative Arts Therapist, we were taught about cultural diversity from a counselling perspective, but no one told me that I had to be of a specific group in order to work with them. And I know that at this point in time, I do not have the option to change my gender orientation or have a specific disability or have suffered a specific medical condition just to work as counsellor with any group.

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*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

Helping – Doing It For Them Or For Me? Part 1

Posted by: Guest on April 29, 2011 10:29 am
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In my work with non-mainstream clients, I’ve often thought that being an immigrant is a crucial advantage in counselling other immigrants and refugees. But it is not enough. Although once being an immigrant has helped me understand common issues brought by this population, I don’t believe it provides automatic credentials to help other newcomers.

As counselors we need to have knowledge of ourselves and important issues in our own biography, so we can not only use our strengths in session but also navigate wisely through the muddy waters of our traumas. And it is particularly within such waters that we need to look closely when trying to figure why we decided to help in the first place.

I remember vividly Dr. Alfried Langle’s lecture in which he explained how help must come from a free place within ourselves. By ‘free’ he meant that help must be a conscious decision, one in which we are not feeling obligated or compelled to help. If I feel so overruled by impulse that I can’t resist (“I can’t help it”) but to throw myself into assisting someone, there is a great danger I am feeling triggered to fix it. When in a place of trigger, I am more susceptible to reacting automatically and not fully being there for my client.

I take every experience of being triggered as an opportunity for exploration of my muddy waters. These are usually clients that I feel either very compelled to help or that I feel tremendous difficulty in helping – the common factor being that I feel the work as extremely easy or difficult.

If I am unaware of my motivations to help newcomers, I could be perpetually triggered into helping, seeing only my suffering in the client and, in fact, treating my own. The impulse to help gains an element of compulsion: I must always offer my hand in order to avoid the greater task of healing myself first.

This posting will be continued…

 

Bianca Buteri, M.A., M.Ed., is a Child and Youth Mental Health counsellor, working with diverse and mainstream clients in Metro Vancouver, BC. She became a Canadian citizen and busy mom in 2010 and shares her time with her husband and 11-month-old daughter.




*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

The Sink in the Counselling Room

Posted by: Guest on April 13, 2011 1:57 pm
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We are exposed to a high level of helplessness in the therapeutic profession. A counsellor not only must witness but also bear her client’s suffering when they feel the most exposed, lonely, ashamed, and scared. In cross-cultural counselling, feelings of loss of the homeland and ambiguity about starting out in Canada permeate the lives of newcomers in profound ways. I remember a recently immigrated family when they had their first appointment with me. At that time, I had a very small office with a sink in it – I would try not to pay attention to it as I was slightly ashamed I had a sink in my office. It was, after all, the sink in the counselling room.

Soon after they arrived, the father glanced at the sink, then back at me and by the time he sat down, we were all laughing about this displaced item in my office.

Sometime during the session, the father said he missed having a good laugh. In the midst of trying to settle into the new life in Canada, he had become really busy and there was no space or friends yet to share a good belly laugh with. He asked if I knew what he was talking about. I shared with him that I remember it being a while after I came to live here that I had that kind of experience. I was not only consumed with trying to understand how things worked most of the time, but was also dealing with my own feelings of loss.

I find there is something very touching about a family who unties from their cultural context and sets out to start over in a new country. As they go about everyday tasks, the ‘everyday’ is so foreign that all that is left are the ‘tasks’ – the space of leisure may become forgotten or delayed until things get organized. As I sit with such clients, I am always reminded of how delicate the work of re-planting a whole family in new soil is. But it is the powerful, resilient force of life they bring that will fertilize it and bring the laughter back.

Bianca Buteri, M.A., M.Ed., is a Child and Youth Mental Health counsellor, working with diverse and mainstream clients in Metro Vancouver, BC. She became a Canadian citizen and busy mom in 2010 and shares her time with her husband and 11-month-old daughter.




*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

Multicultural Infused Counselling : The Canadian Mosaic

Posted by: Priya Senroy on April 4, 2011 10:49 am
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It is a little argued fact that since its inception in 1971 multicultural policy has shaped Canada’s national identity and its international image, and has drastically altered the country’s demographic landscape. In response to these changes, counselling programs nationwide have become increasingly aware of the need to understand and respect diversity. As a result, there is a growing need for educational resources and curriculums that critically explore culturally sensitive approaches to therapy.

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*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

A Multicultural Tale of Mistrust

Posted by: Guest on March 29, 2011 1:39 pm
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“And you will not put the mental illness on my son…” said the woman with a heavy African accent and an angry voice. That was a message left over the weekend on my work phone. A few weeks into my new job as a multicultural liaison for an agency in greater Vancouver, this was what I encountered on a Monday morning, as I arrived at my office. The woman was a recent refugee from Africa. She came with her baby and a boy in Grade 3 – my client.   This boy was having a lot of trouble in school; he would not stay in class, but wander around the patio sometimes leaving school grounds, often showing aggression towards other students during recess. Various staff had attempted to make contact with him but he would withdraw, hiding under tables and hugging himself as he rocked back and fourth.

I had a meeting on Friday with the school counsellor, teacher, school liaison, my client’s mother and grandmother, and  the mother had agreed that her son would start seeing me.

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*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA