CULTURAL HUMILITY: A PATH TO BECOMING CULTURALLY REVERENT
Cultural Reverence is the capacity to relate to, learn from, and accept persons traditionally labelled as “different” or “other.” Cultural Reverence is grounded in the belief that there are no “disposable” people, because there is no “other.” A culturally reverent person values diversity and practices inclusivity, because it generates our mutual human growth and development so we may all achieve and experience equity.
We live in a world of diversity. For organizations to be change leaders in their communities, we must move beyond cultural competency or cultural sensitivity as concepts. These ideas create distance between us and imply a targeted outcome, rather than a lifelong journey to equity, diversity and inclusion.
At Share Collaborative, our Cultural Humility to Cultural Reverence training increases service providers’ ability to serve an increasingly diverse client population. Whether culture is defined as race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation, different ability, or another dimension, cultural humility guides our interactions.
By embracing the framework in Cultural Humility training, we expand on the cultural competence model, encouraging providers to view learning of different cultural backgrounds as a revered journey rather than a destination.
Cultural Humility to Cultural Reverence training:
- Surfaces deep respect for another’s cultural heritage, experiences, and behavioral influences.
- Invites an understanding that developing a culturally informed relationship continuously evolves in partnership with others in moment-to-moment interactions.
- Invites self-introspection to better understand our own identity and how they influence our values, perceptions, and behavior.
- Provides a guiding structure that surfaces in individuals and teams the necessary awareness, desire, and ability to relate to any person’s essence. Relating to the essence of a person requires seeing beyond appearance and presentation.
- Promotes the CLAS Standards of providing practical, equitable, understandable, and respectful quality care and services responsive to diverse cultural health beliefs and practices, preferred languages, health literacy, and other communication needs.
CULTURAL HUMILITY TO CULTURAL REVERENCE TRAINING OVERVIEW
Cultural Humility training provides a safe, nurturing space to explore principles and concepts that may be new for participants. We’ll discuss topics openly and do self-exploration on essential and relevant cultural concepts as we walk through the journey to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Self-Reflection & Lifelong Learning
Practitioners examine their own multiple cultural identities and the places where their own power, privilege, and unconscious bias is at work with served persons, colleagues, service partners, and others.
Client as Expert
We’ll explore and address the implicit power imbalance in any service relationship. This study helps us respect and understand the dynamics at work in human services.
Community as Expert
Learners will discover how to learn from the population-served about their needs, wants, and desires rather than assuming or predetermining them.
Institutional Self-Reflection & Investment
Participants explore how to engage in ongoing institutional self-assessments to determine how documents and processes (such as intakes) are or are not culturally reverent and how they might be redressed.
As we follow these four principles, individuals, teams, and organizations will journey towards becoming culturally reverent in their service and community interaction, moving towards equity, diversity, and inclusion. Our cultural humility training began in 2015 and continues to evolve to meet our changing world community’s needs.
Visit our training team page to meet each of our Cultural Humility trainers.