Tuesday, 16th August 2022
Cultural Awareness Training
One of the two specific recommendations in our Professional Standards/Safeguarding audit was to include more comprehensive cultural awareness/cultural safety training.
Our two Safeguarding Officers Melissa Victoriano and Tracy Sievewright have recently completed this training, and will in turn impart their new learnings across the site.
Tracy shares her experience:
The webinars I have been attending through the Safeguarding Programme have taken the form of a series of six ninety-minute sessions that have been running since mid-May 2022. The webinars were facilitated through Catholic Mission in collaboration with the WA Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office.
The course is titled “Cultural Competency for Mission”, and was a series of webinars covering six modules to understand culture, what it means in our society and in our Church, and how we implement that learning in our communities. The first few sessions were about attitude i.e. being open to new cultures, new ideas and engaging in new styles of learning, and being patient with ambiguity. We clarified the term ‘culture’ and tried to reference how different cultures operated within our own parishes.
The next week involved setting up an online portal called the “Cultural Orientations Model.” This was how we as individuals fitted into a standardised orientations model, and set up our own indicators. I found this to be one of the most interesting modules. We got to see how each of the other ten applicants fitted into the model, what our values and beliefs were, our attitudes towards self and others, our own behaviours both in the Parish and the work place and how these differed from the others. Turns out I’m quite a good listener and not as bossy as I thought! I think that was the ambulance officer part of me coming out!
Over the next few sessions, we looked and other cultures, specifically Indonesians, Filipinos and Indians, and how their numbers in other parishes affected the makeup of the Church. We spoke about how we communicate the idea of being “Australian” to other cultures, and how language and context, the concept of personal space, and being direct or indirect towards people can lead to better communication. Also, how to look at the skills and styles these other cultures have come here with, and try to gently incorporate them into our parishes to make them feel welcome. Music was a big one, so we got a thumbs up for all the YouTube songs!
Our group leader was a man called Patrick Fox and was a wonderful facilitator. I’m not normally a fan of online meetings where there is an expectation that we have to discuss topics, but he handled it very well, there was no talking over each other and we all agreed that it had been a very worthwhile and beneficial course.
Tracy Sievewright
SGO, New Norcia