A Youth Leader's Guide to Building Cultural Competence [PDF]

As a youth group leader, teacher or other youth-serving professional, you know the challenges that young people face in today's world. Many of those challenges center around choices and consequences related to sexual activity. Working with teens on sexuality issues, including prevention of HIV/AIDS, can be demanding and intensely rewarding on both personal and professional levels.

This resource is designed to help you meet one of the most difficult challenges of sexuality education in general, and of HIV/AIDS education in particular: working with teens and families who come from backgrounds that are different from your own and from each other's. Those differences can be related to any number of factors, including race or ethnicity, socioeconomic class, religion, gender and sexual orientation.

As rates of sexual activity, teen births and sexually transmitted disease (including HIV) infection among teenagers increase, researchers and program leaders continue to search for effective strategies and materials that will reach young people with affirming messages about sexuality and with clear messages about the risks of sexual activity, particularly of unprotected sexual intercourse.

In addition, the increasing racial and cultural diversity of the United States and the growing recognition of gay, lesbian and bisexual youth make it apparent that educational strategies based on the experience and perspective of the majority European-American heterosexual culture often fail to engage youth of color and youth who are gay, lesbian or bisexual.

Largely as a result of concern about African-American and Latino/Latina youth, much interest has centered on "culturally appropriate," "culturally relevant" or "culturally specific" approaches to prevention education. Debate continues about what constitutes such programs. Course content, instructor background/skills, teaching strategies and location have all been discussed as critical factors, however, no clear conclusions have emerged from the limited research base.¹ There is a strong indication that youth of color benefit from staff who are caring and sensitive as well as from adults who are racially and culturally similar to themselves and that youth development programs should strive to hire staff who possess all these qualities.²

In the last few years, there has been an explosion of interest in addressing the needs of lesbian, gay and bisexual teenagers. There are more than 200 support groups and agencies nationwide dedicated to this population and several national groups, including the Child Welfare League and the National Education Association have endorsed guidelines for working with these young people. Too often, however, their very existence is denied by program planners and leaders. As a result, young gay, lesbian and bisexual people are not acknowledged, much less nurtured. In many cases, adults think—or even know—that some members of their groups are gay, lesbian or bisexual but lack information about and comfort with issues related to homosexuality. In other cases, leaders who themselves are gay, lesbian or bisexual, may feel profoundly torn between providing support to these young people and protecting their own jobs and reputations. Anti-gay prejudice (homophobia) and the persistence of the myth that homosexuals "recruit" young people create environments in which it is not safe for gay adults to reach out to young gay people. The result, in any case, is a continuation of the isolation and shame that many gay, lesbian and bisexual teens feel.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has highlighted the critical need for understanding cultural differences because HIV/AIDS prevention education demands frank discussion of sexuality—a sensitive subject in many communities and for many people. Understanding cultural beliefs about a range of sexual issues is critical to providing effective HIV/AIDS prevention education.

This resource is designed with the belief that until we explore our own values and beliefs and understand them as rooted in our own cultures, we will draw inaccurate and judgmental conclusions about others based on our own limited perspectives.

As someone who works with young people, you should engage in a self-reflective learning process that will increase your abilities to effectively interact with a variety of young people. You might be working with teens who belong to a different racial or ethnic group, have a different sexual orientation, belong to a different religion or come from another socioeconomic class, but the challenging and rewarding process of learning about yourself and others is the same.

The Four Steps

This resource proposes a four-step model of building cultural competence for working effectively and respectfully with youth from a variety of backgrounds. The four steps are:

1. learning about culture and important cultural components;
2. learning about your own culture through a process of self-assessment that includes examining your culture's assumptions and values and your perspectives on them;
3. learning about the individual young people in your program; and
4. learning as much as possible about important aspects of their cultural backgrounds with a focus on sexuality-related issues.

This resource is a guide to working on all four steps.

Chapter One provides descriptions of various cultural components such as family relationships, religion and health beliefs. After each description, questions will prompt you to think more about each component. Chapter Two suggests a process of self-assessment designed to help you start examining your own cultural background, values and assumptions. Chapter Three provides tips for learning about the individual young people you work with and for continuing the process of learning about their cultural backgrounds. Chapter Four outlines some of the reasons that HIV/AIDS prevention messages might meet with resistance by some members of African-American and Latino/Latina communities. Chapter Five offers tips for working with African-American and Latino/Latina youth, as well as for working with gay, lesbian and bisexual youth of all races and ethnicities. Chapter Six suggests tips for providing effective multicultural education.

What is Cultural Competence?

The term "cultural competence" has been used by a variety of people in recent years. It moves beyond the concepts of "cultural awareness" (knowledge about a particular group primarily gained through reading or studies) and "cultural sensitivity" (knowledge as well as some level of experience with a group other than one's own). Instead, cultural competence focuses on the fact that some level of skill development must occur. Being culturally competent is "more than being sensitive to ethnic differences, more than not being a bigot and more than the warm, fuzzy feeling of feeling of loving and caring for your neighbor."³

Gaining cultural competence is a long-term, developmental process that requires more than reading this resource, attending a workshop or being a member of one so-called "minority" group. It is an exciting, engaging, lifelong process of expanding horizons, thinking critically about issues of power and oppression and acting appropriately. Culturally competent individuals have a mixture of beliefs/attitudes, knowledge and skills that help them establish trust and communicate with others.

Beliefs/Attitudes

The culturally competent individual is:

• aware of and sensitive to her/his own cultural heritage and respects and values different heritages;
• aware of her/his own values and biases and how they may affect perception of other cultures;
• comfortable with differences that exist between her/his culture and other cultures' values and beliefs; and
• sensitive to circumstances (personal biases, ethnic identity, political influence, etc.) that may require seeking assistance from a member of a different culture when interacting with another member of that culture.

Knowledge

The culturally competent individual must:

• have a good understanding of the power structure in society and how non-dominant groups are treated;
• acquire specific knowledge and information about the particular group(s) she/he is working with; and
• be aware of institutional barriers that prevent members of disadvantaged groups from using organizational and societal resources.

Skills

The culturally competent individual can:

• generate a wide variety of verbal and nonverbal responses when dealing with difference;
• send and receive both verbal and nonverbal messages (body language) accurately and appropriately; and
• exercise intervene appropriately and advocate on behalf of people from different cultures.⁴

General Description

A general description of cultural competence includes:

• "The personal recognition and acceptance that all types of cultures have a profound influence on our lives;
• The personal awareness that oppression is pervasive in the United States, it is part of U.S. history and as much as we may want to escape that fact, it colors relationships;
• The acceptance that there are cultural differences and we need to learn to respect what we may not always understand;
• Having the humility to accept that we do not know everything about other cultures, never will [and] therefore we need to ascertain what it is we need to know about the specific groups with whom we are working;
• A willingness to pursue that information in all the ways available to us;

When we are unable to do the above, having the courage to identify and confront our personal resistance, anger and especially our fears."⁵