CULTURAL CONNECTIONS TOOLBOX
The aim of this project is to create a toolbox with consolidated strategies on intercultural dialogue and diversity for professionals working with youth. The Cultural Connections Toolbox will build the capacities of professionals in the social and educational fields to be able to create positive change, safe spaces, agency, and inclusion for ethnic minority youth. This project is part of our greater mission of creating bottom-up institutional changes for those working with minority youth in their everyday occupations, challenging internalized cultural biases in the workplace and creating opportunities for positive and constructive change that have historically been a challenge for all parties involved.
Project Background
The Cultual Conenctions Tool box builds on insights from our ongoing Cultural Connections projects. Through interviews with 40 youth and professionals, we discovered that misunderstandings and conflicts frequently arise from a lack of knowledge on cultural communication, unawareness of personal biases and insufficient tools for acting with cultural compentence. These issues have led to instances of racism, prejudice and bias both on structural and interpersonal levels.
With this project we are adressing a critical socialtal need by providing professionals in civil society with the tools to foster change and initiate conversations about inequality and discrimination, often overlooked in their current roles. Recognizing a gap in practical training materials for those working directly with youth, the Cultural Connections Toolbox offers hands-on resources tailored to teachers, social workers and other youth professionals. This makes it an essential tool for promoting cultural competence and reducing societal inequalities.
Our Main Objectives
The overall objective is to implement bottom-up institutional change as a result of social workers, teachers and volunteers developing their personal approach to intercultural communication.
The toolbox will be 5 dimensional, addressing the complexity around cultural diversity work:
- Interrelational between a professional and youth with minority background
- Interrelational between a professional and the network surrounding the youth.
- Interrelational between a professional and a Danish focus group of youth and here amongst youth with minority background
- Interorganizational – colleagues – how to address intercultural and transcultural matters with your colleagues.
- Interorganizational – leadership – how to make organizational changes and get leaders on board.