Increasing the cultural competence of your organization or group involves looking at your current practices and considering whether your written guidelines or policies reflect a culturally competent perspective.
Answering the following questions can help you assess your group’s strengths and weaknesses in this area:33
- Membership: How well does your group reflect the communities you serve? To increase the breadth of your representation, should you add members, or forge partnerships with organizations that have stronger capacity for working with certain diverse groups?
- Resources: Do your members or partners need additional training or resources in order to serve all parts of your community equitably? For example, do you need to build capacity in order to translate program materials into another language?
- Barriers: What is getting in your group’s way as you work to connect with and serve diverse communities? Without rehashing past mistakes, can you take a clear look at any problems that exist and identify how your group might change its practices?
- Leadership: Has your group publicly endorsed cultural competence and inclusivity? Does it need more leadership in this area, perhaps from a partner with more expertise?
More information on cultural competence is available here.
Tool
SAPC Planning Tool