Assess Cultural Competency
In addition to familiarizing yourself with users or visitors, organizations must take the time to know themselves more deeply. How effective can organizations be to meet the needs of Latinxs and build strong relationships with the community? One way to determine this is by assessing your cultural competency. In other words, organizations need to look inwards and make sure they are capable of appreciating cultural differences and working effectively with these differences.
On an individual level, this can include taking note of your biases. Everyone has biases but it is on us to recognize these biases and ensure they do not negatively influence our interactions with other people. On an organizational level, assessing cultural competence can mean reflecting on policies, structures, and practices.
If you say you support inclusivity and diversity, do your policies, structures, and practices open the doors to make inclusivity and diversity possible or do they act as barriers and prevent you from doing so? Do your board and staff reflect the diversity of the people you serve and support? Does the work culture foster acceptance and embrace of differences? Translating materials into Spanish is a step in the right direction but do you have someone that speaks Spanish and can engage with the questions and comments from Spanish speakers?
Related resources and materials:
- From the National Center for Cultural Competence, “A Guide to Planning and Implementing Cultural Competence Organizational Self-Assessment,” https://nccc.georgetown.edu/documents/ncccorgselfassess.pdf
- Example of a cultural competence checklist for policies and procedures by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, https://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/Cultural-Competence-Checklist-Policies-Procedures.pdf
- A detailed breakdown of enhancing cultural competence in organizations, https://ctb.ku.edu/en/enhancing-cultural-competence
- An informative and thoughtful analysis of the need for more diverse board. Also includes seven actions boards can take to address a lack of diversity, http://nonprofitaf.com/2017/09/7-things-you-can-do-to-improve-the-sad-pathetic-state-of-board-diversity/