Why are you interested in the Community Coordinator position?
I am interested in the community coordinator position because I am passionate about being involved and helping others. Being a Community Coordinator to me means that I can be a resource to anyone who needs it. By being a Community coordinator, I want to be a role model of understanding and respect that others could follow. Building a strong relationship with the residents I interact with is very important to me. I believe that every person who is on this planet is a person with so much I can learn from them. Being a community coordinator also means I can positively affect people’s lives with the gifts that I possess.
What experiences have you had with individuals or groups outside
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English being my first language, it wasn't hard to express myself but I was afraid of being judged because of my accent. Whenever someone asked me to repeat myself whenever I said something, I felt attacked, I felt as if they were making fun of my accent and I felt ashamed that I had an accent. Noticeable or not, it does not bother me anymore. Now, I see myself as a person that fits in both worlds. The two places are my home. I belong in both worlds. Whenever someone asks where I'm from, I'm not afraid to tell them that I am from Kenya. I'm not afraid to tell them that: Yes, I'm African, Yes, I'm American but most of all.... Yes, I'm Kenyan.
How would you develop community as a leader in a culturally diverse population represented in Apartment Life?
Embracing other people’s cultural backgrounds has a large effect on making a place more inclusive. Cultural acceptance often requires confronting some of the most painful divides in American life. Cultural acceptance starts with acknowledging that factors such as race and ethnicity matter and that some programs fail to send diverse students signals that they belong. To make sure all students feel valued, I think that community coordinators should be aware of their own biases and work deeply to understand their individual residents from different backgrounds.
What kinds of programs, activities, projects, or services would you propose for implementation if you are selected for the position(s) you have applied
As an elementary student, I had a slight accent as I spoke, and I would get bullied for not being able to talk as fluently as the other kids. The way the other students would act
Despite integration of comprehensive cultural studies into the academic curriculum, a gap still exists in the response to the problem and needs of the ever-growing culturally diverse community.
Therefore, universities have had to implement new measures that address racial insensitivity expressed by White students. According to Chao et al. (2015), in college campuses, student of color can hear every day racism comments, therefore, to create college campuses with a healthy climate, educators and psychologists must find ways to promote justice attitudes among non-Latino White students and foster racial empathy for targets of racism (p.95). They said: “White empathy refers to White students’ expression of empathy through a deep understanding of their fellow students’ experiences, especially those of racial and ethnic minority students suffering from racism”, (p.95). Educators and counselors must work together in helping students to better understand how to appreciate differences between groups. Chao et al., underlined in their study that to be able to understand individuals’ perceptions toward diversity, researchers have proposed the concept of openness to diversity (OTD), which refers to the appreciation of similarities and differences across cultural groups (p. 96). Open to diversity (OTD) also involves students ' interest to know more and more about unfamiliar cultures without assumptions. They said that “OTD moderates the relationship between White racial identity and White Empathy”, which means that when White students have greater OTD, they may be more likely to understand how minority students experience racism and when White students are less open to diversity, they may also be less willing to consider different perspectives on racial issues (p.
As an undergraduate at the University of California, Davis, I grappled with the decision to engage in opportunities that would provide me the background knowledge to address my passions for social justice and health disparities. With my involvement at the UC Davis Cross Cultural Center (CCC), a student space that fosters critical consciousness and student activism, I gained a newfound appreciation for community work and desire to implement change through community empowerment. By understanding and processing my intersection of identities, I was able to identify the value, and importance, of community space. As one of the Asian Pacific Islander Community Coordinators, I worked alongside student leaders and community based organizations to advocate for social justice thro...
Just because other perspectives are incorporated in the classroom, this doesn’t mean that everyone will become more understanding and appreciative of other cultures. When multicultural practices have rigorous standards, allow the advancement of social communications with other cultures, and allow the advancement social justice concepts both inside and outside of the classroom, this is when students will become more appreciative of other cultures (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p.162).
Based on the key qualifications for the Program Coordinator Position, my experience and education make me an excellent candidate, but my passion and love for service are what make me an exceptional applicant for this role.
Develop a diverse interprofessional team that represents the diversity of the community’s population and provide culturally competent education for the team members (Akiyode & Davis, 2015; Gucciardi et al.,
The information we gathered in our research, could prove to be quite useful to our community partner Jackie and the Asian-American Student Union (AASU). It seems that we have received mixed views on Asian American leadership and inclusivity on campus. There are many diverse things we can do with this research to help Asian Americans on campus feel more included and welcomed. Through our research, we determined that many students on campus were not even aware of the fact that we have an Asian American Student Union. We can take the information we learned through this process and use it to improve awareness around campus. Raising awareness has proved to be helpful in many other circumstances, where the general public is either misinformed or just unaware that a problem truly exists. When asked about inclusive leadership, many of the individuals interviewed, said that inclusive leadership should mean that everyone has a voice and that we all deserved to be heard. Therefore, we feel that raising awareness can help give others the voice,
To emphasize this point, Rice and Mathews highlight the lack of cultural competency being a required part of the core curriculum in Master of Public Administration programs and the evidence that a lack of understanding cultural competency leads to poor working or failed community-oriented programs (Rice and Mathews). Rice further explains, “The teaching of cultural competency in university based public administration education program and core curricula must be required. Second, steps much be taken to get public agencies to implement cultural competency programs, strategies, and practices in service delivery (Rice 2006, 91-92.).” When future public agency service delivery professionals are provided the basic knowledge cultural competency prior to entering the work force, they have to opportunity to gain a better understanding of the key elements of the cultural competency cycle, develop cultural (or self-awareness) of their views of a particular culture in the form of stereotypes (Pope and Reynolds 1997), and to be further prepared in providing services to a diverse
This essay will be arguing that colleges and universities should promote more efforts to diversify and create equal representation of all students. Attending higher education institution for minorities has been an uneasy struggle and one that few minorities accomplish. The dilemma of African American enrollment for example, in a college lecture hall at Texas A&M containing 250 seats, only a maximum 4 out of 250 seats will contain African American students. Unfortunately, many institutions are similar to Texas A&M University, they have an underrepresentation of minorities their on campus in relationship to white students. The lack of diversity keeps stigmas associated with racism relevant and disregards the demographic representation of minorities in America disabling students from identifying with different cultures. There’s evidence from scholars such as Elizabeth Smith and Emilia Plonska, students and instructors that validate in order to promote unity and knowledge of all cultures institutions must promote integration of minorities and increase attendance. Many minorities fail to complete their journeys in higher education which results in unequal representation, segregated environments and unprivileged minorities receiving the benefits of a quality post-secondary education offered at prestige Universities like Texas A&M and UCLA
One might succinctly shows how oblivious the white students are on the issues of racism, lack of diversity, social and political. The underrepresented students are very conscious of the negative effect of segregation, discrimination, and racial tension, social and political inequality. While the underrepresented students tend to feel perplexed on these issues, the underrepresented faculty members on the other hand tend to feel incapacitated and not courageous to address these issues due to the fear of losing their job. To the contrary, some faculty members with tenure position were able to address these issues, provide a logical solution, and implore the institution to implement diversity in their curriculum. According to Karkouti, (2016) diversity has the power to create a friendly social environment that can allay the fear of racial tensions among students and can be used as an educational tool to enhance students’ learning and development. Lundy (2015) argues that in order to foster intercultural relationship on HBCUs and PWIs campus there should be desegregation not segregation. This means the PWIs student enrolment should include more African Americans and other non-Whites. In contrast, the HBCUs desegregation should increase the number of White students’ enrolment, despite the fact that HBCUs never had or display discriminatory admissions policies. In order to address some of the diversity issues in the U.S. higher education system, there is a need for assertive leaders who can logically create a serene cultural environment for students, faculty members and staff. He has to be versatile with the issues of diversity and must be able to implement effective strategies that will suit the students, faculty member and staff (Brown, 2017-class note). In doing so,
“An array of knowledges, skills, abilities and contacts possessed and used by Communities of Color to survive and resist racism and other forms of oppression” encompasses the main idea of Community Cultural Wealth. It is vital to understand that students will step foot into the classroom with a variety of cultures zipped up in their backpacks, and it is our job as educators to make sure that equality is instilled/taught in our classrooms. The second a student feels a sense of discrimination, whether from ourselves or their fellow classmate(s), is when the safe and comforting environment of the classroom begins to diminish. Here I will discuss just how important it is to see the differences amongst students as an advantage
Garcia, E. (2002). Student cultural diversity: Understanding and meeting the challenge (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Multicultural education and social advocacy among human service professionals have gained momentum in the United States over the past several decades due to an increase of diverse populations across race, nationalities, age, and socioeconomic status. Statistics demonstrate significant changes within the counseling profession as shifting its focus and strategies to attend to counselor and client cultural differences. The U.S. population at nearly 313 million is expected to increase by the year 2050 to 438 million individuals with a notable decrease in percentages of Whites, non-Hispanic, non-Latino, steady proportion of Black African origin, and increases for Hispanic, Latino, and Asian descent residents. Cultural competence is marked by counselors’
Diversity and Inclusion are important to the University of Toledo’s campus because they don’t just serve to one ethnicity, they serve to many. Many different kinds of cultures come to UT to give themselves an education and to better themselves. Here at the University, they want everyone to get along with each other, since it’ll make coming to school more exciting