Creating Cultural Competence: An Outreach Immersion Experience in Southern Africa
- PDF / 213,895 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 87 Downloads / 202 Views
Creating Cultural Competence: An Outreach Immersion Experience in Southern Africa Cirecie West-Olatunji & Rachael D. Goodman & Sejal Mehta & Laura Templeton
Published online: 6 October 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract With disasters on the rise, counselors need to increase their cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills to work with affected communities. This study reports outcomes of a four-week immersion experience in southern Africa with six counselor-trainees. Data sources for this qualitative study were: daily journals and demographic forms. Outcomes suggest that sustained contact with community residents and daily supervision experiences served to improve cultural awareness. Recommendations include pushing through students’ resistance using a non-linear dynamic model of transformation. Keywords Disaster counseling . Counselor training . Cultural awareness . Outreach and immersion experiences
Introduction Natural and human-made disasters are on the rise around the world with the year 2008 being one of the most devastating years to date (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 2009). Further, it is projected that global weather patterns and the degrading environment will lead to an increase in natural disasters, such as the most recent catastrophes in New Orleans and Haiti (Kennedy 2010). In southern Africa, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, a human-made disaster, continues to devastate communities. In 2007, approximately 35% of all people living with HIV resided in the southern region of Africa (United States Agency of International Development [USAID] 2008). C. West-Olatunji (*) : L. Templeton University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. D. Goodman George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA S. Mehta University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
336
Int J Adv Counselling (2011) 33:335–346
Given this increase in disasters, there has been a call for more mental health professionals in disaster relief (Guha-Sapir et al. 2004). Trauma symptoms, such as anxiety and withdrawal, are evident not only for those directly involved, but for family and friends located in other parts of the world (West-Olatunji and St Juste 2010). However, in recent years, responses following Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. have highlighted the need to augment cultural competence among disaster mental health counseling responders (Goodman and West-Olatunji 2009a). Using critical consciousness theory, the researchers explored the outcomes of disaster outreach training followed by an immersion experience in South Africa and Botswana. Results indicated that while participants exhibited initial resistance, they did increase awareness of sociopolitical context and client resilience factors. Recommendations for counselor educators focus on framing resistance as a collage of fractals of the transformation process.
Review of the Literature Disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, have increased in either strength or number (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cres
Data Loading...
