10 Ways to Embrace Cultural Diversity in Your Workplace

Hi I’m an activity lady for a care home after some advice for what activities I can do for colouring or make for showing cultural ideas in a box . Recently heard of culture boxes but not sure what activities are involved or what I can colour etc . Thx

As a nursing home outside of Boston, Massachusetts, we have a VERY diverse population of staff from all over the world, especially Africa, Central America, and South America. Every year on Nursing Home Week we do special programs for the staff, and we always have an international lunch and dinner just for the staff that features food from the countries they are from. And we encourage staff to dress in "native clothing" and we play cultural music and decorate the room with all the flags of the countries that are represented in our staff (which are many!). The staff LOVE this event every year!

In activities on a smaller scale, I have had a cultural appreciation group, which is a multi sensory travel group where we explore a country like Haiti for example, where many of our staff are from...I print out pictures, play Youtube travel clips to that location, play music, bring food if I can...and I try to do it on an hour when I have nursing assistants helping who are from the same country. It was really special...and its nice to have the other staff involved in activities and enjoying it.

As a volunteer I am on my own to create my own craft/ activity agenda and I have been planing to include a different country/ culture at least once a month using some of the information off your site. I have already used a few ideas with good response. I love the artist feature and have printed off some of the pictures for clients for color or paint and we talk about the artist. Never too old to learn something new. Thanks for the motivation to get going on my monthly plan.

One good way to celebrate diversity is to celebrate international we are family day this can bring everyone in your facility together.

Another challenge is when some residents especially those with dementia show some prejudice which can be hurtful to the staff

It is a good idea to talk about kindness with your residents even though world kindness day is in November

Here are some ideas

https://www.goldencarers.com/world-kindness-day-ideas/3850/

Despite everyone's best effort's some residents can display hurtfulness

Very interesting comments here. We had a Maori resident at The Redwood Club who said the grace before our midday meal always in the Maori language. He later left for care where he died and I took over his small contribution but not in Maori as I do not speak the language. However for Maori Language Week I researched a grace in Maori, printed off copies for all the residents and staff, reciting as best I could as a tribute to our own cultural heritage as well as competence. We could do this for other cultures among our residents as we have a Samoan, Pitcairn Islander, Dutch, Chinese, and two other Pacific Islanders in our small gathering. Let us do more for "Treating others the way they want to be treated" should be our guiding rule.