3 Best practices when working with ethnic or religious minorities: key aspects for trainers

Train in cultural competence

By cultural competence we mean the knowledge, behaviours and attitudes that enable a professional to work in different intercultural contexts. Cultural competence is a key factor when working with minority groups, and it is needed to achieve success in the creation of inclusive and non-hostile spaces. It is not an easy competence to acquire and it requires a long process of training, work experience and gaining awareness of the different contexts of the groups. When facing intercultural learner groups, it might be useful to approach colleagues who share similar cultural backgrounds to the learners when preparing the activities and learning itineraries. They might be able to provide different input, which might make the learning process more culturally relevant (and hence more meaningful), as well as help spot culturally sensitive material and propose ideas on how to best address it in the classroom.

Beyond language

On many occasions, the activities proposed face a language barrier. This can result in difficulties for the teacher, who is obviously concerned to avoid the exclusion of people on this basis. In learner groups that might face language barriers, it is possible to resort to activities in which the use of language is not exclusively necessary. There are other tools that can be used to plan activities in this way, such as music, theatre, movement, dance, etc. Throughout the handbook you will find some activities that will guide you through such processes. Depending on the context of the training, using a translator might be of value to ensure activity instructions are communicated more efficiently. However, we do warn against relying on an actual participant who is language proficient as a single translator, as the responsibility of that task might hinder the learning experience for that participant. As an alternative, identifying which learners are more or less language proficient and grouping them so that learners can help each other out, usually results in a pleasant cooperative experience for the group.

Translation

In the case that translation is needed, we must:

• As highlighted above, be careful not to make participants responsible for this task just because they speak the languages we need to work with our minority groups. There is a difference between trying to get people involved in the activity and making them responsible for tasks that arise from our activities.
• Make sure that the translator also has the cultural competence or has a closeness to the minority group. This is important in order to create a safe and trustworthy symbolic space for the participants and have accurate translations.

Saviour complex

This is something to beware of and know how to avoid. Sometimes when working with minority groups or people who belong to them, we can unconsciously adopt a saviour complex. This occurs when someone has the underlying belief that they have skills that people of minority groups do not have, or that they know more. To prevent this from happening it is important to:

• Avoid patronizing others: sometimes we enter a ‘spiral of respect’ that, instead of leading us to truly respect otherness, leads us to acquire patronizing behaviour towards minority groups.
• Beware of assigning others the role of representative of the minority group: it is common in groups in which there are a small number of people belonging to minority groups to assign them the role of representative of the group. This may over emphasize difference in a way that can be hostile to other people and so make them feel uncomfortable.

Recruitment

Sometimes it can be difficult to reach out to people from minority groups and invite them to participate in our workshops. This can happen for different reasons, and there are ways in which we can try to overcome this barrier to participation:

• Reach out to minority groups through community leaders, as they are people who are well known and trusted in their communities. Establishing initial contact with community leaders to explain training objectives and listening to the community leaders on how to best articulate the learning experience with the needs of the community in mind might give us valuable insight into best ways to approach minority learners and make the most of the learning experience.
• Flexibility and adaptability: the circumstances in which many people who belong to minority groups live may prevent them from participating on a regular basis or they may have very little free time at all in comparison to non-minority learners. We must adapt the activities to their availability and plan them accordingly, agreeing in advance about the best times to host training (i.e. afternoons, weekends, etc.).