Hillside Children’s Center requires it’s employees to be ‘culturally competent.’ This means that every employee should have a certain number of hours learning about different cultures or cultural related topics each year. These trainings can happen in the agency or anywhere. For instance, I have counted cultural programs at local colleges and guided tours in India as cultural trainings. Though trainings on cultural topics related to clients we serve is more sought after, topics on any culture are welcome. Though I am doubtful Indians have a presence as a client population at Hillside, and only few Indians work at Hillside, Hillside employees love to learn about Indian culture. I have presented two previous seminars on Indian culture, and on June 20, 2007, I presented a two hour seminar on Hindu Holidays from different parts of India.
We discussed the holidays based on the Hindu calendar, with the year starting in March, rather than January. The list of holidays discussed were: Tamil New Year, Akshya Thirithya, Onam, Rakhi, Krishna Jayanthi, Ganesha Chathurthi, Fall Navarathri, Diwali, Karthigai Deepam, Bhogi, Pongal, Maha Shivarathri, Holi, Ugadi/Spring Navarathri, and Ramanavami. Rarely referring to the website page, I shared stories of how I have celebrated these holidays in India and in Rochester, New York. I did this to show that these holidays are not so foreign and that there is quite a large Hindu Indian community in Rochester who keeps these traditions alive. I also created slide shows of Pongal, Onam, Ganesh Chathurthi and Navarathri as celebrated by us at home. I hope to post these to my site as these holidays arrive.
Additionally, I had bought in some Indian cooking utensils that we use at home to make food for the various festivals, such as idli pan, steel plate, puttu kutti, tumbler with small bowl (used to serve tea/coffee in south India), masala dhaba, south Indian coffee filter, and a few other items. I will not discuss these items here, if you’d like to know more, you can Google them to find out about their uses.
My humble helper who aided me in advertising the seminar agency-wide, also provided another level to this presentation- food! She bought in some potato/califlower parathas and rotis from the Indian store and mango chutney from Wegmans grocery. We had planned on Indian breakfast items like pongal/sambar, idli/ chutney, upma, potato/puri, but the Indian restaurants in Rochester don’t make these more south Indian choices, and do not make breakfast items! What a shame! Breakfast items are so tasty!
Since I offered this training through the Learning Institute at Hillside Children’s Center, they provided me some feedback forms. The seminar was attended by 21 people; I have collected their feedback below. The first set of questions was graded on a 1-4 scale, 1 being not satisfied, 4 being most satisfied (averages have been calculated):
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It was well organized |
3.809524 |
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It was interesting |
3.904762 |
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It was clear |
3.809524 |
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Presentation style was a good match for the way I learn |
3.809524 |
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I gained new knowledge |
3.904762 |
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I gained new understanding |
3.857143 |
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I gained new skills (only 18 answered) |
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