By Ashleigh Armstrong and Shauna Loganathan
Hills Rotaract Club, NSW
To inspire curiosity and celebrate diversity, Hills Rotaract Club devoted November to building cultural awareness within its membership. The club’s first meeting of the month allowed members to share their own different cultural experiences.
“Our members come from a diverse range of backgrounds, including South African, Indian, Korean, Australian, Italian and Filipino,” said club President Madeleine Juanita Govender, who herself has a South African Indian background.
“We learnt about the importance of family and food in Turkish culture, how nicknames in Ugandan culture are terms of endearment, and the experiences of being raised in mixed cultures such as Korean and Filipino, or Australian and American.
“This was an enriching opportunity to learn and be exposed to different perspectives as we believe in the importance of accepting other cultures and embracing what they have to offer.”
The second monthly meeting was a professional development session, with guest speaker Sampavi from C.O.E.X.I.S.T. The interactive session included an ‘Introduction to Cultural Awareness’, which challenged members to confront their own biases to become more culturally competent.
“Cultural awareness is more than simply understanding your own culture,” Madeleine said. “It is the ability to understand another person’s culture, and the willingness to be open to new experiences, new ideas, and different ways of life. Hills Rotaract Club members volunteer in a diverse community within our local Hills Shire Council and the Blacktown Council.”
To continue building cultural awareness the club hopes to run cultural days in the future, where they will visit diverse places of worship, take tours of cultural sights, and enjoy eating delicious foods from different cultural backgrounds.
“For our first cultural day we are planning a trip to Muru Mittigar to learn more about Aboriginal culture,” Madeleine said. “We hope that other clubs will follow our lead and choose to become more culturally aware.”