Cultural Awareness: Video 1 - What is cultural awareness?

My name is Anthony Jacob and I work for a company called Navitas English. We deliver the Adult Migrant English Program, it's the Settlement and English Program for migrants and refugees. We also deliver the Settlement Program and the Skills for Education and Employment Programs, all funded by the Federal Government. I'm here today to sort of work through a very, well I think it's a very quick presentation, around cultural awareness and some of the factors that migrants and refugees face when migrating to a new country, irrelevant of whether they're coming as a migrant or a refugee. So some of the goals or sort of our objectives for today's workshop is to be able to define what culture is in the broader terms, understand the basic stages of settlement in a new culture, recognise some of the common signs of culture shock and have a more sort of strategies for assisting you in managing when working with clients and sort of identifying some of that culture shock and how to address them. Just to sort of get an idea, can I get someone or some of you to sort of call out what you think culture is? Beliefs. Social. Symbols. So obviously the biggest one is language. Background. Beliefs and religion. Morals. Food. Art, music and dance. Festivals and celebrations. Rules of behaviour. Roles of men and women. Beauty. Taste. Architecture. Values. Family and relationships. Dress codes. Status. Discipline and punishment. And language again. So as you can see, and that's broadly, there's a lot more that culture is and we really need to be conscious of the various cultures that we have living in Australia. And when somebody migrates to a new country, they bring all of that with them. And it's very challenging and very difficult for them to adjust because that's what they know. You know, I would like to sort of think about us going to a country where all of that is different to how we've been brought up. It's very challenging and very confronting for many of us as adults migrating at will to another country, let alone coming as a refugee into a new country where everything is different. And they are struggling with the adjustment of being told that what you know and what we do are different. So culture is learned. But in the mind of the culture member, it's reality. So that's what they know. That's everything that they believe in. That's true. And it's the way things should be for them. This is the way it should be. There are no differences. They don't understand. They don't know the differences in another country's culture. And just a very simple quote, a culture is a way of life for a group of people. The behaviours, beliefs, values and symbols they accept without generally thinking about them. Similar to what we do. We just do what we do because that's what we know. And they are passed along by communication and generations.