Welcoming Diversity is a five-part, AAISA-credited* course series that explore topics around serving newcomers with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, expressions, and sex characteristics.
The series is split into five two-hour webinars:
- Social Location, Privilege, Oppression and Intersectionality
- Introduction to Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, and Expressions and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC)
- Coming Out in a Cultural Context
- Working with LGBTQ+ Immigrants & Refugees
- Basic organizational policies that support SOGIESC newcomers
This facilitated online course will focus on anti-discrimination and will include both an introduction to the topic as well as information on how to apply an anti-discrimination analysis. We will cover both the theory and also the practical ways to apply the theory at different levels in society.
The course is a six-module course that will enable Settlement Practitioners to learn knowledge and practical skills required to effectively conduct needs assessments and assist people from diverse backgrounds to develop individualized goals and action plans appropriate to their culture and life experience that will meet their settlement needs.
The course is delivered through blended approach as an online facilitated course, the course encompass six synchronous webinars in addition to set of asynchronous learning activities delivered through AAISA ' s learning management system.
This course will equip front-line settlement workers with the necessary knowledge and resources to help them develop programs and provide services that address the complex needs of multi-barriered newcomers.
Participants will become familiar with the common barriers for newcomers, the ways to identify these barriers, the causing elements, and the additional impact of COVID-19 on newcomers.
We will consider multiple complex barriers including mental health concerns, PTSD/trauma, disabilities, low literacy, language barriers, and low income. We will look at how these barriers can combine and pose challenges to the settlement and integration process. The course will also explain how COVID-19 has changed the situation for these groups.
