Community leaders in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) are being trained to work with and have an appreciation for diversity.
A two-day unity and diversity workshop opened at the Chambers of the New Amsterdam Mayor and Town Council on Wednesday with the aim of fostering cohesive environments in which diverse people can have healthy and professional interactions in spite of their differences.
The workshop, which was organised by the Social Cohesion Department, targeted community leaders across the region. It aims at promoting better understanding of how an appreciation of diversity can contribute to strong societies.
Persons are being provided with the skills that promote healthy interaction even in the face of ethnic, cultural and other differences. It is hoped that participants will be made aware of how personal bias impacts social interactions.
The lead trainer, Will Campbell, who is a lecturer at the University of Guyana and a psychologist, told this publication that the purpose is to have leaders aware of the fact that “we have inherent biases and prejudices in our community as individuals”.
“We want to look at how we are different but more importantly, how are alike and how we can use those differences and that diversity as a strength than a weakness. We want to look at how we are similar and how we can use those similarities to bridge gaps, work together [in] our communities for improvement.”
According to Campbell, persons are being examined as individuals.
“At the end of this, we want persons to be able to go back to their communities and look past their differences and work with people who they may not have ordinary not have ordinarily worked with before because they were perceived to be different. We want persons to be able to reach across political divides, political differences and ethnic differences. We want persons to be able to have a different mindset towards diversity and at the end of this we are hoping the persons will find strength in diversity rather than continuing to see our differences as a means of dividing us,” Campbell said.
According to the psychologist, in many communities, leaders separate themselves and deny themselves the opportunities to interact with persons who are different but who can still contribute.
Many, he added, gravitate towards those that are similar to them in ideology and religion, thus, excluding persons that they perceive to be different and, in the process, forgetting that those persons can contribute value to what they are trying to do in our communities.
“If we can bridge those gaps, then we get more people to contribute, more people to work towards community development and we will have a more united community, hence, stronger [a] nation,” Campbell related.
