Goals

• to acknowledge the cultural diversity in the room and bring it in as a resource;
• to have participants identifying their own cultural perspective and share it with others.

80 minutes

Culture sharing is a simple tool for acknowledging cultural diversity and allowing people to share about their culture and learn about others. For mainstream people (white people in the US, for example), it may be a challenge to identify “my culture” — stay with people and give them support — this tool is not about right or wrong, it’s about exploration.

(Your design might be different depending on the method of support you set up in the workshop.)

1. SHARE 3 THINGS THAT YOU ARE PROUD ABOUT YOUR CULTURE AND 1 THING THAT CONCERNS YOU
Explain the goals for this exercise and tell them to each in their group take time to share 3 things that they are proud about from their culture and 1 thing that concerns them.

2. WORK TEAM NAME
After every person in each work team has shared, have the work teams come up with a name that represents their team. Give them 5-7 minutes to complete this task. Then have each work team proudly share their team name! (Team names are a quick way to build the intention for effective team work.)

3. BUDDY DEBRIEF
After all the work teams have created their names and proudly shared (maybe even shouted!) them to each other, send folks into buddy pairs. Have buddies reflect on what they are learning and what they are noticing about culture. (Assuming this is done early, this is done to help differentiate the different structures: work teams and buddies.) With highly multicultural groups (e.g. groups from the Global North and Global South) this can be a good chance to help note that cultural clashes will come up in the group and help them think about how they might handle them.