A busy June for Asian Media Access, we have hosted non-stop capacity building opportunities for our communities – from Chinese/Vietnamese seniors’ vaccination safety training, Cambodian Monks nutrition food assessment, to encourage vegetable consumption with BIPOC youth, you see us at everywhere.
The key messages we delivered to our communities have been – “How to Creating an Inclusion Environment through Bicultural Healthy Living Model.” Worldwide, cultural diversity has been evolving within and across communities, and continuously changed over time and been shaped by human mobility and aspiration. Biculturalism is a philosophy – that people, who masters the rules and norms of their new culture without abandoning their own language, values and social support. It refers to a sense of belonging to a broader cultural communities and common humanity, promoting the ‘Cultural Resilience’ that integrates diverse cultures together.
Often in different cultures have also shared such INTEGRATION concept, for example, in American Indian culture encourages their youth be like “Little Turtle” who needed to know how to move both in water and on land (in two cultures). In Chinese philosophy, it suggests the balance between Yin (“shady side”) and Yang (“sunny sides”) (as two different perspectives). It is also as a way of living, understanding, acting and relating oneself to others and the environment in space and in time, based on universal values, through respect for diversity and pluralism.
In this context, each individual’s life has implications in day-to-day decisions that connect to their root culture and other diverse cultures around them, and vice versa. We encourage our members to seek a balance that creates community-based resources and collaborations that are built upon a foundation of cultural practices and pedagogy that are integrated with, but not diminished by, Western philosophies. This approach is based in the strength of families, and each culture’s values that give everyone a place within the community and the expectation of belonging.
With attention to the integration aspect of biculturalism, our Bicultural Healthy Living Model —is a holistic approach seeking to maximize benefits of cultures of origin with other cultural perspectives in current locations (e.g., combining aspects of Hmong culture with other cultures found in Minnesota). It recognizes the resilience and creativity of all communities, families and individuals, as demonstrated in their growth, successes and abilities to navigate tedious and often confusing government systems regardless of whether they are refugees or American-born people. Such engagement encourages asking questions during the assessment phase such as how we could integrate cultural diets and Western nutrition concepts into bicultural solutions for reducing obesity rate. Many of our training and workshops have built on such belief, and provide bicultural solutions to our members.
For more information, or invite our team to host workshop, please contact our ED – Ange Hwang at angehwang@amamedia.org.
