Toward Cultural Competency

Cultural competency refers to the ability to understand, respect, and effectively work with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Cultural competency centers the practice of cultural awareness, knowledge, skill, desire and encounters with the other. Cultural competency invites the humility to focus on identifying our own implicit biases, understand ouselves and embrace interpersonal sensitivity and cultivating an appreciation for the multifaceted components of individual intersections of identity (culture, gender, sexual identity, race and ethnicity, religion, lifestyle, etc.)