Essay: Cross-Cultural Skills & Perception in Humanitarian Work

This essay discusses the importance of cross-cultural competence, sensation, and perception in humanitarian and community work, particularly in the Australian context. It highlights the need for social and community workers to develop skills in understanding and interacting with diverse cultures to address issues like health disparities among Aboriginal Australians. The essay emphasizes that effective communication, cultural sensitivity, and an understanding of individual perceptions are crucial for building trust and delivering appropriate interventions. It also suggests strategies for professionals to enhance their cross-cultural skills, including attending workshops, practicing evidence-based approaches, and advocating for policy changes to improve services for culturally diverse communities. This resource is available on Desklib, a platform offering study tools and assignments for students.

Running head: HUMANITARIAN AND COMMUNITY WORK
HUMANITARIAN AND COMMUNITY WORK
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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The humanitarian and the community studies mainly provide the opportunity for the
students in learning, critically analyzing and applying the concepts of the human service delivery
in the field of humanitarian aid, social and community engagement (Green et al., 2017). The
individuals get scopes of being employed for service delivery in the field of humanitarian aid,
social as well as community engagement. The workers mainly need to develop the essential
knowledge as well as skills required in working with the individuals as well as groups not only
from the indigenous communities but also for the different disadvantaged and generalized
communities of the nation (Sue et al., 2015). The individuals working in the fields need to
develop an in-depth knowledge in the domains of the psychology, sociology as well as in the
human behaviors ethics and even cross-cultural communications skills. They also need to
develop awareness for not only the indigenous culture and knowledge but about the different
cultures of the people who reside in the nation besides the non-indigenous Australians. This
assignment would thereby focus on two important concepts like cross-cultural skills as well as
perception and sensation. It will show how the two concepts help in overcoming various issues in
the domain and how the skills can be developed in order to improve the condition of the disorder.
Cross-cultural competence can be defined as the ability of the individuals in
understanding, communicating and interacting effectively with people across different cultures.
Researchers are of the opinion that cross-cultural competence by every social and community
worker should comprise of being aware of the individual’s own point of view and developing
attitudes that helps in successful and sensitive handling of the cultural differences among the
various clients who need support (Fisher et al., 2015). Cross-cultural competence mainly helps in
allowing the social an community workers to become more attuned with and sensitive for
different individuals, family and different group specific needs, values, beliefs and attitudes. This

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is done in order to provide more culturally competent interventions, services as well as supports
that align with the cultural traditions, perceptions as well as inhibitions of the different clients
coming from different backgrounds. Researchers are of the opinion that cross-cultural
competence is mainly about the will and actions for building a proper understanding between
people (Mason et al., 2018). They also need to be open and respectful for the different cultural
perspectives that would be required for strengthening of the cultural security and helps in
working towards equality and the opportunity. Relationship building is fundamental to cross-
cultural competence and is therefore based on the foundations of understanding each other’s
expectations and attitudes and subsequently building on the strengthening of each other’s
knowledge (Ochs & Scheiefflein, 2017).
From this concept, there arises the importance of another concept called the sensation and
the perception. These two concepts are intimately related but they may be seen to play different
roles how one individuals perceives the world. Sensation refers to the procedures of sensing the
environment through proper touch, taste, sight, sound as well as smelling. This information is
sent to the brains in the raw form and in this arena, the perception is seen to play roles.
Perception is the way by which individuals are seen to interpret these sensations and thereby
participates in making sense of everything surround them (Truong et al., 2014). Therefore, in a
summarized form, sensation has been explained by researchers as the passive processing of the
bringing in the information from outside world into the body and then to the brain. This process
is termed as passive by many researchers because an individual does not have to engage actively
in the sensing procedure. It can be defined as the active process of selection, organization and
interpretation of the information that is brought to the brain by the senses.

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The nation of Australia has become egalitarian in nature. This means that the nation
believes in respecting equal rights and opportunities of all the residents of the nation irrespective
of their background, class, ethnicity, race and religion. Moreover, the nation is trying its best to
ensure equality among all members of the nation so that every person gets the full potential to
love successful and healthy lives (foley & Matlin, 2015). However, the outcomes that had been
reported shows a different result and failing of the close the gap campaign had been seen to be
one of the biggest example. The Aboriginal Australians are seen to still facing disadvantages and
the huge gap in the health status between the Aboriginal Australians and the non-indigenous
Australians is one such example. One closely analyzing the causes of the failures of the different
campaigns for not only the Aboriginal Australians but also of the different culturally and
linguistically diverse communities, important data has been found which is extremely important
for the individuals working as health professionals and social and community workers of the
nation (Mather, 2016). It has been found that considerations and participations of the
representatives of the communities is one such cause. Due to absence of the participation, the
western health and community workers are not able to understand exactly their needs and
requirement. Another main cause is the improper incompetent cross-cultural communication that
takes among the professionals and that of the communities and clients who need support. Even
data has suggested that the professionals exhibit improper verbal and non-verbal communication
skills that do not align with that of the culturally diverse communities. Examples can be provided
in case of the cross-cultural incompetency to shed more light on the issues. Asians do not prefer
eye contact while communicating with the professionals while direct eye contact is considered as
an important aspect of eastern communication medium helping in developing trusts and shows
genuine feelings (Cabarello et al., 2015). Therefore, when a professional works with culturally

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diverse Asian communities they need to be careful in managing such non-verbal skills and for
this they need to have proper cross- cultural competence. Moreover, in case of the native people
of the nation, they are seen to prefer silence during conversations whereas silence during western
mode of communication is disliked and shows the urgency of the communicators to fill the gap
(Zuckerman et al., 2014). Therefore, it becomes extremely important for the community workers
to develop cross-cultural knowledge and accordingly develop intervention plans to help such
communities meet their needs, otherwise they would feel de-motivated, dishonored and
disrespected and their level of compliance and help seeking behaviors will decrease. .
Similar another concept that needs to be applied while working with the culturally
diverse communities are sensations and perceptions. Every specific culture and families have
their own ways pr perceptions regarding various attributes in their lives and their sensations
about their surrounding along with their perceptions might make them feel differently from
another family or from communities of different culture. No two individuals have the same
perception and sensations regarding the different aspects that happen in their life as well as the
carious attributes of their likes and dislikes. Often the application of interventions by the
professionals as “one that fit all” kinds of treatments will never bring positive results but will in
turn disrupt the relationship building that needs to take place between professionals and their
clients or communities where they work (Miller & Kras et al., 2015). It is extremely important
for the professionals to develop the skills where they would be not only able to develop a wide
sense of sensations and perceptions but also can help the clients by effectively understanding
their particular perception and the work accordingly. Developing the skills of being broad and
open minded and being able to accommodate and work accordingly to the different sensations
and perceptions of each of the clients would help a lot. This would not only help in providing

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service in a person-centered approach but would also encourage equal participation as
communities will feel that the professional genuinely understand and cares for their sensations of
the world and perceptions.
In order to improve the issues of culturally incompetent services and care that the
culturally diverse communities face as well as improper ideas and misconceptions developed
about the perceptions and sensations of the communities, it is important for the professionals to
develop important skills. The first skill would be cross-cultural competence and knowledge and
the second skill would be effective self-regulation, self-awareness and broad-minded approach. It
is extremely important for the healthcare professionals to understand that one intervention fits all
approach is highly criticizing and never brings positive outcomes. It is therefore important for
the development of the situations and for this, the professional first needs to develop their inter-
personal skills of cross cultural communication and competence, develop self-awareness and
self-regulation, overcome cultural biasness, and develop broad-minded thinking procedures
(Dutton & Raggins, 2017). This could be achieved by the attending workshops, practicing more
evidence-based practices, searching website articles about different perceptions and sensations of
different cultures, attending seminars and discussion forums and interviewing experienced
stalwarts. Moreover, advocating about the issues to the government and accordingly helping the
policy makers develop effective policies in overcoming the issues can be also suggested.
From the above discussion, it becomes clear that cross-cultural competence and
developing ideas about perception and sensation of the clients are very important. This would
help in increasing their help seeking behaviors and compliance with the interventions, as they
would feel respected, cared and understood. Therefore, development of inter-personal skills of

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the professionals and advocating the issues to the government are important for overcoming the
issues.

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References:
Caballero, R., & Paradis, C. (2015). Making sense of sensory perceptions across languages and
cultures. Functions of language, 22(1), 1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.22.1.01cab
Dutton, J. E., & Ragins, B. R. (2017). Exploring positive relationships at work: Building a
theoretical and research foundation. Psychology Press. Retrieved from:
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Fisher-Borne, M., Cain, J. M., & Martin, S. L. (2015). From mastery to accountability: Cultural
humility as an alternative to cultural competence. Social Work Education, 34(2), 165-
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Foley, H., & Matlin, M. (2015). Sensation and perception. Psychology press.
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Mather, G. (2016). Foundations of sensation and perception. Psychology Press.
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