Our model
Our model is developed based on extensive research on the topic of resilience and racism that examined how individuals respond to adversity and racism, both risk factors and protective factors.
Resilience is strength-based strategies to help people maintain wellbeing and an effective coping mechanism when they face challenges, it involves people being able to maintain a positive sense of self despite adversity, effectively adjust their mindset, manage emotions and adapt their behaviour, as well as having confidence in their cultural identity, strengths and abilities (Jongen et al., 2019). This is why we believe building resilience is the key to help people cope with racism.
Our bespoke workshops were created based on our 3-level resilience model, individual resilience, interpersonal resilience and community resilience. We believe that in order to build resilience against adversities such as racism, it is not enough to have strong individuals and require the sociological concept of resilience as well. When considering the importance of family, friendship and community within culturally diverse communities, interpersonal and community resilience are important factors to be considered when helping people cope.
Jongen, Langham, Bainbridge and McCalman (2019), Instruments for measuring the resilience of indigenous adolescents: An exploratory review. Front Public Health; 7: 194
For individual resilience, we help people explore four (4) factors, including competency, composure, confidence and cultural strengths, which help them to develop resilience and increase their capacity to deal with the negative effect that racism and help them build their strength to respond to potential future racism incidents. For interpersonal resilience we explore connections as a factor to help people increase the quality of their connections with others in particularly after they experienced and witness racism. For community resilience, we help people explore the cultural strengths factor which help people take pride in who they are and respect each other’s uniqueness and thereby strengthening community resilience.
