Intercultural Communication Essay At Sylvia Center.

Describe the new intercultural event you selected and experienced while enrolled in this course. Explain, when and where you went. Stretch yourself. This intercultural communication action project needs to be specifically for the purpose of this course and not something from the past or that you have to do for some other reason. The intercultural communication action project may be attending an intercultural activity, religious event different from your previous religious experiences, ethnic festival, or other appropriate intercultural experience designed to expand your intercultural perceptions.

Describe the intercultural communication event (action project) through application of textbook principles. Explain key intercultural communication skills you need to improve.

Plan for Your Improved Communication Skills
Plan for improving your intercultural communication skills. Actually DO something to help the improvement process.

Background

The Sylvia Center is known to be one of the major centers of the organization that is responsible for the assisting the women and the children who have been in need of the services. The events wherein I had participated involved the serving meals to the homeless residing at the center. The following report aims at the discussion on the background of the study that is required for the identification of the factors that are present for the intercultural communication that is mandatory for the success of the event. The report further moves on to discuss the factors that aim to describe the events that were a part of the event. The report nears a conclusion with the plan on the improvement of the communicational issues as faced by the concerned volunteers as well as the participants of the event.

The selected cultural event in this case is the event of distributing meals among the homeless shelters. In order to complete the course assigned to me, I had visited Sylvia Center, one of the homeless shelters that have been enlisted under the Cornerstone Community Outreach organization in the area of Chicago. The organization in located in the area of Illinois and was founded in the year 1989 (Ccolife.org, 2018). The organization was built with the mission of raising the quality of the life that is led by the homeless in the given area. The concerned non-profit organization is also known to have majorly targeted the residents who have been relying on the extremely low incomes. The organization is known to have been implementing the issues that help in the reduction of the homeless conditions within the area of Chicago. The concerned homeless shelter is known for extending its services towards the residents of the area that include over 500 children, women as well as men (Ccolife.org., 2018). The homeless shelter is known to have been implementing the issues that help in the rehabilitation of the concerned people in a consequential manner. The community center is also known to have helped in the matters that are related to the stable housing of the concerned people who have been seeking help from the community center.

The Sylvia Center is known to be one of the major centers of the organization that is responsible for the assisting the women and the children who have been in need of the services (Ccolife.org, 2018). The center aims to serve the various men as well. The people who have been seeking services of the concerned shelter is generally observed to belong to the inter-generational families, the single parent especially the men who have been raising their child in a single handed manner. The center is also known to be supporting people of all descriptions unlike other shelters wherein the elderly people who have been seeking the services (Ccolife.org, 2018). The events wherein I had participated involved the serving meals at the center. The event had taken place in the last month and had involved serving meals to all the people who have been residing within the shelter. The activity involved the interaction among the people who belonged to several cultures. The involvement in the given event helped me to learn more about the various cultures that are followed by the concerned residents at the shelter.

Event Description

The event in discussion involved the distribution and the serving of the meals at the given homeless shelter, Sylvia Center. The events that have been taking place within the homeless shelter involved the communication among all the members who have been residing within the shelter and the people who have been visiting them for serving them with the necessary food items. The communication that had taken place while completing the given event was majorly influenced by the environmental factors that are present within the concerned shelter. The environmental factors that are implemented within the issue refer to the factors like the housing of the people, the perception of the privacy maintained by the people (Neuliep, 2017). The other factors that are involved in the intercultural communication are those that refer to the climatic conditions that are prevalent within the area as well as the time orientation (Samovar et al., 2014). The intercultural communication also depends on the issues of the verbal addressal and the languages used in solving the issues within the concerned activity of intercultural communication.

The communicational issues that have been faced while interacting with the homeless people referred to the issues that resulted from the usage of the language on the part of the people who have been residing within the shelter. The shelter is known to accommodate people who have various linguistic backgrounds and traits. This has led to the conditions wherein the volunteers as well as our team faced numerous issues for understanding and following the conversations that were taking place during the activity (Hall, Covarrubias & Kirschbaum, 2017; Evans & Suklun, 2017). The activities that are undertaken for the completion of the event involved the major interaction with the homeless people who have been residing at the shelter, Sylvia Center. The huge range of the linguistic and cultural factors that were followed by the concerned homeless people turned out to be one of the main challenge in the communication (Ting-Toomey & Dorjee, 2018; Levine & Levine, 2014). The intercultural communication issues that were faced majorly involved the issues that were related to the use of the linguistic diction on the part of the participants of the communication. Ladegaard and Jenks (2015) as well as Philip, Manias and Woodward?Kron (2015) state that the cultural issues within the intercultural communication refers to the issues like the use of the gestures in order to communicate with the people who are not being able to communicate through languages or have been using gestures to communicate. Mak, Brown and Wadey (2014) opine that the other issue that is faced by the concerned volunteers refer to the issues like misinterpretations of the body language as well as the language that is used by the communicators.

Conclusion

In lieu of the above discussion, it might be pointed out that the intercultural communication that has been taking place within the event helps in the pointing out of the issues that are faced by the people involved in the activity. The activity of the serving the concerned residents of the homeless center involved the interaction among the people who belonged to several cultures. The involvement in the given event helped me to learn more about the various cultures that are followed by the concerned residents at the shelter. The activities that are undertaken for the completion of the event involved the major interaction with the homeless people who have been residing at the shelter, Sylvia Center. Thus, it might be pointed out that the implementation of the intercultural communicational measures is necessary in order to resolve issues arising from the differences in the linguistic and the cultural aspects of the activity.

References

Ccolife.org. (2018). ABOUT US. Retrieved from https://www.ccolife.org/about-us/

Ccolife.org. (2018). Our Family Shelters. Retrieved from https://www.ccolife.org/our-programs/our-family-shelters/

Evans, A., & Suklun, H. (2017). Workplace diversity and intercultural communication: A phenomenological study. Cogent Business & Management, 4(1), 1408943.

Hall, B. J., Covarrubias, P. O., & Kirschbaum, K. A. (2017). Among cultures: The challenge of communication. Routledge.

Ladegaard, H. J., & Jenks, C. J. (2015). Language and intercultural communication in the workplace: critical approaches to theory and practice. Language and Intercultural Communication, 15(1), 1-12.

Levine, K. J., & Levine, S. L. (2014). Teaching Expatriate Adaptation While Dealing with Reality: The Impact of a Tragedy on the Study-Abroad Experience. Journal of International Students, 4(4), 342-350.

Mak, A. S., Brown, P. M., & Wadey, D. (2014). Contact and attitudes toward international students in Australia: Intergroup anxiety and intercultural communication emotions as mediators. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 45(3), 491-504.

Neuliep, J. W. (2017). Intercultural communication: A contextual approach. Sage Publications.

Philip, S., Manias, E., & Woodward?Kron, R. (2015). Nursing educator perspectives of overseas qualified nurses' intercultural clinical communication: barriers, enablers and engagement strategies. Journal of clinical nursing, 24(17-18), 2628-2637.

Samovar, L. A., Porter, R. E., McDaniel, E. R., & Roy, C. S. (2014). Intercultural communication: A reader. Cengage Learning.

Ting-Toomey, S., & Dorjee, T. (2018). Communicating across cultures. Guilford Publications.