Category: Uncategorized

Description: This exercise invites your group to explore traditions of significance and to connect across differences.

Introduction: One way to better understand how cultural and personal experiences shape behaviour is to turn inward, to explore our family and cultural traditions. By reflecting on and talking about these traditions, we notice things we do similarly and differently from others in our communities, and in turn make connections across diverse ways of experiencing and engaging in the world. Below are some prompts to spark dialogue. However your sponsorship group decides to address these questions, the goal is for every team member to feel included and heard.

• What are some birthday traditions in your family? Were birthdays important for your family when you were growing up?
• How and when does your family celebrate the New Year?
• What traditions do you have around new babies? How do you celebrate the coming of a new baby? How do you prepare for the birth/adoption?
• What was your favourite childhood food? If you wanted to serve a visitor a meal that would help them to understand your heritage, which meal would you serve?
• Does your name have any particular significance or meaning? Are there reasons why your parents chose your name?
• Where did you grow up? What relationships did you have with people from other ethnic, racial, class, sexual orientation, religious, backgrounds?
• What messages did you receive about people who are different from you when you were younger, and from what sources?
• Can you give an example of a time when you realized that the way your family does something is different from how other families do things?
• What does your birth order mean to you? Your family?
• What does your sex mean to you? Your family?

Summary: This activity, done individually or in your group, invites you to reflect on different aspects of your identity that inform how you experience and are seen in the world. You’ll need paper and pen to complete it.

Instructions: Draw an iceberg like the one above, with part of the iceberg above the waterline and part of the iceberg below. Working individually, in the part above the waterline of visibility, write down different aspects of your identity that might be more visible to people you meet. Then, in the part below the waterline, write down aspects that are not visible. If it’s helpful, use the categories in the picture above for inspiration.

Reflect on the process of drawing the icebergs: What surprised you? In what spaces do you experience safety and protection where someone with different visible identities might not? How might it be possible for someone to hold misconceptions about you based on your (in)visible identities? What assumptions could you make about the newcomer(s) based on their visible and invisible identities?

Description: This activity provides discussion questions, for your group or individual consideration, around some topics raised in these exercises.