The Importance of Diversity and Cultural Awareness

“We live now in a global village, and we are in one single family. It’s our responsibility to bring friendship and love from all different places around the world and to live together in peace”. This quote perfectly illustrates the world that we live in today.

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The internet has blurred geographical, sexual, and cultural boundaries, and we are now connected and closer than ever before. This has also increased the awareness amongst the masses related to topics that were usually avoided or limited to closed-door talks, such as cultural diversity. 

Now that we have addressed the elephant in the room let’s understand the importance of diversity and cultural awareness. Read on to learn more about this topic that is critical to be conscious of.

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The Importance of Diversity and Cultural Awareness

Broadening Our Perspective

Hearing about another person’s experiences, traditions, languages, or beliefs sheds light on life that is vastly different from ours, and it helps improve our awareness, understanding, and it broadens our perspective. 

When you hear about the struggles, living conditions, and priorities, you start realizing the reason for the other person’s way of life.

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Finding Unity in Diversity

Cultural awareness makes us realize that we aren’t different from others, after all. As your awareness increases, you’ll realize that the languages we speak contain similar words. 

The traditions that we follow are somewhat identical. The religions that we follow talk about similar things, such as love and harmony. This helps us become more empathetic towards each other and help us connect on a deeper level.

Wouldn’t your life become mundane if every person on the planet looked, talked, and behaved exactly like you? Diversity brings new ideas, visions, lifestyles, and practices that make our life worth living. Different cultures add variety and bring a unique experience every day.

Diminishing Discrimination

Tolerance, acceptance, inclusiveness; these are not just fancy words. Increased diversity and cultural awareness have shown the actual power of these words. 

We are increasingly moving towards an all-inclusive society where we have realized that the conditioning that we have received is wrong. Diverse neighborhoods are becoming commonplace, and we are finally starting to live as one cohesive society.

Promoting Growth

Building a community of people from various backgrounds, each having unique socio-economic statuses, life experiences, can lead to the generation of ideas that would not have been possible otherwise. 

This helps in our growth right from a community level to schools to even professional work-environments. The progress of the human race, no matter how small or large, lies in our combined efforts.

Be a Good Listener

“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But, if you listen, you may learn something new”. Sometimes people only want someone who can hear them out. 

Be the pillar of support and proactively listen to people’s struggles, stories, and experiences from different ethnic backgrounds, races, religions, and cultures. Having a short, thoughtful session of discussion can help increase your awareness about different individuals.

Be Welcoming

The Importance of Diversity and Cultural Awareness

Recognize and understand the differences, such as varying familial, gender, and societal roles of each culture. Although they might look weird to you, these factors have shaped them and helped them progress as a society. 

So, open your arms and welcome them and even introduce them to your customs and traditions. You won’t truly understand someone until you go through their experiences. 

Conclusion

So, read, research, listen, and increase your awareness and try to experience lives from the other person’s perspective to understand why they are the way they are. Together our differences, make us something beautiful and unique in our own way.