Join us for this workshop platica where we will explore the legacy of our cultural strengths and resources in ways we can use to advocate for ourselves, our families, and our community. Dr. Selma Yznaga, LPC, a national leader in counselor advocacy and social justice, will facilitate this hands-on interactive workshop that will amplify collective cultural resources and deepen the development of our ethnic consciousness

Too often, the immigrant rhetoric conveys a message of deficit, hardship, and struggle. While we certainly experience all of these, they don’t tell our whole story. We have inherited rich, abundant resources from our antepasados that are frequently antithetical to dominant U.S. culture values. The divergence can cause us to feel shame and inhibit us from celebrating our legacy.

This interactive workshop will teach us how to identify family’s strengths and will ask you to reflect on your responsibility to pass them on to future generations. In addition, we will consider our collective cultural resources and their sometimes contradictory outcomes. Finally, we will envision what our collective activist voice might look like when it is grounded in our values, our strengths, and our resources. This workshop plática is inspired by Dr. Yznaga’s 2008 article “Using the Genogram to Facilitate Intercultural Competence of Mexican Immigrants: and will introduce the use of the genogram as an intervention to help identify traditional resources that can be modified or adapted for success in a new culture. Join us as we dig in deep together to honor the past in order to strengthen our future.

Objectives:

– Identify ancestral family strengths using a resource genogram.

– Compare our cultural resources to dominant culture values.

– Compile an inventory of shared resources and consider their application in activism and advocacy.