Mentoring Multicultural Approach to Adult Mentoring Disadvantaged

Mentoring Multicultural Approach to Adult Mentoring Disadvantaged adults take place in the community and need special attention to enhance their life. The disadvantaged adult population mostly comes from various cultural background; many of them also belong to the low-class society, work in blue collar occupation scheme, unable to finish high or middle school, and sometimes have problem with literacy. The government works hard, collaborating with educational foundations, NGO, and volunteering professionals to provide continuing education for those people, to build them better future.

Through series of integrated educational programs, the disadvantaged groups learn how to read, write, and express themselves, and go through learning process for basic lessons. With enough pressure from the job and family, learning process may not be the only task to fulfill. Developing motivation, building concentration, and enhancing self-esteem sometimes demand greater attention for people who work in this group, both teachers and learners. In order to help them achieve the goals and monitor the progress, mentoring is necessary to apply in the special continuing education situation.

Mentorship participants may come from different nations and bring their own culture-based values into their attitudes. Many of them are migrant workers, which have different or perhaps contradictory values from their motherland. Multicultural approach in mentoring sessions can be a useful alternative in building rapport between mentor and mentees, and among peers. The approach has some advantages such as creating colorful background in the learning environment, encouraging them to respect each other's cultural circumstances, accept differences, and exposing the mentees to the higher extent of diversity.

Socially and educationally disadvantaged adults develop the pattern of learning that is different from those of average people. With the strong influence of their economic and educational drawback in the past, some people may have significant barriers that prevent them from normal process of learning and retention, such as social pressure. Kerka (1988) also states that such pressure might have been the cause why some disadvantaged ones did not manage to finish their basic formal education.

However, the barriers might not come solely from economic factor, but tend to be the combination of internal (self-esteem, self-acknowledgment) and external (family, friends, environment) factors. The respond also varies among individuals, which makes them somewhat different as persons when they start the mentoring session.

Nevertheless, Hayes (1988) in Kerka (1988) classified the typical personal attitude of disadvantaged adults into "deterrence level" that range from "low self-confidence, social disapproval, situational barriers, negative attitude toward education, and low personal priority." Each person may show one characteristic dominant over others, which require assortment of approaches during the counseling sessions.

In some extents, mentors may find multicultural approach advantageous for the learning process, such as: Cultural diversity provides collaborative environment where participants learn to accept each other, build constructive views toward diversity, learn to listen attentively, "negotiate ideas" to solve conflicts (Imel & Tisdell 1996 in Ziegahn 2001). Some mentees are curious with others' background, and it may develop their peer closeness after learning to know and respect each other.

Mentors can use positive cultural concepts as reading or discussion materials in mentoring program, giving opportunities to participants to honor themselves with good values and make the most of them. Cultural diversity can be fruitful discussion topics. Since existing cultural concept can be easy examples, participants can use it to get new knowledge and widen their horizon. However they should understand that potential conflict may arise and they should discuss about it empathetically.

Mentors may address cultural approach to show mentees that mentors try to get deep acknowledgement with the mentees, or pay them respect for their cultural background. Mentorship provides less demanding environment than regular classroom where some people in a type of cultural value need to pay full respect to teachers in order to learn something (Carbaugh 1998; Liang and McQueen 2000; Pratt et al. 1998 in Ziegahn 2001).

Aside from those benefits above, multicultural approach also contains some risks or disadvantages, for example: Some adults are quite sensitive with cultural backgrounds, probably regard them as racial issues, and do not like the idea of bringing their backgrounds into counseling sessions or discuss it with a lot of people. Diversity in culture can be the source of conflicts and insult for mentee, especially if they have negative attitude and build self-defense against others' opinion.

Some negative aspects from their cultural background may affect their learning strategies, for example, low disciplined attitude, traditional view on gender issues, lack of knowledge, or perhaps blind faith on traditional beliefs. The multicultural approach idea that integrates into the mentorship needs careful planning and extra efforts from the mentor to design the classroom environment and anticipate disapproving responds from mentees.

Before bringing multicultural approach into the sessions, it is necessary that mentors: arm themselves with ample preliminary research about cultural backgrounds, make list of safe and controversial topics to anticipate positive and negative responds from mentees; are ready to tap mentee's knowledge to explain such facts they ask but mentors are probably unaware about. Mentors pay respect by allowing mentee to explore themselves in the class, and then draw conclusion or recommendation based on mentors' experience.

Here the mentors show the function as managers to bridge the gap and resolve conflicts; never judge a negative aspect on cultural background, however if the value brings the mentee down or prevents him/her from achieving the expected goals, the mentor should address it right away and discuss it with the mentee, along with sufficient sense of humor; relate mentoring materials with mentees' daily activities where they can see the benefits for themselves in doing the program. It is.