Aloha IAMC Members and Supporters,
It seems like it was just yesterday that I was strolling around the tiki torches at the Hilton Hawaiian village hotel for the annual ACA conference. My intentions upon returning to the Mainland (the good old windy city) was to immediately capture my thoughts on paper about the phenomenal and awesome time that I spent not only at the conference, but to reflect on my overall experiences in Honolulu. However, after recovering from my jet lag and returning to work the very next day, somehow time went by much sooner than I had anticipated. So here I go one month later trying to capture for all my IAMC colleagues the full extent and magnitude of that week. First of all, besides the weather being absolutely fantastic, the overall conference was just as terrific. It was well organized and provided participants with an array of workshop experiences. Each day’s itinerary was filled with choices for the new to more seasoned counselor and for the counselor in training. Additionally, the workshop topics and poster sessions offered an abundance of information on subject areas to satisfy the professional palate and/or passion of the diverse counselors that flocked to Oahu, (I had the pleasure of networking with counselors not only from the 50 states, but also the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Africa and Australia). Of course, as IAMC President Elect, I planned to attend a few workshops that involved or addressed concerns of diversity, multicultural competencies and social justice hot topics that will allow us to better serve our clients and be voices or advocates for change. It was affirming after attending several of these workshops to find that counselors are continuing to carry a collective global torch on controversial topics such as “racial bias” “privilege,” and “discrimination.” Even though there has been a great deal of progress on many of these issues, as a nation and throughout the world, there is still much work to be done. Additionally, as my esteemed colleague Dr. Maricruz Ramos and I discovered when presenting our workshop “Engaging at-risk students: a comprehensive mentoring program for minority students”, practitioners continue to look for best practices for serving our diverse clients. In closing, I would like to share more stories with you at an upcoming networking event. Please let me know if you are interested in meeting and exchanging best practice ideas to assist at-risk populations from multicultural and diverse perspectives. My IAMC co-leader Mr. Rodney Bullock and I plan to host an IAMC “Multicultural Counseling Forum” networking event of the third Friday of each month from June to August,5pm to 6:30 pm at a Chicago area location. I can be reached at [email protected] and Mr. Bullock at [email protected]. Looking forward to hearing from you and seeing some of you soon. Still Hanging Loose, Mildred Mildred Holmes President Elect IAMC
0 Comments
|
AuthorThis blog is dedicated to the happenings and musings of the Illinois Association of Multicultural Counseling. Archives
February 2015
Categories |