Growing Dialogue and Understanding Between Communities

Here at ING, we have been delivering workplace training for educators, healthcare professionals, corporate managers, and law enforcement officers for many years. These presentations are among my favorite to deliver, because they have such a huge impact: training one teacher, one doctor, one police officer has a positive impact on the hundreds – if not thousands – of people they interact with in their professional life.

Over the past couple of months I delivered a series of training presentations to the University of California Berkeley Police Department. I thought the presentations went really well, with the attending law enforcement officers highly engaged and clearly interested in what I was presenting.

The training ends with an opportunity for trainees to ask questions and share reflections from their own experiences. As a number of officers described encounters with Muslims and other minority populations, I was struck by the theme which emerged: “I have interacted with Muslims many times before, but I’ve not had the opportunity to learn about their culture and beliefs.”

Law enforcement professionals do a difficult job. They are on the frontlines of working to keep all Americans safe. I am proud to deliver training presentations which help them to serve and protect their diverse communities more effectively. Knowledge of and exposure to the norms, practices, and beliefs of different cultures and communities is especially necessary when officers are dealing with crisis situations, and having to make quick decisions.

Soon after I got home from the last presentation, our office received a call from another police department. They had heard about the training, and wanted the same for their officers. This is important work, and it’s a privilege to be a part of it.

Next year, we want to videotape live training seminars as well as record webinars of all our professional trainings for law enforcement officers, educators, healthcare professionals, and corporate managers, and to stream them online for nationwide dissemination. That way, our trainings could be viewed privately by individuals at any time of the day or in group settings for staff development at institutions. We estimate that it will cost $15,000 to make each training available this way – $60,000 total for the four trainings. This would help us reach hundreds of thousands of professionals each year.

Please join me in giving generously to ING so that we can reach more law enforcement officers, educators, healthcare professionals, and others with our training and education.