Cultural Self-Awareness & Relational Humility: Identity, History & Healing: ONLINE LIVE STREAM EVENT

Workshop Description

​Most people enter the helping professions moved by compassion and a genuine desire to support others. At the same time, we all carry the imprint of the worlds we grow up in - our families, communities, cultures, and histories - shaped within broader social systems marked by ongoing colonialism, power imbalances, and inequity. Without intentional self-awareness, even well-meaning practitioners can unintentionally replicate harm, overlook important cultural contexts, or miss cues that influence safety, trust, and healing. This workshop begins with a simple but essential premise: ethical and culturally responsive care starts with understanding ourselves.

A central focus of this training is cultivating awareness of our own intercultural and intersectional identities, values, and social locations, and how these shape the ways we show up in clinical and community-based relationships. Participants will explore the lenses they bring into the room, including personal history, worldview, migration stories, experiences of displacement, identity formation, and the ways they may hold, navigate, or be impacted by privilege, power, marginalization, and cultural narratives.  Together, we will examine how these intersecting dynamics influence assessment, attunement, and decision-making, and how greater self-awareness strengthens our ability to recognise, respect, and attune to the cultural worlds of the people we support.

Participants will also explore how colonial histories, contemporary forms of colonial harm, and ongoing systems of colonial domination continue to shape mental-health structures, clinical relationships, and the lived experiences of the individuals and communities they accompany. Through guided reflection, dialogue, and applied exercises, attendees will deepen their capacity to engage across differences with authenticity, openness, and compassion.

You will deepen your practice or learn to:

• Explore and describe your own cultural identities, values, and social locations - and recognize how they shape clinical presence and decision-making.
• Identify how lived experience, worldview, and personal history influence relational dynamics with the individuals and communities you serve.
• Understand how colonial histories, contemporary forms of colonial harm, and ongoing systems of colonial domination continue to affect mental health systems and the people you support.

Who Should Attend?

​This workshop is designed for helping professionals who provide counselling or relational support, including therapists, social workers, psychologists, and other mental health and health-care professionals. It is also well-suited to educators, community workers, leaders, and anyone seeking to deepen cultural self-awareness, relational humility, and understanding of how culture, power, and history shape relationships.​​​​​

​You will receive:

• Login details and instructions emailed in advance of the workshop
• Downloadable handouts
• Certificate of attendance upon successful completion of a brief online quiz (if desired)
• Access to a recording of the workshop for a limited period of time after the workshop - so if you can’t join live, or need to miss part of the live workshop and want to view it afterwards, we’ve got you covered!

About the Presenters

Shayla S. Dube, MSW, RCSW, is a Zimbabwean-born Canadian social worker, psychotherapist, educator, and ACSW board-approved clinical supervisor with over 15 years of post-graduate experience across micro, mezzo, and macro practice. She teaches Africentric Social Work at the University of Calgary and works as an intercultural safety consultant. Her clinical and educational work integrates Africentric healing frameworks, EMDR, somatic practices, and Ubuntu/Sankofa wisdom to support collective wellness.

As an uninvited guest on Indigenous lands, Shayla honours Indigenous sovereignty and works in relational and communal solidarity with Indigenous peoples.

Shayla is grateful to co-facilitate this workshop with Adele Lafrance, her Ubuntu-centred sistar who embodies cultural humility with so much grace.

Dr. Adele Lafrance is a clinical psychologist, research scientist, author and co-developer of emotion-focused treatment modalities, including Emotion-Focused Family Therapy. She has published extensively in the field of emotion and health, including the EFFT Clinician’s Manual published by the American Psychological Association. She has also written a popular parenting book titled: What to Say to Kids When Nothing Seems to Work.

A frequent keynote speaker at professional conferences, Adele is known for her engaging, energetic and authentic presentation style.  She provides consultation and training for clinicians, school boards and mental health agencies worldwide.

Adele is perhaps best known for promoting family-focused care for children, adolescents and adults struggling with mental health issues.

For more information or to register: www.missionempowerment.ca