Posted on Wed. Aug. 20, 2008 - 08:31 am EDT E

Understand immigrants' outlook, speaker urges
Bridging cultural gap vital in resettlement, he said at workshop.






By Bob Caylor
of The News-Sentinel
Even for social workers and volunteers trying to look past their own preconceptions, building relationships with refugee or immigrant families can be both hard work and uncertain. The gap can be as fundamental as whether people think of themselves as individuals first or members of a group first, Brant R. Dykehouse with the Jewish Child & Family Services in Chicago told a Fort Wayne audience Tuesday.

Americans, even the youngest children able to speak, are likely to identify themselves by their names, while Burmese and other non-Western immigrants are likely to define themselves as members of an ethnic group, a family or a clan, said Dykehouse, who helps run a 10-agency project in Illinois designed to help refugees adjust to life in the United States.

It’s tough for Americans to relate to that, because here “everyone is divided into a single ‘me’ and not enough ‘we’,â€