Danielle

As a nursing home outside of Boston, Massachusetts, we have a VERY diverse population of staff from all over the world, especially Africa, Central America, and South America. Every year on Nursing Home Week we do special programs for the staff, and we always have an international lunch and dinner just for the staff that features food from the countries they are from. And we encourage staff to dress in "native clothing" and we play cultural music and decorate the room with all the flags of the countries that are represented in our staff (which are many!). The staff LOVE this event every year!

In activities on a smaller scale, I have had a cultural appreciation group, which is a multi sensory travel group where we explore a country like Haiti for example, where many of our staff are from...I print out pictures, play Youtube travel clips to that location, play music, bring food if I can...and I try to do it on an hour when I have nursing assistants helping who are from the same country. It was really special...and its nice to have the other staff involved in activities and enjoying it.