Social Responsibility, Humanity and Cross Cultural Community

Last week, I completed my 6-month mentorship with the Refugee Services of Texas (RST) as a volunteer mentor of their Youth Mentorship Program. With mixed feelings, I said goodbye to my mentee over Zoom, but also let him know that this was not the end of our relationship, that he could always reach out to me for any help he needs in his life or his career development. This is my first mentorship experience with RST, but will not be the last.

I joined RST around October last year after I moved to Austin, Texas. As a regular volunteer in my local community, I started to look for volunteering opportunities in Austin. A friend who works at RST introduced me to this community where they’re making a huge impact on the refugee families who have recently relocated to Texas from various countries. I had no prior knowledge about Texas being one of the largest states in the US to accept refugees to start their new life here. After I found out about this organization, I immediately asked about the possibility to volunteer in the community.

Social Responsibility

As an individual, we all have the social responsibility to make our community a better and more harmonious place and help families in need. There are various programs in RST that you can contribute as volunteers to help the refugee families such as welcoming the families, tutoring English language, transporting families to healthcare or social security appointments, etc. As any new member of a community, one would feel disconnected from the rest, and naturally feel lost orienting around their life. Some arrive with a big family, while others in a smaller group, with unique challenges of their own. While I was still looking for ways to help in any of these areas, in our volunteer orientation session, I heard about the Youth Program. Then a light bulb came on in my head that I believed I could help the young people in a more fundamental way, being a mentor to help shape their future here.

Humanity

Everyday we hear stories worldwide that individuals or families are suffering from unfortunate events like wars or illegal activities like human trafficking. Usually these stories sound so far from us that we never thought there’s an immediate action that we can take to help. To me, that helpless thought ended when I heard about RST. As soon as I learned about this organization, I decided to do something. Although I couldn’t be more involved in the beginning of their journey to seek asylum, I can be there when they come through and finally arrive to start a new life in Texas. As humans, the least you can do is to lend a hand to those in need, regardless of their race, gender or age.

Cross Culture Community

As someone who’s passionate about different cultures and always seeks opportunities to interact with people from different backgrounds, I got so excited to be part of this community because I know I will enjoy the journey working with anyone from a different country. RST provides guidance on cross cultural communications, the do’s and don’ts, taboos for some cultures, etc for its volunteers, but what I found most impactful was the nuances from our real life conversations in various subjects. What’s more interesting about this mentorship is, both me and my mentee are from another country who recently moved to the US. Our observation, interpretation, and comparison between our home and the new culture became a mainstream of our conversations.

My mentorship journey

I got paired with my mentee H around May. He is a 22-year-old gentleman from Rwanda, who is studying an online university program, and is expecting to graduate early 2021. He moved here with a big family last year. RST had a few interviews with me before to understand my background so the mentorship is paired based on the needs of the mentee with the analysis about how the mentor can help. To me, this is a perfect match to maximize the influence by leveraging my experience and knowledge.

The mentorship lasted 6 months, with an expected 8 hours interaction between the mentor and the mentee each month. We met once a week for about an hour from the beginning to test out if the frequency worked for both of us, which lasted till the end. In our first meeting, we had introduced each other and talked about what we would like to achieve in this program. H is studying a communications related major, and he is very interested in learning about Marketing and Communications, as well as Human Resources in a real business setting. His goal is to find an internship to get some experience in these fields.

After we met for a few times, I made a rough timeline that accommodates H’s goals. The first phase is to get to know each other better, and have deeper conversations about our background, life stories, and other aspects of life since we moved to the US. The second phase is to focus on his school projects when he would have more time to work on them after he finished his part-time job around September to October. Recognizing that I might not be the subject matter expert in some fields that he was working on, I did make suggestions about how to be resourceful and get the right information he needed. The last phase of the mentorship is to focus on getting ready for a job, including writing a resume and a cover letter, and having a practice interview. I mostly used a lot of my own stories as a job seeker and a hiring manager to set the preparations and expectations.

While I believe this has been beneficial to H’s transition from a student to a professional, I also enjoyed and learned quite a few things from the mentorship.

• Humility. A mentorship is a two-way street. I also learned a lot from H’s culture, their education system, and the thought process that helped him conduct market research and write reports, which helps me organize my thoughts on the current business environment in the market, and certain social dynamics around us. I learned about how they spend their holidays and how they interact with their family.
• Empathy. The success of this mentorship is built on strong foundations of us understanding each other’s position as someone who recently moved to the US from another country. The experience and feeling I had when I went through processes such as getting a driver’s license and social security last year when I moved to Austin helped me understand what they must be struggling with. I was also once a student and I was very eager to find a job that really interested me. These all helped me put myself in their shoes when conversations happen so I can be more helpful pointing them to the right direction.
• Respect. While you’re interacting with someone from a different culture, respect is something you should keep in mind. Regardless of their current situations, there is no such thing as being superior or inferior in a social status. All human beings are equal in a sense that they are entitled to being respected for who they are and where they’re from. I am personally interested in learning about their cultures so I tend to ask more questions about how this happens in their home countries, so they don’t feel that even though they’re in a different country, they are being neglected from their heritage or home culture.
• The power of stories. We can influence others so much more by telling our own stories, instead of teaching or preaching. The stories also help provoke thoughts about why things happen in a certain way and can lead to further conversations that lead to more ideas. In my conversations with H, I never used words like “This is the way that something should happen” because there is never one only way. I would always tell a story of my past experience and ask him what his thoughts were or what he experienced before.

As Astronaut Neil Armstrong once said, That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. If each of us would take that one step to reach out to help people in need, this will amplify the humanity of mankind. Be kind. That is what we all need to remind ourselves in a difficult year like 2020.

Shirley Xu has an MA in Intercultural Business Communications. She is currently the Program Manager and Operations Lead of a large global team at IBM. She moved to Austin, Texas in July 2019 from China. She is an active member of the IBM volunteer community and the Refugee Services of Texas. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s position, strategies or opinions.