How do we create an inclusive & egalitarian society in which diversity is not merely tolerated or managed but fully harnessed as a thriving lived experience for enrichment of everyone involved & benefit of the society as a whole?

 

Despite progress made over the last decades, MULTICULTURALISM still remains an enduring challenge, all the more urgent as we stand at the junction of retrogressing to the homogeneous & hierarchical past rather than progressing towards egalitarian, inclusive & plural ideals.

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MULTICULTURAL CHALLENGE inserts analytic insight on HOW we can rise up to the challenges of creating a multicultural democracy in the 21C.​​ It focuses on the following key challenges:

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• INTEGRATION: HOW immigrants come to be integrated into a society & what we mean by 'integration' anyway;

• FEAR OF LOSING CULTURE & IDENTITY OF THE NATION WITH A GROWING DIVERSITY: HOW a society could embrace diversity without losing culture, identity & solidarity of the nation;

• HARNESSING DIVERSITY: HOW the benefit of diversity can be fully harnessed as a thriving lived experience for enrichment of everyone involved & benefit of society as a whole;

• FAIRNESS: HOW we can ensure fairness for ALL — the sense of unfairness felt by the majority that is fueling the 'white backlash';

• ROOTS OF POPULISM & CRISIS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY: HOW the intersection between economic, social, cultural & psychological forces is colliding to fuel the rise of populism & HOW it can be addressed at its root in order to create the vision of society we believe in.

• TRUE POWER: WHAT true power is & HOW we can come to feel it, without which the outer 'symptoms' of power struggles would persist.

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Rather than framing multiculturalism as a 'minority issue' or 'how to treat minorities better,' which maintains a division between the majority & minorities, MULTICULTURAL CHALLENGE takes a UNIFYING approach of framing it as a social justice issue that concerns us all: 'what kind of society would we choose to create based on the values that we believe in?' 'How do we ensure equality, justice & fairness for ALL?' which brings everyone together in a shared pursuit of shared ideals —  the values of equality, inclusion, justice & fairness being neither Left nor Right ideal but UNIVERSAL ideal, the source of unity, under which different ways of achieving these ideals can be debated & discussed. It also intervenes at the source by empowering individuals with the tools to connect with their 'deeper self', without which the outer 'symptoms' of tribalism & hierarchy would persist.

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MULTICULTURAL CHALLENGE also offers ONLINE COURSES that create the SPACE for CRITICAL ANALYSIS & SOICAL VISIONING that clarifies shared ideals & shared vision forward as well as empowering participants with the tools to connect with their true power, without which the outer symptoms of hierarchy & tribalism would persist. It serves as the space for:

 

• HOLISTIC: Holistically making sense of HOW the intersection between economic, social, cultural & psychological forces is colliding to produce the phenomenon that is being expressed now & HOW it can be addressed in order to create the vision of a society that we believe in;

• CLARIFYING: Clarifying that the values of equality, inclusion, justice & fairness are neither Left nor Right ideal but UNIVERSAL ideal — the source of unity — under which different ways of achieving these ideals can be debated & discussed; 

• UNIFYING: Having 'difficult conversations' that nonetheless need to be discussed & clarified in order to bring different sectors onto the same page & move forward.

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Current offerings are as follows:​​

• BEYOND MULTICULTURALISM [8-weeks,online]: How do we create an inclusive & egalitarian society in which diversity is not merely tolerated or managed but fully harnessed as a thriving lived experience for enrichment of everyone involved & benefit of the society as a whole? BEYOND MULTICULTURALISM empowers participants with social consciousness to be able to SEE — with a critical distance — WHY where we stand now is still a problem & HOW we can move beyond where we stand now towards creating a truly multicultural society & HOW we can become active agents of social transformation in the way we choose to create our everyday lives. [DETAILS>]​

• ROOTS OF POPULISM [8-weeks, online]: Despite the eruption of populism across the globe that is throwing liberal democratic values into a disarray, there is little public understanding of what populism is, what's fueling it & what can be done about it.  ROOTS OF POPULISM takes participants through the process of holistically & systematically making sense of how the intersection between economic, social, cultural & psychological forces is fueling the phenomenon that is being expressed now & HOW it can be addressed at the root. [MORE>]

• CRISIS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY [8-weeks, online]: When we say 'democracy' in the West, we mean liberal democracy.  But liberal democratic values — such as freedom, equality, the rule of law — have increasingly come under attack, not only in societies that adopted liberal democracies from the West but within Western liberal democracies themselves. CRISIS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY explores WHAT we mean by 'liberal' in liberal democracy, WHY it has come under attack [including its dysfunctions, contradictions & shortcomings] & HOW we can restore liberal democratic values as the source of unity rather than division. [MORE>]

• RISE & FALL OF NEOLIBERALISM [8-weeks, online]:  The course explores HOW neoliberalism — an economic paradigm that, in the name of 'efficiency' and 'freedom,' lets the market, with hardly any intervention by the government, determine the outcome — came to be accepted as the unquestioned ideology through the 80s and 90s & ended up contributing to the extreme wealth gap and concentration of wealth in the hands of the few that we see today, the physical manifestations of which has been uneven development both within cities and between cities and peripheral regions. The course will explore what alternative paradigm can replace the neoliberal paradigm, with a particular concern for reviving the peripheral 'left-behind' regions that are fueling the populist backlash. [MORE>]​

• TRUE POWER WORKSHOP [Individuals & Groups]: What is true power & how do you come to feel it? TRUE POWER WORKSHOP empowers you with the tools to STEP INTO YOUR POWER & EMBODY YOUR WORTH. It takes you through a step-by-step process of dismantling what's blocking access to your TRUE power & connecting with it. You will not only come to understand what true power is conceptually, but also embody it experientially & be rooted in it. Suitable for anyone who wants to (re) start their lives from the place of empowerment rather than disempowerment (abundance vs. lack) & especially recommended for historically disempowered groups such as WOMEN or MINORITIES. [DETAILS>]