Our Approach
Bridging Worlds provides the necessary cultural education, outreaches and counseling to Black immigrant parents and their children, multicultural couples and communities serving them to ensure a proper cultural understanding with the goal to minimize conflict.
Our programs are designed to help black immigrant families to culturally co-exist to achieve their goals.
Bridging Worlds is a ground-breaking community-based cultural-education non-profit organization. Black immigrant families in the United States, which often have older traditional parents, and younger first-generation American children have always struggled with cultural conflict and cooperation.
Bridging Worlds provides tools and opportunities for families and organizations seeking to better understand how to bridge the cultural divide between these two groups (worlds). The support for our families include but not limited to: one-on-one cultural coaching, mental health counseling, cross-cultural marriage counseling, and cultural competence and diversity training for organizations. We also work with our partners to develop content that benefits the community we serve. We provide our services at no cost to our community, and at minimal cost to organizations.
Explore Our programs
Cross-Cultural Coaching and Training for Parents
Immigrant families who face multiple cultures and identities must find a way to blend the two cultures. This effort often starts with parents, who are the educators at home. Bridging Worlds offers highly-personalized, one-on-one coaching to parents and guardians of first generation American-born children and youth. Our process of coaching ensures participants/clients adopt new ways of seeing, thinking, and understanding the other people in their lives and around them.
Our programs for black immigrant parents includes:
- One-on-one coaching in cross-cultural parenting
- Cultural competence education
- Community workshops
- Cultural adjustment training
Cross-Cultural Coaching and Training for Children of Immigrant parents
The children of immigrant parents must grapple with growing up in American culture yet expected to behave in the way of their parents’ culture. The pressure to navigate through these complex cultures without much guidance from parents who may not completely understand the American culture could lead to strained parent-child relationships, unfulfilled dreams and emotional stresses. Bridging worlds collaborates with parents and their children and teaches relationship-based style parenting and applies cultural orientation programs to assist teens and youth to better understand their parents and to effectively communicate with them.
Program offerings include:
- Cultural competence education
- Cross-cultural marriage counseling to bi-racial and multicultural couples
- Mental Health and Socio-emotional Counseling
Mental Health Counseling
At Bridging Worlds, using a team with a culturally diverse background with extensive cultural and diversity training, we employ empathetic listening based on biblical principles of love to administer emotional healing therapies to families and individuals who are experiencing anxiety, stress, or trauma due to the complexities of culture and almost no cost.
We specifically target at-risk youth of Black/Afro Caribbean descent who have been adversely affected by the cultural gap at home. We also offer marriage counseling for multicultural couples and Black couples who may need help dealing with immigrant parents and in—laws.
Our programs offers:
- Depression counseling
- Anxiety disorders counseling
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) counseling
- Referrals
- Support Groups and Buddy system
Academic and Career Support
Several first-generation American-born or raised children of black immigrant parents feel their parents are living their lives through them. They are pursuing careers or courses based on the preferences of their parent’s who may suggest certain career lines that they feel could provide job security. In addition, limited education among the black immigrant communities mean teens are less exposed to academic and career opportunities than their peers, especially in the STEM fields. Bridging worlds provides the tools and opportunities to our communities to ensure the success of our youth.
Our programs offers:
- Career and academic counseling for parents
- Career and academic counseling for teens
- College selection and funding
- STEM support and coaching
Cultural Competence And diversity Training for Organizations
We provide training and resources in cross-cultural awareness to schools and organizations that serve black immigrant communities. We believe that people live within concentric circles that may include the family, school, neighborhood, and society, embedded within a cultural context. Hence, for children of immigrant parents who may find themselves in schools and the community beyond the home, their teachers and community leaders must be oriented with the appropriate cultural awareness and given the necessary tools to provide them with the right support in a culturally relevant manner.
We partner with the public schools, state and city governments and para-organizations to provide:
- ·Cultural and diversity awareness to public high schools, churches, and universities
- Cultural and diversity awareness to city agencies, Homeland Security, and immigration organizations
- Books and training modules