Interculturality
8 sessions of adventure (plus 1 community sharing celebration): Wednesday January 28-March 18th, 2026 from 1:00-2:30PM San Francisco, 2:00-3:30PM Mexico & St. Louis, 3:00-4:30PM New York City, 4:00-5:30pm Venezuela Time* Subject to Daylight Saving Time.
SHTL Harvest Monday March 23, 2026
Moving from being multicultural to living interculturally,
and some steps in-between we all can take on that journey.
Interculturality is a call to listen and dialogue with the aim of truly encountering
other persons from different socio-ethnic-cultural backgrounds. As an invitation to recognize and honor the other person’s inherent dignity as a child of God, our own expectations, assumptions, preconceived ideas, biases and more are challenged.
Ultimately, the choice for interculturality is a way of life in which we commit ourselves to doing the hard work of forming community and creating communion with those who are different from us, on an equal footing.
In a world that is in constant haste, opening up ourselves and our hearts to interculturality, and choosing to live interculturally, is a deeply counter-cultural endeavor.
This course explores the important topic of interculturality, characterized by similarities and differences among human beings, which is essential when striving that “Another World is Possible” for all. Living interculturally is a choice we can make and goes further than mere acknowledging that no ethnicity, culture, sex, social class, religion or aesthetics, etc. is better or superior than another. Recognizing the many cultural differences among peoples, we will explore how equitable dialogues and interactions as well as mutual respect are key to co-construct new meaning, new attitudes and new perspectives that surpass the differences, by valuing them and taking that richness to make it something better and more inclusive.
Program Outline
One week for the Introductory Course on the basic tenets of Popular Education followed by eight sessions on Interculturality, covering four topics.
Week 1 – 8
- Eight weeks of one 1/2-hour large group session per week with large group interaction by students and facilitators; and
- Eight weeks of one session for small group work by students only (without facilitators), to be decided and organized by participating students.
Four Topics
Topic 1 – Multiculturalism
- Exploring how to live the Gospel call to “love our neighbor as ourselves” in a world that is increasingly marked by multiculturalism, diversity and inequality.
- Reflect on our personal history and family history to begin to understand ourselves as persons who have been formed by multiple cultures. What does multiculturalism mean to you today? Are you comfortable with that understanding? If you have time, start to explore multiculturalism online. What strikes you as some of the essential elements of multiculturalism?
Topic 2 – Towards Interculturality: Intercultural Competence
- Exploring conceptual paradigms from which we operate in everyday life. Raising awareness about biases and preconceptions by learning effective communication skills to engage with people from different cultures.
- Reflect on how you have been enculturated – in your own culture and maybe in other cultures as well. Becoming aware of some of our social conditionings is critical because although they may seem “normal” to us, they are most likely far from universal. Ponder how the process of inclusion and exclusion is present in your daily life – what can you do to transform these tendencies? Reflect on the richness of diversity in your life.
Topic 3 – Using Power Differently
- What is Interculturality and exploring some essential social, psychological and spiritual attributes needed to live in an intercultural setting that is focused on mission.
- Exploring the meaning of interculturality and its constitutive elements. Understanding what it means to recognize and build on the dignity of difference. Living interculturally through listening, dialogue and encounter.
Principles
Spirituality
- Discover, by using the Gospels and Sacred Heart Spirituality, the richness of diversity, which we are invited to live interdependently with one another, as equal children of God.
- Open ourselves through prayer and meditation in its many forms to the workings of the Spirit who transforms us and leads us to new ways of relating to one another and to reality.
Popular Education
- Collaborate with others for the good of the whole and learn from one another.
- Transcend the knowledge and problem-solving culture through critical thinking on our own concrete reality, by learning active and participatory learning methods.
- Explore together what synodality might mean in an intercultural context and how we can learn from that contemporary issue in the Catholic Church.
Power
- Decenter national, cultural and ethnic superiority in order to meet one another as members of one humanity.
- Call forth and awaken in each student their own power, not for personal gain but rather for the sake of the learning community and in service to the common good.
Methodology
- To start always from the experience and reality of each participant’s own cultural context.
- Participatory, interactive and experiential learning online, through Zoom and an online platform.
- Popular Education methodology.
Facilitator: Jacquelin Jiménez, Rscj
Resources