The ABC's of Empowerment through Volunteering in ASHA
Increase your cultural competence and help others become more culturally competent by:
- Networking with other ASHA members and spreading your diverse perspective and ideas throughout the organization
- Impacting your area of clinical or professional specialty and making a difference
- Representing your multicultural constituency group or Special Interest Group
- Influencing ASHA members and the Association with your cultural expertise, richness, and competence
- Teaching friends and other constituents about multiculturalism within the academic and clinical aspects of the professions
- Expanding your cultural competence and learning from colleagues and clients from a variety of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
- Infusing multicultural information into coursework and clinical procedures thus impacting the future practices of the professions
- Contributing to the development of ASHA's policies and procedures and ensuring that your ideas are represented
- Interacting directly with ASHA's Executive Board and other volunteer leaders governing the Association
- Affecting decisions of Congress and other elected officials regarding laws and regulations that have an impact on the work of audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech-language-hearing scientists
- Expanding your network of colleagues to include members from the United States and the world
Put Your Power To Work
- Volunteer to serve on an ASHA or NSSLHA Committee, Board, Working Group, etc. for the Association.
- Read and react and let your ideas be heard through the Peer Review policy documents.
- Sign up to mentor students [be a "mentee"] in the Student to Empowered Professional S.T.E.P. program.
- Keep up with the Legislative Briefs that ASHA distributes and actively pursue your Senators and Congresspersons to co-sponsor and/or support bills that affect the work of speech-language pathologists or audiologists.
- Study the Issue Briefs that are available to learn how to pursue your interests in legislation and/or campaigns that enable you to have a positive impact on our clinical practice in all professions.
- Contact your State Association to volunteer on committees, boards and get involved in your state's activities such as the state Diversity or Multicultural Committee or Political Action Committee concerning multicultural issues.
- Start a CLD committee at your workplace to ensure culturally competent assessment and intervention practices.
- Encourage your colleagues to incorporate culturally relevant practices into their work.
