Our Programs
Key Programs and Activities
Study Circles
Groups of eight to fifteen people from different backgrounds, experiences,
and ethnic heritages, meet over the course of several weeks to work through
targeted issues, and then come together to summarize their ideas and
determine a plan of action. Since its inception TMPU has convened Study
Circles to unite diverse citizens of many communities around divisive issues
and problems; promote teamwork and common understanding among public safety
officers themselves, and the people they serve; and promote civic engagement
and cooperative problem solving among middle and high school youth.
A national model for bringing diverse people
together for dialog and action, will continue to be a mainstay of
TMPU activity, with increasing focus on public safety and community
development. Study Circles are the “citizen’s congress,” the vehicle
for moving
from theory to practice, concept to action, personal experience to public
policy.
How to be part of a study circle:
1. Be a resident of Palm Beach County, or conduct your business here.
2. Be willing to discuss problems openly and work toward solutions and understanding.
3. Contact TMPU with your preferred topic. Include your name, title, street and electronic addresses (e-mail) and daytime phone.
Cultural Competency Training Program
The need for health care and social service agencies to provide
access, care, and services with cultural sensitivity and competence
grows more urgent as increasing numbers of individuals from many
cultures, who speak different languages, have diverse educational
backgrounds, levels of acculturation, and socio-economic status, and unique ways of processing information, walk
through their doors. Consequences of failing to communicate with them
effectively or to take into account their cultural differences results not
only in personal discomfort but also in failed comprehension, poor service
delivery outcomes, and increased costs of deep-end care. In response,
initial focus of TMPU’s new county-wide Cultural Competency Training Program
is on line staff and supervisors, those who most directly “touch” the lives
of the county’s diverse residents, with the longer term goal of developing
broad-based organizational change through engaging agency leaders.
View our Cultural Competency Training Program Brochure
For more information about CCTP -
click here
Youth Programs
TMPU youth programs engage a diverse cross section of youth at all levels
(Elementary, Middle and High School) using the Study Circle dialog format as the
basis of empowering young people that resides in Palm Beach County to make a
difference in their own neighborhoods. Youth that are engaged in dialogs begin to
think beyond their own needs, and
their focus becomes developing "Action" ideas that will positively impact
their communities. The dialog model encourages youth to take risk to improve
inter/intra cultural understanding, build problem solving skills, and places
them in scenarios by where they will be able to not only demonstrate
appropriate social interactions, but help to cultivate long standing
relationship with others from diverse backgrounds. TMPU currently provides services to Palm Beach County youth that range in scope.
Some TMPU program services:- Study Circles - facilitated dialogue for six or more weeks leading to community action projects determined by the participants (elementary and middle/high school students)
- Intergenerational Study Circles - Study Circles giving young people and seniors opportunity to interact with ethnically, racially, and religiously diverse community members while focusing on stereotypes they hold about one another
- Proficiency workshops - changing outdated concepts of learning to promote the concept that young people are not born with limits on learning and can achieve beyond the expectations of parents, teachers, and others (after school program staff and other community participants that interact routinely with young people)
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Committed individuals daring to create a unified community |