PITTSBURGH, PA (December 21, 2020) The City of Pittsburgh and Mayor William Peduto’s Office of Equity have partnered with Cultural Humility & Equity Collaborative, LLC (CHEC) to create a cultural competency training curriculum for the Department of Public Safety bureaus.
The City released a request for proposals for the development of a cultural competency training in July to produce a “Train the Trainer” model curriculum specific to the Pittsburgh region designed in collaboration with public safety personnel and local immigrant and refugee community stakeholders. The selected vendor, CHEC, is a local consulting group made up or organizations that work and have built trust with the immigrant and refugee population and community leaders in the Pittsburgh area. This will allow for a curriculum developed specifically for local first responders designed to meet the needs of our local immigrant and refugee communities with their direct input.
The cultural competency training curriculum will be managed by Welcoming Pittsburgh and the Department of Public Safety Multicultural Liaison Unit (MLU). Once developed, it will be delivered to all personnel in the Police, Fire and EMS bureaus to equip first responders with the knowledge and skills to effectively address and support the public safety needs of Pittsburgh residents with various cultural backgrounds and English language proficiencies. The goal is for all first responders to have the skillset and resources required to appropriately understand, respect, interact, protect and respond to our immigrant and refugee communities.
The training will include multicultural overviews of the immigrant and refugee populations and communities in each of the six police zones to increase officers’ understanding and appropriate cultural response when responding to members of these communities. It will include basic cultural awareness information about the communities being served, the history of those communities and how those factors play a role in the circumstances, attitudes and beliefs of those cultures. The program will include methods of capturing and reporting community input to inform processes for accountability and updating so that trainings remain relevant over time and adapt to the changing needs of our communities.
CHEC and the City will begin to develop the training in early 2021.
