The Seva Story: Q2 2023 Newsletter
Updated: Jun 28
Preface from the Founder and CEO, Seema Jain
April is Diversity Month, which serves as a great opportunity to reflect on your own awareness of cultural differences. It’s also a great time to encourage your colleagues, friends, and family to learn more about backgrounds, cultures, and religions that are not part of your daily life.
When talking about understanding and celebrating cultural differences, I have heard many phrases used over the years: Cultural Intelligence, Cultural Fluency, Cultural Quotient, and Cultural Competency, just to name a few. But regardless of the term we use, it’s important to reflect on how we approach cultures beyond our own, and how we commit ourselves to growing that understanding over time. I recently read an article that suggested we think about cultural competency on a continuum, rather than a fixed stage or status. Let’s take a quick poll: On a scale of 1 to 5, where would you place (a) yourself and (b) your work environment on the cultural competence continuum?
Cultural Incapacity: Seeking to make the culture of others appear to be wrong.
Cultural Blindness: Unable or refusing to acknowledge the culture of others.
Cultural Pre-Competence: Being aware of what one doesn’t know about working in diverse settings. Initial levels of awareness after which a person/organization can move in a positive, constructive direction or they can falter, stop, and possibly regress.
Cultural Competence: Viewing one’s personal and organizational work as an interactive arrangement in which the educator enters into diverse settings in a manner that is additive to cultures that are different from the educator.
Cultural Proficiency: Making the commitment to life-long learning for the purpose of being increasingly effective in serving the educational needs of cultural groups. Holding the vision of what can be and committing to assessments that serve as benchmarks on the road to student success.
Regardless of where you are today, there is always an opportunity to elevate. Are you ready to invest in growing your cultural competency, and ultimately striving for cultural proficiency? Contact us to see how this investment can unlock greater business success and increased customer satisfaction for your organization.
And, of course, a big thank you to all our clients who have already invested in Seva Global to increase their teams’ cultural competency!
Source: The Center for Culturally Proficient Educational Practice
Are You Ready for Pride?
Pride Month, celebrated in June, is approaching quickly and now is the time to start thinking about what Pride means, how to celebrate, and plans to support those who do celebrate. Ask yourself:
Do I know why and how people celebrate Pride?
Do I want to grow my business within the LGBTQ+ community?
Do I wonder why pronouns are so important today?
Am I curious about LGBTQ+ terminology and history?
Do I want to recognize and celebrate people’s right to be who they are?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, Seva Global has the program to get you ready!
Seva Global offers the perfect solution to learning more about the LGBTQ+ community. Our program covers the history of the LGBTQ+ community, demographics, market trends, and best practices to grow your business and attract and retain employees. We focus on how to generate word-of-mouth marketing and strengthen your partner relationships within the LGBTQ+ community. The workshop also provides tools for training your sales and delivery teams and leaders to be more culturally proficient when engaging with the LGBTQ+ community. Seva Global customizes each program to fit any industry, company, or organization.
To learn how we can help you on this journey, reach out to tim.vesperman@seva-global.com.
Holidays
Passover
Wednesday, April 5 - Thursday, April 13, 2023*
Easter
Sunday, April 9, 2023 (Orthodox Easter: Sunday, April 16)
Eid Al-Fitr
Friday, April 21 - Saturday, April 22, 2023*
Juneteenth
Wednesday, June 19, 2023
*Holiday starts and ends at sunset
Font for Thought: Best Fonts for Accessibility
How often do you think about the font you are using?
The color of it? The tails and wings of certain letters? The spacing between individual letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs?
For some people, this makes the difference between being able to easily read and understand written text or spending hours laboring over the same few sentences and paragraphs, trying to get your brain to understand.
At Seva Global, we try to ensure our correspondence is accessible for the reader. In January 2023, the
United States State Department announced that, “The Times (New Roman) are a-Changin”. They decided to switch from the Times New Roman, a font that was used for more than two decades, to Calibri, a font believed to be easier for more people to read and understand. "The Department is committed to creating a more accessible workplace and being a public sector leader in modeling accessibility best practices."
Have you thought about what fonts you use? Is the font easy for people with visual impairments, dyslexia, or learning differences to read? Do your marketing materials or other resources utilize high color contrast differences, which can significantly help people with color blindness? Color contrast, in addition to the font type, makes a substantial impact especially for people who have difficulty differentiating colors, which impacts about 13 million Americans.
Some generally easy-to-read fonts for people with dyslexia and other learning differences are Helvetica, Courier, Arial, Verdana and CMU. A key aspect are the “wings” and “feet” of the font.
Use The British Dyslexia Association Style Guide for your team to enhance your readability and accessibility of your materials.
In summary, here are a few tips to keep in mind:
• Use a font that is Optical Character Recognition (OCR) friendly.
• Think about the color contrast and opt for colors that are highly visible with strong contrast.
• Add in alternative text for all images.
• Ask questions or solicit feedback!
Sources: Color Blind Guide, University of Michigan, British Dyslexia Association
Our Newest Team Member, Introducing Roberto Rivera
On behalf of the Seva Global team, we are excited to announce the addition of Roberto Rivera! Roberto brings his unique perspective as the first Floridian and Latinx individual on our team. He comes with a depth of experience from his previous career in hospitality and now, as an Account Executive. We are thrilled to have him on the team where he will be collaborating closely with Tim Vesperman on Seva Global’s LGBTQ+ Program.
Meet The Team
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Seva Global offers a wide array of services to foster cultural competence across organizations. Through our customized solutions and consultations, we can help to increase employee engagement, enhance customer experience, and drive bottom line results. Our goal is to help teams become more culturally competent when engaging with people from different backgrounds. We would love your feedback on this newsletter. Please share with anyone you think it may interest!
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seema.jain@seva-global.com | www.seva-global.com
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