Creating and Implementing the NIMC’s Strategic Plan:

Using Democratic and Empowerment Strategies to Build a Beloved Community

Goals:

The NIMC is an action-oriented organization that is aimed at accomplishing three fundamental goals.  These goals are stated below.

First, the NIMC is aimed at fostering positive chances in our society by promoting the principles and spirit of multiculturalism, feminism, and social justice at the individual, group, organizational, and institutional levels.

Second, the NIMC is designed to stimulate transformative changes in the mental health and human service professions by promoting the principles and spirit of multiculturalism, feminism, and social justice in these fields.

Third, the NIMC works to assist mental health professionals and other human service providers in acquiring the types of multicultural competencies they need to work respectfully, effectively, and ethically among persons from diverse groups and backgrounds. 

Objective:

One of the keys in accomplishing these three overarching organizational goals is to build a mass grassroots movement that is comprised of mental health and educational professionals who are willing to openly state their commitment to implement the APA MC Guidelines and the ACA Multicultural/Advocacy Competencies in their professional practices.  The NIMC places a special emphasis on implementing these professional guidelines and competencies because it is believed that these institutionally-sanctioned resources represent keys in transforming the fields of counseling and psychology as well as our society.  Since the NIMC was re-structured in July 2004, the members of our organization NIMC have been involved in a number of action-oriented projects that are deliberately designed to support the implementation of these guidelines and competencies in ways that help to promote a greater level of peace, justice, and sanity in our society.  These action strategies reflect our collective strategic plan and our briefly described below.

1. Working with the organizers of the National Multicultural Summit to have a special “Difficult Discussion” sponsored by the NIMC that address the ways in which the APA Multicultural Guidelines and the ACA Multicultural/Advocacy Competencies are being implemented by numerous persons in the field AS WELL AS seeking the support of additional persons in increasing the implementation of these guidelines and competencies in the field (Luis Vazquez, Michael D’Andrea, Thomas Parham, Judy Daniels, Allen Ivey, Patricia Arredondo, & Mary Bradford Ivey);

2. Securing a presentation at this year’s Multicultural Roundtable at Teacher’s College that addresses these issues and seeking the support of additional persons in increasing the implementation of these guidelines and competencies in the field (Lewis Schlosser; Yu-Wei Wang, Bryan Kim, & Pamela Foley;

3. Initiating a proposal that is co-sponsored by the NIMC, ACA, and Counselors for Social Justice that involves the implementation of a special “Giving Back to the Community Project” at this year’s ACA Convention in Atlanta.  This project is intentionally designed to use the ACA MC and Advocacy Guidelines to promote culturally-competent counseling practices n ways that foster a greater level of peace and justice in that community (Patricia Arredondo, Hugh Crethar, Sandra Lopez, Judy Lewis; Allen Ivey, Mary Bradford Ivey; Judy Daniels), ;

4. Sponsoring a presentation at the 2005 ACA Convention that addresses additional ways in which the ACA multicultural/advocacy competencies are being implemented in professional practice (Judy Daniels, Patricia Arredondo, Thomas Parham, Mary Bradford Ivey, Allen Ivey).

5. Developing a new NIMC web-site called, "Pathways to Psychological and Spiritual Health and Liberation: The NIMC’s Electronic Information and Organizing website (Brian Kajiyama & Carlos Zalaquett);”

6. Submitting a proposal to this year’s APA Convention that focuses on the work that NIMC has done as well as our future plans to help build a more peaceful and sane society (Judy Daniels);

7. Developing an on-going Delphi study that records the work that many NIMC members are doing to promote the APA Guidelines and ACA Competencies in the field.  Dr. Paul Pedersen has headed up this action strategy and is planning to have this study become a part of the NIMC’s first electronic book that will be made available on our new website (Paul Pedersen);

8. Initiating discussions about the possibility of re-establishing a National Dialogue on Race, Peace, and Justice with key persons in various professional fields and members in the Black Congressional Congress.  This national dialogue will complement and extend the findings that were generated from President Clinton’s initial dialogue on race and complement the calls for action that were generated at the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) (Michael D’Andrea & Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.);    

9. Re-establishing the NIMC’s National Tour to “Promote Multicultural Competence and Social Justice;” and

10. Developing a proposal that was submitted for this year’s meeting of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) to conduct a major presentation that focuses on ways in which Counselor Educators can more effectively promote the principles and spirit of the social justice counseling movement by infusing multicultural competence training in our professional counseling programs. (Fred Bemak, Allen Ivey, & Rita Chung)

11. Extending time and energy to build connections with various professional groups and individual leaders in these groups.  This includes working with leaders in ACA, ACES, APA, Counselors for Social Justice, the National Center for Health Behavioral Change, and Psychologists for Social Responsibility to find ways that we might better realize some of our common goals and purposes.  (Jay Chunn, Michael D’Andrea, Fred Bemak, Rita Chung) 

12. Initiating discussions about the potential to have the NIMC sponsor international “cyber summits/conferences/conventions’ that reflect a major shift and expansion in the ways that professional counseling and psychology organizations have traditionally organized their annual conventions.

13. Donating $170.00 that was collected at the July 2005 NIMC meeting to a needy family in Hawaii.

14. Developing an “Allies-building Workshop” that can serve as a prototype model for similar workshops to be conducted around the country. (Allen Ivey and Carlos Zalaquett)

15. Initiating a community-service-learning project in Hawaii that is aimed at promoting a peace and justice consciousness among elementary school age children and their families (Judy Daniels).

Building a “beloved community”

The NIMC is committed to building the sort of “beloved community” that is comprised of culturally-competent, peace, and justice advocates that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and bell hooks write about.  I have repeatedly stated my individual assessment of the current situation in our nation and have concluded that our society is clearly headed down the wrong path... that this path is marked by escalating forms of violence, injustice, the perpetuation of various forms of racism, sexism, classism, hetersexism, and other forms of cultural oppression that adversely impact the psychological health and spiritual well-being of millions of persons in this nation and around the world.  I have also expressed great hope that counselors, social workers, and psychologists can do much to help build a more sane society in part by supporting the implementation of the APA Guidelines and ACA Competencies in our work.

As the NIMC Executive Director, I have repeatedly asserted that the world is in need of non-violent revolutionary change...such a revolution needs to be rooted in the teachings of Dr. King, Cesar Chavez, bell hooks, Cornel West, and Thich Nhat Hanh to name a few revolutionary advocates who explain how transformative changes can be promoted in non-violent ways...

I have also asserted  that our professional organizations are in need of revolutionary changes..changes that increase the accountability of our leaders in promoting a greater level of democracy in these associations from the “bottom up” and not simply by mandating changes from the “top down.”

In the coming year I hope to continue to work with other NIMC members and allies in the mental health professional to: [1] emphasize that the need for revolutionary changes in the mental health professions, [2] move beyond an on-going analysis of the current spiritual-socio-cultural-political-psychological crisis that is at hand implement concrete action and implement a set of carefully thought out action strategies that are aimed at fostering a greater level of justice and sanity in our society, and [3] working within and outside of our established professional organizations to develop a culture of resistance that is intended to increase the health and well-being of the citizens of the United States and the world.

Michael D’Andrea,

NIMC Executive Director