How can you improve diversity training for volunteers?

1 Assess your needs

Before designing or delivering any diversity training, you need to assess the specific needs and expectations of your volunteer program and your volunteers. What are the main diversity issues or challenges that you face or anticipate? What are the learning objectives and outcomes that you want to achieve? How do your volunteers prefer to learn and interact? What are their existing knowledge, attitudes, and skills regarding diversity? By conducting a thorough needs assessment, you can tailor your diversity training to your context and audience, and avoid a one-size-fits-all approach that may not address the real issues or resonate with the participants.

3 Incorporate feedback

Feedback is an essential component of any learning process, especially for diversity training, where participants may have different levels of understanding, comfort, and assurance with regards to diversity and inclusion. Feedback can help to reinforce the learning points, identify the gaps or misunderstandings, and provide guidance and support for advancement. You can incorporate feedback into your diversity training in various ways, such as having participants evaluate their own learning and performance, setting goals for further development, providing constructive and specific feedback to the participants individually or in groups based on their participation and outcomes, soliciting feedback from the participants on the content, delivery, and impact of the diversity training to improve future sessions, and creating opportunities for peer feedback. This allows participants to give and receive feedback from each other while also learning from their diverse experiences and perspectives.

4 Follow up

Diversity training is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process that requires follow-up and reinforcement. To ensure the training has a lasting and positive effect on your volunteer program and volunteers, you need to provide resources and support to help them apply their learning and skills. You can do this by sending reminders and summaries of the key learning points and action steps, providing additional resources, organizing refresher sessions or workshops, and creating a community of practice or a network of mentors. This will help to deepen understanding and awareness of diversity and inclusion, as well as refresh knowledge and skills. Diversity training is beneficial for both you and your volunteers; it can improve the quality, effectiveness, and impact of your volunteer program, as well as your volunteers' personal and professional growth. Follow these tips to make your diversity training more meaningful and enjoyable for everyone involved.