| Program: | National Multicultural Institute | | Contact(s): | Elizabeth Salett, President: (202) 483-0700 | | Purpose: | To increase communication and respect among people of different racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds | | The National Multicultural Institute (NMCI), a private nonprofit organization, was founded in 1983 by Elizabeth Salett to train mental health practitioners to work with patients from a wide variety of cultures. NMCI broadened its mandate in the late 1980s to include work on multicultural issues such as diversity in the workplace, multicultural education, cross-cultural conflict resolution and diversity training. The institute holds diversity conferences, conducts training, develops educational resource materials and initiates special projects of interest to the field of diversity training. The conferences and workshops address professional issues relating to diversity, including training of diversity trainers, multicultural education, cross-cultural conflict resolution, and multicultural issues in health. Managers, administrators, human resource specialists, independent trainers, educators, mediators, law enforcement officials, and mental health and social service providers attend these conferences. NMCI also works with corporations, government agencies, professional associations, nonprofit organizations, hospitals, schools and universities to help them achieve their diversity goals. Typical consulting services include organizational needs assessments and training programs that focus on individual and organizational change. NMCI produces resource materials for educators, trainers, and mental health and social service professionals. These include beginner and intermediate level manuals on training of diversity trainers, books on a variety of multicultural issues and videos on cross-cultural mental health. NMCI enjoys a national reputation for its diversity training and its multicultural conferences. A wide variety of agencies and organizations have taken part in NMCI diversity training, consulting and conference workshops, including: Freddie Mac, ICMA Retirement Corporation, the American Counseling Association, the U.S. Department of Justice's Office for Victims of Crime, the Corporation for National Service's AmeriCorps Program, Fairfax County, VA, and Montgomery County, MD. Over 18,000 people from about 45 states in the United States and a number of foreign countries have attended an NMCI conference. Two conferences are held per year. The 13th annual conference in 1998 attracted an audience of 525 people. The National Multicultural Institute has a Website at www.nmci.org. |
