Canada: Counselling Couples, South Asian Style

Canada: Counselling Couples, South Asian Style

For South Asian couples who live abroad ... accessing professional counselling to tide over a rough patch in a marriage is often out of the question. Most couples would rather live through a bad marriage than seek professional intervention or a divorce.

Responding to [the] rather general conclusion - that the western model [of counselling] will not work for cultures where family is built into every aspect of an individual's life - is a project currently underway at York University. The project caters to the need of the South Asian community for an ethno-specific couple counselling.

The South Asian Couple Counseling Project is ... the initiative of Saunia Ahmad, a PhD student at the university's clinical psychology programme. Daughter of Indian immigrants, Ahmad opted to do research with South Asians because "there is not a lot out there in terms of counselling with people of my community and there is also not much research of what is most effective." What is known, she says, is that most are not using the services; and that there are culturally-specific value differences in how they experience marriages, making it difficult for professionals trained in western models to help them.

Dr Yvonne Bohr, an Assistant professor at York University, has worked extensively with the Chinese community, particularly, young parents. She says, "The available research shows that needs may be different when you come from a collectivist community - versus an individualist community as we are here - that influences your family system, parenting system, and so on. But most of the models we use are largely based on western research and they may not always be appropriate as over 90 per cent of infants today are born in non-western countries."

York University professor and Ahmad's supervisor, specialist Dr David Reid, who is a partner on this project explains, "Models developed in North America largely in the 1950s and 1960s do not have anything to say about traditional marriages, particularly those from other cultures. Times have changed and there are a lot of South Asians in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), but we do not have models developed, tested or investigated with that particular group in mind."

Dr Reid says, "There is no doubt in my mind that what we may learn from working with South Asians may well benefit other cultures. We overemphasise personality, which is a very individualistic perspective, and we need to look at other factors, like culture. The idea is not to compartmentalise between ethnic and mainstream but to come up with an approach that is indigenous and built from people we work with."

Read the full article at this link: Counselling Couples, South Asian Style

Read Toronto Star's report (published July 10, 2008) on Sauni's work: A fighting chance for married couples

Here is a video report on Saunia's work




You can access the South Asian Couples Counselling website at http://www.southasianfamilies.com/ or contact Saunia Ahmad at 416-736-2100 x33224 or saunia [at] southasianfamilies.com

Thru the Bible - Punjabi - J. Vernon McGee

McGee's well-known five year journey through the entire Bible with a daily radio broadcast is available in the Punjabi language on the Internet through streaming audio (Windows Media or Real Media) and can also be downloaded as mp3 audio files.

The translation into Punjabi and voice is that of Bro. Balhar Masih who had originally recorded these messages for daily broadcast for Trans World Radio called Sachi Bani.

Broadcast archives are available online for about a month's worth of messages. The recordings also feature Punjabi songs so that is an added plus if you like Punjabi Christian music.

Here is the URL: Thru the Bible - Punjabi - J. Vernon McGee

Free Punjabi Audio Bible Download

Faith Comes By Hearing (r) offers a free download of Punjabi audio New Testament. This is a dramatized reading of the Old Version with several voices reading the dialogues, and background sound effects.

Using their Audio Bible Download Manager you can download the entire Punjabi New Testament audio (mp3) files to your computer. (It is a 640 MB download so you might want to schedule it at an appropriate time. The software has an option to pause the download and then resume it later, but I have not tested this feature.)

Once you have the mp3 files on your computer, it should be easy to transfer them to your iPod or other mp3 player and carry it with you for your listening pleasure!

Of course Punjabi is not the only language FCBH offers - they have the New Testament in over 300 languages available, and a bunch of other products and materials. Their 31 Days of Wisdom and Inspiration are dramatized readings of a chapter from the Proverbs each day, and a daily selection from the Psalms - definitely worth a dekho.

Faith Comes By Hearing.com

Sikhism on the Web

The web is a rich source of information about the Sikh religion. Here are  three sites you might want to check out. AS you should with most content on the web, before you use any information from these sites in your project, be sure to cross-check for accuracy and completeness!

The BBC site on Religion and Ethics contains a major section on Sikhism. Here is the URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/sikhism/

The Wikipedia has a Sikhism portal at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Sikhism This will lead you to a plethora of resources about Sikhism - articles within Wikipedia and also to external sites.

There is even a Wiki on the Sikh way of life: SikhiWiki: the Encyclomedia of the Sikhs! This wiki site boasts of 4,604 articles related to Sikhism and claims to have seen almost a million hits. By the way, SikhNet.com, the promoters of this Wiki, are associated with the 3HO - so you will see their interpretative stance reflected in the content on the SikhiWiki.

If you have special research needs, don't hesitate to shoot a question to me. I will try and help you locate the information you need.

Online Punjabi Learning

The Advanced Centre for Technical Development of Punjabi Language, Literature & Culture (Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab) offers a very helpful online Punjabi language learning site. My friend Scott tells me that it's the best online resource he has found for learning the language. (Thanks, Scott, for directing me to this resource.)

Beginning with the alphabet (you click on the alphabet to hear how a native speaker would pronounce it), you can progress through learning numbers, build up a vocabulary of common action words (the illustrations help but can sometimes leave you wondering...), learn to construct simple sentences - all supported with animated Gurumukhi script (so you can learn how to write it), sound, English meaning & transliteration and supporting pictures.

An excellent resource - do try it out if you are learning to speak, read or write Punjabi in the Gurumukhi script. Do remember though that this site is a work in progress - some parts of the site don't always work as expected, and more resources are being added as they are developed.

Here is the URL: http://www.advancedcentrepunjabi.org/intro1.asp

Happy Punjabi learning!