I walked into the lunch room at work today, and as usual was the only American in a room of about 5 other contract employees - mostly from India.

I work in a large IT department for a major truck manufacturer in the Portland area. They hire a lot of contractors - often from other countries. They each have distinct accents and different cultures than what I normally experience in suburban America.

It struck me that my kids are growing up in a typical suburban community, with primarily white American neighbors, and they have little to no exposure to someone with even a slight accent... let alone a completely different culture or life style. This may not be the case in your neighborhood, but it made me ask myself what I'm doing to expose my kids to other cultures.

We sponsor a child in the Philippines, but we haven't done nearly as much as we could to help educate our kids about our sponsor child's culture or life style.

Our church has a Soup Kitchen group that goes downtown each weekend and hands out food to homeless people, but I'm not sure if I'd feel safe doing that with my younger children (maybe due to my misinformed stereotypes about homeless people... anyone care to comment on this?)... and I'm not sure that they would get the kind of "mixed culture" exposure I'm looking for.

Any suggestions? What's worked well for you and your family?