Recreation for all: Providing leisure and recreation services in multi-ethnic communities

The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of the multiple roles leisure and recreation play in the lives of ethnic and racial minorities, to examine constraints that affect minorities’ participation in leisure and their use of recreation resources and to provide strategies for recreation providers working in multi-ethnic communities. The review shows that leisure and recreation provide a number of benefits to minorities, including facilitating interracial/intergroup contacts, creating opportunities for learning and cultural exchange, helping to strengthen bonds with ethnic communities and families, facilitating preservation of ethnic culture, fostering socio-economic advancement and improving physical and mental health. Simultaneously, minorities are constrained by factors related to socio-economic status, including lack of time, money and overwork, limited access to quality recreation environments and resources, discrimination, lack of information and certain culture-related constraints. This paper provides a number of suggestions recreation providers who work in diverse communities can follow to provide culturally appropriate and sensible recreation services to their constituents.