ECCV’s upcoming Mental Health Forum – Multicultural Mental Health: Voices from the Community on Wednesday 25 August 2021 will include speakers with lived experience and frontline mental health workers in COVID-19 affected communities.
The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System highlighted that people with lived experience need to be at the centre of the new mental health system.
In the second ECCV forum on mental health, our speakers will share stories and insights from the lived experience of people from migrant and refugee backgrounds.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the structural barriers CALD communities face in accessing mental health services and our forum will address the continual impacts of lockdowns on these minority groups.
We will hear from speakers with lived experience and frontline mental health workers in COVID-19 affected communities, including counsellor Tigist Kebede and youth worker Hala Nur, as well as Shehani De Silva, Education & Service Development Consultant at Victorian Transcultural Mental Health, and Jaya Manchikanti, President of IndianCare.
This forum will be held online and is free to attend. Registration is essential.
Mental Health Forum – Multicultural Mental Health: Voices from the Community – Wednesday 25 August 2021 from 6:00PM – 7:30PM.
Speakers
Shehani De Silva
Shehani is an Education and Service Development Consultant at Victorian Transcultural Mental Health (VTMH), the lead transcultural and intersectional mental health service in Victoria. Prior to migration, Shehani worked in Sri Lanka with organisations such as UNICEF Sri Lanka. She is interested in building service capacity to address intersectional community needs within her current role at VTMH.
Tigist Kebede
Tigist is a counsellor with the Victorian Foundation of Survivors of Torture Inc – (Foundation House). Tigist has a work history in the field of complex trauma, particularly in family/domestic violence and sexual assault. She is a passionate advocate for equitable practices and employing an anti-oppressive and intersectional lens. She is a counsellor at Pola Psychology and work in both a voluntary and professional capacity in her community.
Jaya Manchikanti
Jaya is the founder and current President of IndianCare, a welfare and community development organisation for the Indian origin community in Victoria. Jaya has been working in social services for more than 20 years, across the not-for-profit, local and state government sectors and is a current PhD candidate at Victoria University. Jaya will share her lived experience of navigating the mental health system.
Hala Nur
Hala is a Youth Worker at The Venny, focusing on early intervention and prevention for kids aged between 5-16 years, and studying a Master of Social Work. She has been an active member of the Inner North West Melbourne African Community. Her recent community work has involved COVID-19 risk outreach and support, as well as increasing local support capacity through advocacy.
Plus Special Performance
Thabani Tshuma
Thabani is a Zimbabwean writer and performance poet who will share work that centres around his lived experience of mental health. His work can be found in publications such as Dichotomi magazine and Next in Colour. Thabani was the 2019 Slamalamadingdong Grand Slam champion and winner of the 2019 Melbourne Spoken Word Prize.