Date: April 8 

Time: 1:00 – 2.00 pm (Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney)

Registration: Register in advance for this meeting

The ISANA ACTiveNSW Branch executive committee is inviting you to join the industry collaboration session.

We would love to hear from you about the best practice in the mental health area and invite you to contribute to the educational design of the toolkit.

Purpose: The aim of our Lived Experience Toolkit is for international students to feel more encouraged to seek and access support services. And for the storytelling in the toolkit to open pathways of conversations within industry and service providers who continue to seek ways to improve their reach to international students 

Update: The process whereby students share and creatively explore their stories with the artistic director Catherine Simmonds is well underway. This will result in the production of 10 x 3-4min films representative of each student exploring key themes.

Industry leaders voice in the toolkit: We’ve already had one workshop with industry leaders exploring what they perceive/experience the impacts and issues upon international students’ mental health to be. 

This time we want to include the voice/reflections/experiences of industry leaders/service providers. We aim to create a chapter in our toolkit that explores this in order to humanise the views and experiences of industry leaders for students. 

We are aiming to capture and edit together the experiences, challenges and aspirations of services who encounter international students. This will be constructed through:

• Workshop with a cross section of industry leaders, starting with our steering committee. We would hope to include Legal, Counselling, University, TAFE, Regional services. 

• Individual filmed consultations with Catherine

Prior to our workshop we ask participants to:

1. Think about a real time scenario you’ve encountered that reveals a challenge when trying to engage with or respond to the mental health issues of international students

2. Articulate what you wish could happen/improve

 As we will film the session we ask if you could please:

1. Make sure light is on your face and not behind you 

2. If possible, have a plain wall behind you (if not it’s okay) 

Please note that LET (Lived Experience Toolkit) is a winner of the Study NSW Partner Projects 2021/22 grant. 

LET is an exciting partnership between ISANA and Story IS Connection (SIC) that engages NSW international students regarding challenges that have impacted their mental health and well-being.

Content for a film is developed through a story-telling process, constructed into seven chapters, highlighting key issues and themes identified by students and key partners.

Peers with lived experience will ‘speak up’, serving as role models to other students by opening up conversations about mental health. Simultaneously the project will build awareness for teachers and service providers alike and offer strategies to facilitate dynamic conversations around topics.

The creation of a resource that inspires conversation and destigmatises mental health within the international student community will become a valuable asset available for use by all NSW education providers. LET will creatively engage international students in acts of powerful storytelling which in turn will inspire connection and understanding with audiences.

The process will empower students with lived experience to tell their stories which form the basis of a digital orientation toolkit for international students studying in NSW.

We are looking forward to seeing you there.

Kind regards,

ISANA ACTiveNSW Committee