EVR’s Sesame Seed mental health programme
ESEA individuals often tell us that they have to overcome cultural misunderstandings when they meet mental health professionals. As ESEA individuals, we can also meet unhelpful perceptions or silence about mental health within our own communities. These and other experiences can be lonely and they can make it harder to speak up, to gain the right help.
In response, at EVR we have decided to do our anti-racist work in 2023 with a strong focus on mental health. Our mental health programme is called EVR’s Sesame Seed programme. Why Sesame Seed? Like ESEA cultures, sesame is a crop with a long, rich history. Sesame is a resilient crop. Sesame seeds are small, and we are a relatively small ESEA community in the UK. We would like to grow a programme which is health-giving. We would like to grow anti-racist ways of working.
With that in mind, we have developed a variety of projects under that Sesame Seed umbrella. First, we are going to provide group therapy free of charge to up to 40 young people (aged 18-26) who have ESEA heritage, including mixed heritage. We’re delighted to be partnering with a leading accredited professional therapist of ESEA origin herself, who will lead these groups. We are going to host these online, so that they are available to people across the UK.
Second, we recognise that people who work to support and uplift the ESEA community also need and deserve mental health support themselves. We will deliver action learning sets to members of six ESEA community groups. Action learning is a type of structured peer support with roots in the coal-mining community, and based in counselling and psychotherapy. We’ll be harnessing this practice to support our ESEA community groups with work-based problems and the wellbeing needs of support workers. We’re grateful for the solidarity we already enjoy with our sister ESEA organisations, and we hope to build on that through action learning.
Third, we recognise that some members of our ESEA community are recently-arrived international students. This can be daunting. In the summer we’ll launch a friendship family project to welcome new students with individuals or families who already live in the UK. Our Head of Services Ankita – who has come up with the whole Sesame Seed programme – has warm memories of her own experience as a student hosted by a friendship family: “Moving to a new country is difficult. People are so culturally different and the experience of integrating can be isolating. The friendship family programme will help students to get psycho-social support from families already living in the UK; making integration an easier and less lonely process.”
Fourth, we are grateful to be partnering with The Anti-Discrimination Focus (#TADF) to provide cultural competence training for mental healthcare practitioners and support workers working with ESEA communities. We want to reach over 100 professionals. We believe that services should be culturally competent as a baseline.
The above efforts are going to sit alongside our existing work. We are continuing to fund the South East and East Asian Centre (SEEAC) Community Hub for a second year. They provide sterling community-led mental health support services, including one-to-one therapy, mental health information sessions and befriending support, which continue to develop. We are also proud to expand our role in the On Your Side consortium, and we will be expanding our EVR team with an On Your Side Outreach Officer due to start in the spring. For more on On Your Side, click here.
None of this would be possible without the inspiration and support of our community members. We are humbled to acknowledge the numerous donations we received from our community and allies through Jingle Jam 2021. Your support is crucial, and together we are planting the seeds of change for an anti-racist future.
