News from the Ground | Wellbeing Charitable Trust
Founded in 2014, the Wellbeing Charitable Trust works predominantly with the Mandarin speaking community in Auckland. The Trust is part of the Mt Roskill Collective and works in collaboration with many other ethnic and community sector organisations to build a better future.
Eva Chen, co-founder of the Wellbeing Charitable Trust and a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, stated that it all evolved from facilitating the first New Zealand based Mandarin speaking parenting conference and online parenting forum in 2010 and 2012 respectively. This came about as there was a desire for parents to learn about parenting in New Zealand but did not have access to language and culture appropriate resources.
From 2014 to 2017 after founding Wellbeing Charitable Trust, hundreds of online workshops were delivered and later a series of online video resources on topics from nutrition to toilet training were made available. Parents’ childhood trauma was identified as a major issue and workshop sessions titled ‘Healthy Relationships’ were organised. As trust was built within the community, there were increased disclosures of females living in abusive relationships which led to a focus on education and support around family harm. School bullying and racism became a focus of sessions and workshops for parents in 2018. During the Covid-19 pandemic, a high prevalence of teenage suicide was noted with at least one suicide per month recorded just in Auckland in the Chinese community between February 2020 and November 2021. Teenage suicide prevention became the focus of the Trust as there was a lack of skills within the community to manage children and adolescents with mental health presentations and suicidal ideations. Food parcels and vaccinations were also a big part of their work during Covid.
The work of the Trust has shifted and grown over the years to cater for the needs of communities, in particular families with children. Eva stated that she has found it helpful to work at the grass-root level and beyond ethnic groups. If you are working with any Chinese migrant families who may benefit from connecting with the Trust, please visit their Facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/WellbeingtrustNZ.
