headspace Wollongong and Multicultural Communities Council of the Illawarra are very proud to launch two sets of mental resources which provide wellbeing and self-care advice for young people and their families.

Young people of African and Middle Eastern backgrounds have worked together to create culturally appropriate version of headspace's evidence based '7 tips for a healthy headspace' package. The new resources, in Arabic and Swahili, have been warmly welcomed by local communities and workers in the sector.

"The purpose of the project is to build capacity of young people on mental health literacy, following a strength-based and co-designed approach that is youth focused and culturally relevant. It is great to work with young people who know first hand what the challenges are, and through that process give their voice to the resources", said Allyson Pazos, MCCI's youth and Community Manager.

"We were really excited to give local young people an opportunity to create resources for their own communities in their own voices. headspace works with the community to increase mental health literacy and reduce stigma, and this project addresses this in a contextualised and relevant way", said Amanda Cooper, Community Engagement headspace Wollongong.

The resources are now available in hard copy and can also be downloaded from our webpage. Check out the drop down menu "Swahili and Arabic Mental Health Resources" item towards the bottom of our main page to access all the files. You can also contact us on (02) 42207660 for hardcopies from our limited one-off print run.

In this short film below, young people who participated in the project talk about their involvement and the impact it will have on their communities: