Venkat Raman
Auckland, August 29, 2021
A group of experts based in Hamilton are offering free counselling and psychology services to needy migrants and refugees.
Diversity Counselling New Zealand (DCNZ) has been providing the free service for some time now but has reiterated its presence in view of the psychological and mental stress posed by the persisting Covid-19 pandemic.
Free online service
DCNZ Director Vanisri Mills said that the service is provided online during the lockdown restrictions in several languages.
“Our Organisation provides free, culturally-responsive counselling and psychological services by ethnic, registered professional counsellors and clinical psychologists for migrants and former refugees from Asia, Middle Est, Latin America, Africa and Continental Europe. Anyone, regardless of age, income or gender can access our service,” she said.
Vanisri said that the Service is provided in 15 languages including Bemba, Bengali, English, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Nyanja, Punjabi, Sinhalese, Spanish and Tamil.
“We use interpreters for other languages and our service is available through Skype, WhatsApp and Zoom,” she said.
About the Group
DCNZ in Hamilton was established by Kaoru Tsukiji, Freda Xia, and Vanisri Mills who met at Wintec eight years ago when they were studying towards a degree in Counselling. They were migrants who had come to New Zealand to settle in Hamilton.
Kaoru is from Japan, while Freda is Chinese and Vanisri is from Sri Lanka.
Before studying at Wintec, Vanisri had practised as a psychiatric nurse but like the others, she wanted to become a Counsellor.
Service to Community
“We were all graduating and as a group and wanted to do something for our community as ethnic counsellors,” Kaoru said, while Vanisri said that all of them benefitted from the practical training and shared modules offered by Wintec.
They also studied English at Wintec’s Centre for Languages.
A Beginning
They formed Diversity Counselling NZ in 2013 along with Japanese counsellor, Kou Kunishige, who is also a New Zealand qualified Counsellor.
Kaoru said that they had no money but had the vision to set up a counselling service for migrants, refugees and international students.
“We understand their culture and the meaning of being a migrant and we saw the need to offer counselling in their own language.”
The service is filling a gap in New Zealand as the only service that offers a professional counselling service for ethnic people.
Vanisri said that wellbeing counselling is a foreign concept to many in the international community and there are cultural barriers. For many people, there can be a stigma associated with seeing a counsellor, while some countries have no counselling system at all.
The challenges
“In New Zealand, refugees often have no one to talk to, and their cultural beliefs may make it difficult to ask for help. We start with explaining confidentiality to gain trust and this can be a challenge in itself, as even the word confidential has different meanings with different cultures,” Vanisri said.
For more information, please visit Diversity Counselling NZ
