VTMH continued our seminar schedule into 2023, with our seminars continuing to be held online via Zoom.
We held 6 seminars between March and November this year and were thrilled to have the speakers join us.
It has been a wonderful experience for VTMH, holding these seminars online and being able to reach people around parts of Victoria and Australia, that otherwise would not have been able to attend our face to face seminars in Fitzroy.
We started off in March with a presentation about change and suppression tactics. Gregory Frank from Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission spoke about the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021 to help attendees understand harm caused by these practices and how to identify prevention and remedies for these.
In April, our seminar focused on spirituality and was presented by our very own Naomi Chapman and Justin Kuay alongside Tess Marotta (Mental Health Lived Experience Advocate/Consultant).
In June we hosted Sarah Williams, (Footprint Enterprises Inc, Mahana Culture & RMIT University) who presented on her ‘Art as Activism: Inclusion and Justice through HipHop’ research project.
September saw us delve back into the spirituality space with a presentation by Caroline Le Brun from Monash Health about how to find meaning through spirituality.
In October we heard about the amazing work of Parwin Miazoi and Zabi Mazoori (Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture (Foundation House)) on their work on the Afghan Community Response Project (ACR) by Foundation House in response to the Taliban take-over of Afghanistan, which saw approximately 5000 people evacuated from Kabul by the Australian Government, the majority of whom arrived in Melbourne. The ACR project was led and delivered by a team of mainly lived-experience practitioners from within the Afghan Community.
We finished the year off with Erin Joyce (Alfred Health) and Michael Olasoji (Federation University Australia), hearing about their work exploring the role of Bicultural Workers in Mental Health Services.
This year we had over 380 attendees at our seminars which we are thrilled about.
Our seminars will recommence in the first half of 2023.
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