ISANA International Education Association’s recent live industry collaboration session was aimed at sharing ‘best-practice’ experience of interacting with international students and getting a sense of the mental health issues and stresses students face.

The leading representative body of international education professionals across Australia and New Zealand hopes a digital student wellbeing toolkit will be impactful.

ISANA’s ACTive NSW branch organised the live session, with the branch president, Annette Kalczynska coordinating the interaction with participants from universities’ counselling services, legal services, TAFEs, and other service providers who shared their insights.

ISANA’s Lived Experience Toolkit is a winner of the Study NSW Partner Projects 2021/22 grant and is the largest recipient among all grant winners in this period.

LET, an exciting partnership between ISANA and Story IS Connection, engages New South Wales’ international students. The takeaways from the live interaction will go into one of the chapters of the toolkit, wherein international students would be given a voice, their stories and experiences shared.

ISANA and the Story Is Connection are also working on creating content for a film on the toolkit, which is being done in a story-telling format. The film will be constructed into seven chapters, highlighting key issues and themes identified by students and key sectoral partners.

Artistic director Catherine Simmonds and media director Irene Metter at the Story Is Connection anticipate their work will be positioned to go a long way into helping share stories of international students in a meaningful and truly representative manner.

The whole aim of the process is to facilitate international students with lived experience sharing their perspectives and give voice to the mental health challenges they have encountered. Thereby they will serve as role models to other students – opening up the sometimes difficult and emotional conversations about mental health. This will feed into creating a well-informed toolkit, with case examples based framework for practitioners and students alike.

Simultaneously the project aims to build awareness for teachers and service providers and to offer strategies to facilitate dynamic conversations around mental health and wellbeing.

The resource, aiming to inspire conversation and de-stigmatise mental health, will become a valuable asset for use by all NSW education providers and be a key resource in the sector’s efforts towards enhancing international student experience and wellbeing.