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Eva

Eva Chen cropped

 KXXD is a Like Minds, Like Mine public education programme to reduce stigma and discrimination for Asian young people with experience of mental illness.

“Most Chinese Kiwis are focused on giving their children a better life,” says Eva Chen, who is co-founder of Solutions By and CEO of the Wellbeing Charitable Trust.

“Before, that focus was mostly on the material level, but now people are more focused on the mental level.”

Eva has worked with Chinese families in Auckland since 2010. The Wellbeing Charitable Trust focuses on parents’ and children’s wellbeing. It supports families to help children build resilience, so they can work through life’s ups and downs.

“In 2010, I was invited to join the Mental Health Foundation’s KXXD advisory group while I was working at Skykiwi.”

Eva says it’s important to share information about mental health in the Chinese community. She became passionate about supporting KXXD through her work with families experiencing postnatal depression.

Building a WeChat community

This year, Eva has been supporting the work of KXXD with its recent media campaign.

“I help share KXXD stories to our community through various media, mainly through WeChat. That’s what people prefer, and sharing stories helps people normalise mental health in the community.”

WeChat is the most popular mobile social media app for many different age groups and communities around the world. WeChat has been called China’s “App for Everything” and has 700 million monthly active users.

By sharing personal stories of experience and recovery, as well as information on wellbeing practices through WeChat, KXXD has been able to connect with many people who might not otherwise seek out mental health information. And more importantly, begin to normalise the conversations about mental illness.

Sharing conversations

Today Eva is working closely with Skykiwi to engage the Chinese community.

“I have known the management team at Skykiwi for many years and they believe the work that KXXD is doing is important and meaningful,” says Eva.

KXXD is sharing conversations on Skykiwi about wellbeing, supporting young people, and what the Mental Health Foundation does in New Zealand.

Eva says even though mental illness is still a difficult topic to talk about in the Chinese community, she has seen positive changes through her work.

“KXXD has helped increase not only mental health awareness, but also people’s interest in public health, which is very important for our community.”

Please visit the bilingual KXXD website (in Chinese and English) for more information. There’s also a bilingual KXXD brochure and a range of Five Ways to Wellbeing posters available in different languages, including Chinese.