Welcome to The Water Well Project's quarterly newsletter.
The Water Well Project is a health promotion charity that improves the health literacy of communities from migrant, refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds.
We work in partnership with community organisations to provide inclusive and interactive health education sessions facilitated by volunteer healthcare professionals.
Dear Friends of The Water Well Project,
The Water Well Project turned eleven on Sunday 10th July! Since 2011, we have delivered 1077 free health education sessions reaching over 16,000 participants in over 40 different languages around Australia - happy birthday to us! We look forward to the next ten years to improve the health literacy of communities from migrant, refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds as everyone has a right to good health.
With the release of the latest census data, Australia is a fast-changing, growing and culturally diverse nation of 25 million people, where more than half of us report that we were born overseas or have an overseas-born parent, and almost a quarter of us (24.8%) speak a language other than English at home. Our organisation works towards ensuring that these individuals have accessible health information which is not only timely and accurate, but also culturally relevant.
In this edition, we are proud to share with you our new videos that provide information about the COVID-19 vaccination program as well as prioritising health and wellbeing during the pandemic. Please feel free to share these five two-minute videos with your family and friends as these messages are so critical during this current spike in COVID-19 positive cases. Please all take care during this difficult time.
Warm regards,
Dr Linny Kimly Phuong (Founder & Director)
Suzie Bratuskins (Chief Executive Officer)
In this reporting quarter, we facilitated 73 health education sessions and reached more than 1030 community participants from migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker backgrounds, with flow-on effects to families and friends.
Our most requested session topics over the last quarter have been:
1 . Navigating the Australian Healthcare System
2. Women's Health
3. Healthy Eating and Exercise
4. Men's Health
Find out more about booking an interactive health education session
for your community here.
New session: Staying healthy in winter
Have you had the flu or COVID recently? Or both? Or you've tested negative to COVID but can't shake a nasty cold? You're not alone - across the country respiratory illness rates are surging and it seems it's impossible
to avoid getting sick this winter.
But all hope is not lost! Our team have put together a new health education session titled 'Staying Healthy In Winter' available now. The aim of this session is to promote health and wellbeing through winter with a focus on being up-to-date with COVID-19 vaccinations, having a flu vaccination, and visiting your GP for a health check.
Learn more about The Water Well Project through Elizabeth's story
Elizabeth is a member of the AMES South Sudanese Peer Support Group; a circle of women who have participated in multiple health promotion sessions with The Water Well Project. Elizabeth found the sessions so valuable that she wanted to share her story. Elizabeth describes what it was like arriving in Australia from a war-torn country, the difficulties she faced navigating the Australian Healthcare System, and the benefits of engaging with organisations like The Water Well Project.
Our founder, Dr Linny Phuong, also shares her experience as a child of refugee parents and explains the reasons why she founded The Water Well Project in 2011.
Watch our new video series on caring for your health during COVID-19
Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been working non-stop to provide communities from migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker backgrounds with up-to-date and reliable health information about how to get tested, vaccinated, and protect yourself from COVID, as well as how to look after your general health needs
during this challenging time.
Now, with the support of the Victorian Government's Multicultural Communications Outreach Program, we have captured some of our key messages within
easy to share videos.
Unfortunately, the pandemic isn't over, so we hope these videos will provide you with helpful explanations about the COVID-19 vaccination program as well as the importance of prioritising health and wellbeing during this time.
Founder & Director of The Water Well Project, Dr Linny Kimly Phuong, shared her insights into the importance of health literacy for refugee communities.
Our End of Financial Year campaign wrapped up last month - this year we raised almost $2000! All donations help us to provide free, interactive health education sessions to communities from migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker backgrounds. We cannot thank you enough.
The Water Well Project is a registered health promotion charity with deductible gift recipient (DGR) status, which means that all donations $2 and over are tax-deductible. Of course donations aren't just about tax breaks, and
we are grateful for your support year round.
If you would like to make a donation today, you can click here.
Follow us on Instagram!
Are you interested in learning more about our health education sessions and what "health literacy" looks like? Do you want to know about community groups that we partner with? Follow us now on Instagram
to stay updated with all our latest news.
Testimonials
We are so grateful to our community for their ongoing feedback about our sessions. Thank you to one of our community partners for this testimonial from
a Sexual Health session last month:
“It was great for the community to know that there are sexual health clinics where even international students can go and get assistance. Also, the explanation about consent was so valuable. Thanks for helping us deliver this session.
Sexual health is still taboo in Latin America so having these safe spaces to talk about this topic is priceless.”
