For my Leadership in Action (LiA) project, I worked with an organization called Think Pacific, which allows students to work alongside Fijian communities and youth on local initiatives. Think Pacific partnered up with the Psychiatric Survivors Association (PSA) in Fiji, an association that aids members with psychosocial disabilities as well as their families or guardians.

Our project was to create a self-care tool kit for family members, carers or guardians of those with mental illnesses and disorders. This tool kit would be used by PSA instructors to demonstrate how guardians could care for themselves.

 The first step to our project was to figure out what it would consist of. We discussed how many components we could realistically add to it. When speaking with PSA, they emphasized the need for pamphlets, a simple tool that users could easily access. Hence, we established that the pamphlet would be one of the main focusses of our tool kit.

For us to design a tool care kit for the Fijian population, it was crucial to first understand the main causes of mental illnesses and disorders within this population. This led us to the realization that just acknowledging, accepting and being commiserate of these causes could be a form of self-care for carers. Using this, we were able to come up with a structure for the pamphlet. The pamphlet was divided into three sections: acceptance, treatment, post-treatment. Each section explained what the patient is likely to experience during this phase and what can be expected, followed by how the carer can look after themselves during this period. The pamphlet was in English and translated to Fijian to make it more usable.

 The next aspect of our tool kit was a self-help worksheet and self-care journal. Journaling has proven to be a self-applicable, easy way of self-care. Hence, we were certain that we wanted to provide guardians with a framework to establish it as a habit. We came up with journal prompts and collaborated with the mirror project (an organization based in Hong Kong) to create a worksheet, which would guide individuals in their thoughts and any issue they might be facing.

 Lastly, all we required was a PowerPoint presentation that we made for PSA instructors which they could use to explain the components discussed above to carers, family members, and guardians who come to their workshops. The nature of the project required simple, calming visuals so we chose a color palette that suited these needs.

Our final tool kit consisted of the PowerPoint presentation, the pamphlet, self-care journal and self-help worksheet. Once we had all these components, we were tasked with making sure that our content was sensible in the Fijian context. Thankfully, we were able to do this because of the culture sessions we had every week during our internship. The sessions helped us to understand family dynamics within a Fijian family, and what constitutes a Fijian person’s identity, and hence design a self-care tool kit which was respective of all this.

The support of my mentors Naomi and Lavenia, was effective in furthering my leadership capabilities. I had never received this sort of support from mentors before. I realized that an integral part to becoming a good leader, is a need to experience and be mentored by good leaders. The session on how to provide feedback was particularly enlightening for me. Naomi described it as the sandwich method – whereby you start with something positive, and then mention what could be improved, followed by a solution.

I was able to put these skills into practice when I coordinated issues within my own team. Having the opportunity to do it on a platform where I had the privilege of making mistakes, and the safety net of my supervisors, made me feel more confident about making certain decisions. This also taught me about setting boundaries with my team and how to handle situations where colleagues are unwilling to cooperate. Usually, I would have preferred to shy away from any confrontational situation, focus on my individual vision and just take on any work that colleagues were unwilling to do by myself. However, with the support of my mentors, I was able to communicate and compromise with my peers and learn to work towards the collective goal. As someone who is worried about coming off as too authoritative, this was all particularly helpful for me. This also gave me a platform to practice leadership, which I did not realize till much later, but ended up reflecting on to find that it was especially insightful.

As someone who has worked their entire university career in the mental health field, this internship added to my experience of discovering how we can aid those with mental illnesses, in the context of more conservative cultures such as the Fijian one. Hence, I believe leadership in action project was a pleasant learning experience, through which I not only learned about Fijian culture, but also the importance of mentorship, while being able to do something meaningful. This LiA project has only urged me to continue in my journey of working in the mental health field.