Growing a Friendship Garden: Cross-Cultural Relational Wellbeing Through Nature Connection For Migrant Women in Melbourne, Australia. (#125)
Our social relationships play a pivotal role in building personal health and wellbeing (Dunbar, 2022). As one of the most locked down cities in the world, Melbourne’s population experienced high levels of loneliness and isolation with women disproportionally impacted (State of Mind White paper, 2020). Over 90% of surveyed migrant and refugee women reported multiple hardships (Gen Vic, 2021). The Friendship Garden is a positive psychology informed workshop series piloted in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, a diverse multicultural area. The series was conducted online during the global pandemic (Nov-Dec 2021) and then face to face once restrictions were eased (May-June 2022). This hands-on collaborative series was free for all participants and all materials were supplied to ensure equal access. Over six Friday afternoons, an inclusive and collaborative adult learning environment was created fostering peer to peer relationships while learning about wellbeing. Each session included a hands-on activity related to nature connection (Nisbet et al, 2020), friendship (Aristotle, 1925) and eudaimonic wellbeing (Ryff & Singer, 2008). The series was designed to empower the participants to build wellbeing in their own lives and then share their experience with those they love and others in the community such as their local neighbours. In addition to rich qualitative data collected throughout the series, nature connectedness scales (Schultz, 2002; Mayer & Frantz, 2004; Nisbet et al., 2009) were taken pre and post the workshop series and significant upward shifts were recorded across the cohort. Self-organised meet-ups between participants after the series concluded were another positive outcome. With a long tradition of welcoming humanitarian migrants and the very likely potential for increased migration driven by the effects of climate change, Australian Positive Psychology practitioners are ideally placed to design and implement evidence informed, scalable initiatives to support and grow the wellbeing of migrant women and their families and communities.
- Please select up to 3 keywords from the following list to best describe your submission content: Diversity and Inclusion, Environment and Nature, Interdisciplinarity
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