I remember the challenges I went through when I had my first child. Now, as a mother of four, things have become easier, not just about raising children “per se” also about what service agencies to contact when needed different support either for health issues or school as such.
I come into contact with many Chinese mothers who were relatively new in New Zealand. I saw they were trying to settle in New Zealand, forming their own family, expecting new family members, and then……. struggle with them for years.
I started to wonder, what I can do for them, how I could help them, this is why Chinese Parents Support Service Trust were set up at the first place.
In order to work on this area more properly, I have joint Wellbeing Charitable Trust Board and start working on Chinese Family Service projects, I am glad to have this opportunity to work on what I always dreams to do, and look forward to doing more and better for Chinese community in New Zealand.
We understand many Chinese families unfamiliar with the concept of, not for profit organisation or community support. Hence, despite vast free services are catered and available for Chinese not many of them are fully aware of these. Therefore, we run a 13 weeks Chinese Radio show to introduce organizations which specialize in disabilities. Besides that, we also like to break down the stigma that some Chinese parents feel about disabled kids.
Secondly, we would like to deliver Chinese parenting workshops to ensure the concept of “embed Chinese families’ wellbeing. We would like families are aware of mental health is equally important then have all sorts of skills or to compete with others. Many Chinese families who came to New Zealand might carry on the mindset of “ winning in the beginning.” In China, overpopulated had resulted from parents push their children to position their “performance” from an early age. The stress was passed down from children early age which can have a negative impact. What we hope to achieve is by encouraging parents to help their children in preparing “life.” That can be coped with adversity, problem solving and emotional intelligent as well as socially intelligent.
I always consider what I did is a kind of a milestone for myself, and good to share with Chinese mothers in New Zealand, if I could make my dreams come true while growing up with my 4 children, everyone else could. (Father’s help is appreciated of course.)
There is one person that I always appreciate, Ivan Yeo, http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=78699957&authToken=4icM&trk=prof-exp-snippet-endorsement-name who has been very supportive, patient and mentor me all the way until now, without his help, all of these will be just a beautiful dream and possibly won’t get this far in such a short time. He makes me understand that the years I have spent on social media has become a very useful tool to connect us together.
There are so many more we would like to do, such as family violence, the school bully, internet privacy, etc. for the Chinese families. New Zealand is a country with a big heart; we would love to introduce services to our community, show them the way and help them through their difficulty.
Let’s enjoy parenting with the newly born babies, and then start from here, we build our New Zealand dreams together, make a stronger lovely community.
Please see our work in the following links, and hopefully, I could hear from any of you in the near future to help our community grow better.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/voices/20140609
http://www.thinkdifferently.org.nz/unlimited-love-radio
http://radio.skykiwi.com/tuijian/2014-02-25/175313.shtml
http://www.istars.co.nz/article-117470-1.html
http://www.istars.co.nz/article-113952-1.html
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1401/S00251/chinese-parenting-class-2014.htm
http://www.mentalhealth.org.nz/kaixinxingdong/page/489-a-to-z+dragon-babies+parents-stories+eva
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10840772