Week 3 in Melbourne, Australia

We can’t believe that our time in Melbourne has come to an end. The three weeks that we spent here have been incredible and have provided us with an endless amount of memories that we will cherish forever. This past week in Melbourne focused more on agency visits but we still got the chance to explore the city and its outskirts. We also got the opportunity to spend the last night all together as a group at a departure dinner. I thought this dinner was a great way to end the trip as we all got to reflect on our time in Melbourne and enjoy a delicious meal.

Though the last week was very busy in terms of agency visits, it flew by, and we learned more about child welfare and mental health in Australia. The agencies we visited were very informative and I felt as though they were a bit more interactive. We visited Batyr, Bouverie Center, Family Life, and Mind Australia and out of the agencies we visited, we found that Batyr and the Bouverie Center grasped our attention and interests the most.

Batyr’s moto, “giving a voice to the elephant in the room,” truly articulates the organization’s motives and goals. The staff works to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health and does so in many ways. Speakers of Batyr go from place to place talking about their experiences with mental health and essentially “give a voice to the elephant in the room.” They make it clear that it is okay to seek help and that people are there to listen. The also provide workshops for young people to participate in where they are able to talk about their personal experiences in a safe environment and also learn how to open up about these experiences to others.

The Bouverie Center is an organization that focuses on improving the lives of families and youths through services that focus on relationships. During this agency visit, we were given the opportunity to role play and fully engage ourselves in a “mock” session. During this session, we acted as the clients and also gave feedback on the session. This allowed us to see what it is truly like to be a social worker at the Bouverie Center because we witnessed the way they handle situations. We found it amusing how the social worker was able to balance each client’s’ stories and feelings. Visiting this agency was very beneficial to us and we know that we will use all of the information we gathered in our future careers.

Although our time in Australia has come to an end, we will always remember this trip. It has provided us with so many memories, new friendships, and an appreciation for a new culture. Living in Melbourne for three weeks gave us enough time to submerge ourselves into the daily life of an Australian and this opportunity serves us wonders. We are ready to go home but now we are going home more educated and informed on the world around us. It will be difficult to get used to the time difference given that we feel as though we just adjusted to the Australian time zone, however, a few sluggish days when we get home are well worth the great experience that we had in Australia.

-Cristina Renee Pliego & Alexis Wilson

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