Building Resilience in Transcultural Australians (BRiTA) Futures program is a group-based resilience training for primary school children, young people and adults from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.
The program uses creative and interactive activities, discussion questions and take-home tasks as well as encouraging people to share with others and learn from each other’s ideas and experiences.
Program outlines
There are three different BRiTA Futures programs:
Primary school children
Young people (adolescents/teenagers)
Adults and parents.
The programs can be delivered as a weekly series, in 2-3 day ‘camp’ format or 4-hour blocks.
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Age range: 9-12 years old (Grades 5-7)
Course length: 8 x 2-hour sessions
Topics covered:
Resilience in our multicultural classroom
Cultural identity and life experience: making me who I am
Building empowerment: self-talk and self-esteem
Building social competencies: understanding cross-cultural communication
Social competencies: resolving conflict and coping with challenges
Making life fun: beat stress and build optimism
Family and friends: staying strong with positive relationships
Bouncing back after hard knocks: how to stay resilient throughout life
Resilience means a person’s ability to adapt (or “bounce back”) after negative life experiences, lifespan changes and hard events in their life. Resilience is a big part of mental wellbeing and quality of life. People build resilience by balancing:
risk factors (e.g. life events that cause trauma, the stress of cultural change and mental change called “acculturation”)
protective factors (e.g. supportive relationships and cultural values).
Why focus on resilience
Resilience training was created because studies show that young people from CALD backgrounds and their families felt stress that came from trying to balance their culture of origin with Australian culture. The study found that families coped better if they built resilience in a group setting.
Many risk factors have been linked to early school dropout and poor school results for young people, such as:
breakdown of family ties and community unity
being isolated from friends, family and community
loss of work or being under-employed
living with many people in the same building or area (high-density living)
no access to health services that think about cultural needs
language barriers
trouble between generations (intergenerational conflict)
breakdown of traditional cultural lifestyles and values.
These risk factors are also linked to mental health and social problems. Building resilience helps children, young people and adults to cope well with these and other issues that happen because of migration and balancing cultures.
