What does being a People Connector for The ACDC Project mean to you?
Joby: Creating platform to understand the issues and needs of householders and ensuring their awareness of services available to them.
Baiju: A People Connector must understand the meaning of mental health and the ability and skills to speak with people who experience trauma, distress, and emotional challenges. People Connectors should also have the skills to engage effectively with householders from diverse backgrounds. People Connectors must identify any unmet social and emotional support needs of the householders.
What is one of the best things about your job?
Joby: Someone being heard…. that’s something many people want, and we create the space for that.
Baiju: As People Connectors we get to interact with many people from different communities and cultures.
How do you think The ACDC Project will help people in your local community?
Joby: People speak about their family, neighbourhood, and local community so The ACDC Project could help to identify the issues and needs in terms of enhancing the positive mental health and wellbeing in these groups.
Baiju: The ACDC Project will attempt to identify the barrier to accessing services through proactively engage with people in the community. This will help to identify lack of awareness of one’s own mental health and wellbeing needs, absence of different services in the local community, identify different cultures, and to provide more and adequate information of different mental health services available in the community.
What does positive mental health look like for you personally?
Joby: Smiling at people when I go out, balancing my professional and personal life, going to bed happy at night, helping someone when they are in need, and controlling my emotions. If all of those things are in place I am at peak positive mentally health.
Baiju: Positive mental health is a state of well-being that allows me to feel, think, and act in ways that enhance my ability to enjoy life and deal with the challenges to face. It is someone’s ability to manage and cope with the positive and negative emotions in their daily lives.
Joby and Baiju are knocking on doors as part of The ACDC Project in Dunlop and Macgregor in Canberra. They are our two wonderful people connectors through our delivery partner Mental Health Foundation ACT.
