Video Transcription

Elvis’ Story | Mental health and unemployment

My name’s Elvis. I am at uni and I’m working as well. I am in retail. Just about myself, some of my hobbies—I like to volunteer, I love photography, I like making movies and things like that. I moved to Australia four and a half years ago. When I was new in Australia, it was very secluded and it was hard to fit in. Very early on, I made a decision that I wanted to be financially independent. For me personally, it just meant that I didn’t have to depend on anyone.

While I was trying to find a job or looking for work, mental health issues were one of the biggest barriers, on top of a lot of other things, but it was one of the most prominent ones. (mellow music) I went along to Being Herd Pathway. It was a friend of mine who told me about it, and I was very hesitant because I’d done things like this before. But she knew what I was going through, and she was like, “No, trust me, this is good for you.”

One of the most memorable parts of the workshop was that they gave us a bunch of strengths and they helped us, showed us how to translate that into skills that would work really well on your resume. I was trying to find a job and that was testing in a lot of ways, but at the time, you feel very alone because you think that you’re the only person who’s going through this. I guess that’s where the Batyr workshop came in. I found other people going through exactly the same thing. And I also saw people who went through the same thing and succeeded in what they wanted to do. It gives you a lot of hope.

After the workshop itself, for a couple of months after that, I was mentored by someone amazing. And the best part about the mentoring was to see how catered it was for me. My mentor really did help me get motivated to wake up every day, apply for places, and try and get the work done, like writing cover letters for all these different places and things like that.

Batyr, to me, helped me be more confident and feel safe to share my stories. Sharing lived experiences really does work in breaking the stigma, in the sense that it normalizes the things that you go through. My learnings from that, that I would share with other people, are: you’re not alone. There are a lot of people that are going through exactly the same thing. It is not because you don’t have skill, it is not because you don’t have the experience, it’s none of that. It’s just circumstances.

But at the end of the day, I think the biggest lesson to be learned is that you keep trying. With jobs, persistence is what finally gets you there.

Video by batyr