Welcoming a new year
2024 has welcomed some warmth to Aotearoa, and many of us may wish the weather to remain as sunny as possible.
At the beginning of this year, eCALD Services welcomed a “sunny” team member, Ms Dulani Abeysinghe. She joins us as the CALD Educator, Engagement and Co-Design Lead. Besides providing cross-cultural education to the health workforce, she also engages with practitioners and consumers to improve health equities among migrants and former refugees through co-designed works. Her bright personality has ignited the team spirit from “Day One”. Dulani is no stranger to the eCALD Services Team, as she was one of the contracted Cross-cultural educators in 2023.
Dulani was born in Sri Lanka but has spent most of her life in other countries. She has a keen interest in culture, identity and social justice. Dulani is a registered social worker with a Master’s in Applied Social Work and an undergraduate degree in Psychology and recently completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Supervision from the University of Auckland. She has worked extensively in mental health both in New Zealand and Australia with people of diverse backgrounds, including people of refugee backgrounds, and was with Te Whatu Ora – Waitematā working as a clinical coordinator in the family harm space prior to taking up this full-time position with eCALD as the CALD Educator, Co-Design and Engagement Lead.
Dulani took this beautiful picture during her recent visit to Sri Lanka.
“I have a special connection with the lighthouse at Dondra Point (Dewundara in Sinhala), the Southern-most point of Sri Lanka, a place of nature, beauty, history, culture, human civilisation and global politics. The Dondra Head Lighthouse, the tallest in Sri Lanka, is situated by the southern-most tip of Sri Lanka in the village of Devinura (City of Gods), overlooking the expansive Indian Ocean with construction completed in 1890 by the British on a site where the Portuguese destroyed ancient Buddhist and Hindu shrines in the 1500s.” - Dulani.
