Project Chosen Family empowers multicultural youth to break the cycles of family violence
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Content warning: mentions of suicide and family violence.
Survivor advocate Lewching Yip’s mission to create safe spaces for multicultural youth springs from a powerful conviction – shattering intergenerational cycles of violence.
Creating Project Chosen Family, her mission is to help young people feel less alone. And as she prepares to launch their inaugural support group, she hopes to forge a community where young people never have to face trauma alone.
“As a young woman of colour and migrant who fled family violence when I was 19 years old, I was unable to acknowledge or identify the types of violence I was exposed to,” explains Lewching.
“I simply knew I had to get out and that I saw suicide as the only alternative if I didn’t succeed. It was not as if what I was experiencing stopped overnight after I left, and it took me a long time to connect with services because I simply did not have the language to articulate what I was experiencing and or understood how help can look like.”
Noting that while there are calls for services and systems to centre the voices of children and young people, she says that there needs to be early intervention and peer education available to help them reclaim their voices and to understand the ways family violence can take form.
That’s where the idea for Project Chosen Family came from.
Designed for female-identifying and gender-diverse multicultural youths aged 18 to 25 who are navigating challenging familial relationships, the peer-led support group is intended to be a safe space for discussions around communicating needs and boundaries, exploring identities, navigating safety, and re-building chosen families.
Explaining that it has taken her eight years to navigate the guilt of abandoning the familial obligations she was taught growing up, and grieve the family relationships she will never have, Lewching says that Project Chosen Family will also battle common misconceptions about family violence in multicultural communities.
“While accessing supports, I was often asked why I do not cut my family off. For a first-generation migrant like myself, these are my connections to my culture and is it not easy or as black-and-white as many may assume,” she says.
“For many of us, safety planning needs to involve empowering us to engage with family and community on our own terms safely. It also means asking us for our preferences in support, and not immediately assuming that we would like support specific to our cultural backgrounds.”
Lewching.
Since receiving YWCA Canberra’s Great Ydea Grant in 2024, Lewching has been working behind to the scenes to launch the pilot of Project Chosen Family. Now taking expressions of interests until Friday 18 April for the inaugural support group – which will commence on Thursday 1 May – she says participants can expect a safe place to talk about a range of topics.
“Each group session will touch on different topics ranging from boundary setting and engaging with family on your own terms to exploring identities, gender, and sexuality in what may be an unaccepting environment, says Lewching.
“Group participants will also have access to quiet spaces that they can step into if they need a breather from group sessions at any point.”
Springing from Lewching’s fierce determination to build the lifeline she never had, the project is a step in breaking the intergenerational cycles of violence many multicultural youths face.
And at its core lies a simple yet profound vision: a place where cultural identity can become a source of power rather than isolation.
“I was driven to create Project Chosen Family so multicultural youths can feel less alone in their experiences, connect with others experiencing challenging familial relationships in a supported space, learn how to communicate their emotional boundaries, and navigate safety.”
For more information, visit projectchosenfamily.com.au
If you or someone you know needs help, contact any of the below support lines.
- Lifeline – 13 11 14or text 0477 13 11 14
- Kids Helpline – 1800 55 1800
- Beyond Blue – 1300 22 4636
- Embrace Multicultural Mental Health – org.au
- Transcultural Mental Health Centre (NSW) – health.nsw.gov.au/tmhc or 1800 648 911(9am – 4.30 pm)
