On Thursday 26th of June, at NSW Parliament House, the Shifa Project was honoured with the 2025 NSW Humanitarian Award for Best Project, presented by STARTTS NSW and the Refugee Council of Australia.
This award recognises the delivery of healing circles and educational sessions led by Educaid across New South Wales, as part of the broader Shifa initiative. These spaces have supported refugee, migrant, and diaspora communities in navigating grief, trauma, and displacement through collective reflection, storytelling, and psychoeducation. The project also delivered culturally responsive workshops for schools and service providers, helping build trauma-informed care across the sector.
We receive this recognition with heavy hearts and dedicate it to the children and people of Gaza — those enduring unspeakable suffering as much of the world turns away. In a time marked by devastating loss, it feels difficult to celebrate. But this award belongs to them — and to all communities carrying the weight of injustice, pain, and dispossession, who continue to rise each day with courage, dignity, and resistance.
Born from a shared response to the psychological toll of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the Shifa Project is a collaboration between six organisations across NSW and Victoria. It affirms the urgent need to decolonise mental health care and create collective, culturally rooted spaces for healing, blending psychoeducation with spiritual and communal connection.
The Shifa Project is a collective of organisations — Educaid, Muslim Mental Health Professionals, Six Degrees, Mind Wise, Haweyate — who came together in response to the psychological toll of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Together, we’ve worked to create decolonised, trauma-informed, culturally grounded spaces that centre collective healing and community care.
We also honour the work and wisdom of Palestinian psychiatrist Dr. Samah Jabr, whose teachings remind us that collective trauma demands collective healing. More than an award, this moment calls us to deepen our commitment to justice-led mental health, community-based care, and trauma-informed practice.
📰 Read the full press release and article
📸 Photo: Ziyad Serhan (CEO, Educaid) and Ayman Islam (Executive Director, Centre for Muslim Wellbeing) accepting the award on behalf of the Shifa Project.
To find out more about the Shifa Project please visit the link here: The Shifa Project
