Summary / Most Important Things

• YACWA Youth Awards

• WAAMH awards announcement

• Unfiltered trailer released

• TheMHS Conference

• Welcome Alessia

• Storage unit move

• Preparing for a very busy October

• Getting our packages to PCH

• Event planning - Grinchmas, Read For Rights, Bun Intended

• Meetings

• Grant applications

Welcome to our newsletter!

PROGRAM UPDATE: Caring With Integrity

• Caring With Integrity has taken a massive step this month. It has truly transformed from something theoretical to something real, which has been an incredible, if slightly terrifying, milestone. We have been incredibly busy preparing for our first official delivery of Caring With Integrity care packages, with 100 bags to be delivered to a public youth mental health ward starting October 10th, 2025. (International Mental Health Day… and Rachael’s birthday - how fitting)

• The packages themselves have been made over the course of three weeks - a special shoutout to the team members Maeson Harvey, Emily Sullivan, Sophie Seinemeier, and Alessia Maio. On Saturday 27th September, Sophie and Rachael completed and delivered these to the ward, and they are now ready to be distributed from October 10 onwards.

• Be sure to check out October’s edition for more information!

PROGRAM UPDATE: Workshops

• The main workshop development has focused on our Integral language module, given its relevance to the Cockburn ‘It’s All In Your Head’ panel, taking place on October 7th (see October’s edition for more information).

• Here is a sneak peek!

PROGRAM UPDATE: Community engagement

Upcoming Events

• Unfiltered - collaboration between Integrity Initiative and How To Be Well (Lily Gresele). Scheduled for Sunday October 5th at 10am, the Backlot Perth. Tickets can be purchased for a pay-what-you-feel donation through Eventbrite. We are also absolutely thrilled to share our trailer with you - https://lnkd.in/eVTVx6HG. We are also thrilled to share that we will be offering the ability to host a screening for your school, community, workplace or other setting. If you are interested, please send us an email (rachael@integrityinitiative.com.au) or fill out the Microsoft Forms here

• Read For Rights - a collaboration with Maeson’s soapbox for PrideFEST 2025 NOTE - this is not ticketed, but we encourage EOIs through Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/read-for-rights-tickets-1507770906369. SEE MORE INFORMATION BELOW!

• Albany: Regional Engagement Pilot - happening in February of 2026, stay tuned for more information to come shortly. We are still searching for funding, but at this point I am so determined to make it happen that I cannot envision a reality where it doesn’t!

Stay tuned (not yet confirmed, but we’re planting the seeds).

• Grinchmas: an upcoming Christmas event for people who don’t like or don’t celebrate Christmas, with a panel of people discussing the complexities of Christmas and the challenges that it can bring for those of us who experience mental health challenges

• Bun Intended: a comedy/ game show competition night at Grill’d filled with plenty of puns and bad jokes. This will most likely happen in early December.

• Word Travels: A tour of regional WA- both up north and down south - hosting and delivering Lived Experience zine-making workshops in partnership with Maeson’s Soapbox. These zines will amplify the voices of young people, create a space for safer sharing, and encourage young people to take charge of change and step into leadership. The zines will then go on to form a part of Maeson’s Soapbox and will be delivered - where possible - through Integrity Initiative’s Caring With Integrity packages. Of course, this is all dependent on us actually securing funding 😅

Support Read For Rights

• The Soapbox and Integrity Initiative are collaborating on an event - Read for Rights - taking place on November 15th in Northbridge Piazza, an official PrideFEST WA Plus event. Read For Rights is a pre-loved books, toys and games store where communities can come together and bond over their love of stories and in celebration of Pride month, or to get some sustainable, low-cost Christmas shopping done… all items are simply a pay-what-you-feel donation.

  The event uses books, storytelling, and community conversations to shine a light on human rights, dignity, and mental health. More importantly, it creates a point of connection for people experiencing adversity… especially for LGBTQIA+SB communities and those experiencing mental health challenges.

• Any funds raised will be redirected to our planned Lived Experience zine-making tour, “Word Travels”

• Our webpage, here, contains ALL of the information you need about Read For Rights. It also has PDF printable flyers that you can put up around your community, school, workplace or other venue.

• How can you help?

  • We would love for you to help us spread the word - share it with your networks, print some posters and put them around, and bring it up in conversation. We have a generic marketing spiel you can use here.

  • If you have any books/ toys/ games that you are not using and which you think we could benefit from, we would love to accept them as donations. The same goes for furniture like bookshelves and office/ promotional signage/ stationery/ organisation materials if you have any you don’t use!

Send an email

TheMHS Conference 2025

Oh my goodness. TheMHS was truly, inexplicably incredible. Such a privilege and an honour to be amongst such fantastic people who I have deeply admired for such a long time, and to make so many new and incredible connections whilst there!

I am at a bit of a loss as to how to describe the magnitude of this experience, just know it was something I will never forget. One of the first times I have felt a part of the mental health sector as a whole, surrounded by Peers and clinicians who cared deeply and listened truly.

Read more about mine and Sophie’s experiences at TheMHS 2025

YACWA Youth Awards

• September 12th was the night of the YACWA Youth Awards. In5egrity Initiative was named a finalist in The Y Collective Action Award, and some of the team members were able to go along, including myself, Sophie, Maeson, Bri, Em and Jas.

• Read more about Integrity Initiative at the YACWA youth awards

• I was also named the winner of the ECU Community Leadership Award! It is an honour to have some of my hard work recognised, and I look forward to seeing where the future takes me.

WAAMH Mental Health Awards

• I (Rachael, hi!) was announced as a finalist in the Lived Experience Impact and Inspiration award through WA Association of Mental Health’s Mental Health Award.

• The event will take place on October 10th, which is not only International Mental Health Day, but also the day our pilot packages are set to launch and my birthday! Plus the release date for our first piece of media surrounding this endeavour, so yeah just another day 😅

Storage Unit Move

Integrity Initiative officially moved into our storage unit last month, however, this month saw us organise and sort through our stock and turn what was previously a pile of boxes into something that feels like a real HQ.

MASSIVE shoutout to Maeson Harvey on this one! Also, kudos to Emily Sullivan, Sophie Seinemeier and Lexington Mitchell. Love your work!!

Grants and funding

• To the surprise of absolutely nobody, I am still hot in pursuit of grants to support Integrity Initiative to do the work we so deeply love doing… that work being anything other than writing grant proposals (not a fun task). I have submitted grants to City of Cockburn, City of Fremantle, the Mental Health Commission, WA Primary Health Alliance, Aurizon and many more. Hopefully, we will get some positive news soon (because I don’t know how many more of these applications I can write!).

Current involvement opportunities/ calls for help

• FUNDING SUPPORT - if you have any connections to help us secure funding or if you know any organisations wanting to donate, please send us an email! We are looking at any and all options 🫶🏼

• VOLUNTEERS - we were not successful in our safe spaces proposal, so to those of you who applied to help out… thank you so much, but unfortunately it will not be progressing. That said, we have lots of events coming up and will be sending out communications for these events if we need extra hands!

Resources

• We have updated and created a few new resources this month - including some zines for the Cockburn panel, and a new brochure detailing the Integrity Initiative origin story. Take a look at the new brochure here!

• We are working on a way that we can have these resources available for purchase! Stay tuned!

Donations

• We haven’t gotten any donations this month (besides furniture for our storage unit, kudos to Maeson)

Team spotlight

• Sophie - thank you so much for all of your incredible work! I appreciate you so much. From the pep talks in the car to the caesar wraps at Dome, you have been there since day one. Thank you for being such a phenomenal support and being there for it all!

• Maeson - I will forever have a special place for you in my heart, you have been my biggest cheerleader since well before Integrity Initiative came to be. Thank you for your exceptional organisation and constant compassion. I am so thrilled to have you on board for this ride.

• Thank you to all the rest of you, I love you all deeply and look forward to sharing the ups with you (because goodness knows there have been more than enough lows to last us all a lifetime).

Slay Takeaways

• Frogs were the first land animals with vocal cords. Their vocal sacs resonate sounds like a megaphone, and some frog sounds can be heard from a mile away. Hence, they are a fantastic advocacy mascot - they spoke when many others did not and could not!

Take care froglets,

Rachael and the Integrity Army