Diversity Counselling New Zealand (DCNZ) was established in 2013 by Vanisri Mills, Freda Xia, Kaoru Tsukigi, and Kou Kunishige.  As trained, professional counsellors and migrants to New Zealand, they saw a need for counselling services that catered to the many different cultures here in Aotearoa New Zealand.  

Their vision was to create a free, professional, and culturally responsive service that supported the mental wellbeing of local people, and their communities.

By working as volunteers for the first few years of DCNZ, the founders were able to deliver on this vision. As well as offering free counselling, they engaged with local communities to tackle mental health stigma and delivered wellbeing workshops.

As demand for the services grew, DCNZ was able to obtain funding to employ more counsellors and registered psychologists. In 2018, DCNZ also started receiving referrals from GPs. During Covid 19, DCNZ delivered online counselling right across the country, and started to create more online resources as a way of reaching more people.

Today, DCNZ provides counselling in over 20 different languages and receives referrals from a number of community and health services. In addition, DCNZ offers workshops, resources and programmes that provide education, information and skill development for children, young people (youth) and adults.

Our aim is to help ethnic communities overcome challenges, build resilience and flourish.