When Jasmine Deol’s phone buzzed one afternoon, she wasn’t expecting a message that would shift the course of her life or the lives of dozens of multicultural men across Australia. It was from her father. A simple, vulnerable confession:
“I feel lonely.”
For Jasmine, a daughter who had grown up watching her father sacrifice everything after migrating to Australia, those three words carried the weight of years of silent struggle. She felt a responsibility, an instinctive urge to help change that. But helping a culturally traditional father open up about mental health is never straightforward. “I didn’t know what to do,” Jasmine recalls. “Mental health isn’t something we talk about openly in many migrant families. I didn’t want to overwhelm him, so I started small.”
That “small” gesture, a casual badminton day in Goulburn involving her dad and a handful of community members, would become the seed of Australia’s first multicultural men’s mental health group, Sher Foundation. “Uncles and friends from Parramatta, Blacktown, even Penrith started messaging me, asking if I could organise something for their area,” Jasmine says. “That’s when I realised men wanted to participate. They just needed a culturally safe door to walk through.”
Her first official event came in December 2024, a Christmas special in Blacktown. Participants dressed up as festive characters, played basketball and badminton, and enjoyed food together. It was lively, warm, and intentionally non-clinical.
Today, Sher Foundation supports men from more than 20 cultural backgrounds and across 35 languages, from South Asian to Pacific Islands, African, Middle Eastern, and Chinese communities.
Jasmine works with researchers and clinical psychologists to ensure the foundation’s approach is effective. A key insight that shaped her model was, “you can’t introduce heavy mental health topics on day one,” she says. “If you do, people shut down.”
Instead, Sher Foundation requires men to attend five social sports sessions first. Only after that relationship-building period are they invited to join free mental-health and wellbeing programs conducted online. All programs are funded through government grants—from local councils to state and even federal initiatives.
When asked about her experience as a young female social entrepreneur in the male mental health space, Jasmine smiles. “Honestly, the men have been incredibly supportive. No negativity at all,” she says. She attributes this to her approach, open-minded, warm, non-judgmental, and focused on community-led design.
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Recently, she led a NSW government initiative teaching active bystander skills to men facing racism and hate crime. Again, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. “They talk to me without prejudice,” she says proudly. “I think creating a respectful and relaxed environment makes all the difference.”
“That men are actually seeking support,” Jasmine says. “They just need the right method.” She learned that many traditional support models such as sitting in a circle or being expected to share feelings immediately don’t feel culturally natural for many migrant men.
“But when we shifted the method to using social sport, consistency, and five sessions of trust-building, everything opened up.” Sometimes, she notes, what men need most isn’t therapy but friendship, connection, and collective support, something many women already have.
In just over a year, Jasmine Deol has built what Australia has long needed: a culturally safe, community-driven, human-centred approach to men’s mental health, one that understands culture, migration, healthy masculinity, and stigma not as barriers, but as pillars to work with.
“Men don’t need fixing,” she says. “They need a culturally safe space to connect, belong, and breathe. When that space exists, everything else follows.”
READ MORE: International Men’s Day: When men feel, families heal
