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“Sondai” is a word from Southern Africa that means ‘keep pushing forward’ which encapsulates the concept and aims of the project. Sondai is providing opportunities for research and practice for social work students at postgraduate level; developing culturally relevant psychosocial services for persons living with HIV-AIDS (PLWHA), strengthening the coping of Social Workers and agencies involved in HIV-AIDS prevention and care and will result in the production and dissemination of applied social work-related research relevant to the Caribbean context. This will provide crucial information for those within the Caribbean region and will also be beneficial in a wider context for those outside of the Caribbean.
Change and development are processes whose beginnings often cease to matter and become lost as time and events move on. At other times, we can quite clearly identify a specific moment, experience or event that provided the catalyst. A moment that triggers thoughts, actions, reaction and eventually propels us forward, it does at times seem that ‘each thing was in its place’ and that it is this that made the change possible.
How did the Sondai Project begin? I recall watching the international coverage of World AIDS Day in December 2005. The programme was on children orphaned because of AIDS and despite amazing human resilience, all of the stories told were of sadness and despair – there really wasn’t much of a place for hope. The situation of a little boy in Mozambique affected me most. He was aged about seven and his older sister was around ten years old. The children had first lost their mother to AIDS and the programme focused on the final days of their father’s life and then his death also due to AIDS; that moment when the children visited the hospital and their father was no longer in the bed he had occupied. Back in their tiny home, the little girl racked by grief was trying to comfort her brother – this was now a child-headed household and the children were quite alone. The other families in the village were not able to provide care for the children; many of them were also either living with AIDS or dying from it.
Personalised connections with loss can reach us in deeper ways than the contemplation of large scale suffering and I could not, and cannot still get the image of that little boy out of my mind – he had appeared brave, although somewhat bewildered by what was going on around him and then as the journalist was asking his sister about what they would do, in the corner - out of direct camera focus, the little boy suddenly crumpled, he huddled into himself, a hunched-up little form with his shoulders shaking as he sobbed inconsolably; his sister ran to him.
Trinidad and Tobago has an HIV epidemic and although much is being done to halt the spread of infection, the full impact of AIDS is yet to unfold at the societal level. At the individual and family level though, the impact of AIDS is real and is devastating the lives of children and families. Clearly there is much work for us to do. Haunted by the image of the little boy in Mozambique I reflected on the extensive work that had been done by colleagues in the Social Work Unit at The University of The West Indies in Trinidad.
In reviewing the contribution of social work staff and graduates in addressing HIV-AIDS we concluded that despite some outstanding individuals and agencies, the overall impact was limited and constrained by several factors, not least inadequate knowledge, weak professional infrastructure, inadequate resources and insufficient information on culturally appropriate interventions.
Armed with rationale and supported by social work colleagues the Sondai Project was developed. The project has gone from strength to strength and even though it is still in its infancy, it has resulted in tangible benefits in Caribbean Social Work practice, research and teaching.
The Sondai Project was made possible through a grant from the government of Trinidad and Tobago and The University of the West Indies Research Development Fund
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