Actualités

My mother is the main reason why I wanted to do social work - she’s devoted her life to many causes. For a long time, she worked in the Centre of Learning. When I returned to Mauritius after my studies, I worked as a counsellor in primary schools, but I realised rather quickly that my job had limitations: I could listen to children and adults, but I had no idea what was going on in their homes. There were no follow-ups, nothing like that. I decided to find a job that would allow me to help people in a greater capacity. 

And that’s how I landed here, in March 2016! Follow-ups, records and holistic accompaniment are all part of this NGO's DNA. We take care of the entire family, and dedicate our work to following and empowering the family in all aspects of their lives - education, housing, work, health, nutrition, attitude (MASCO). The whole family moves and grows together. Everything is integrated, linked. 

When I first started, I took care of communications - public presentations, pairing process follow-up, social media…I also helped out where I could, which gave me better knowledge of Loveridge’s operations. Now, I train social workers for their work on the field. I evaluate the services that our Lovebridge-trained social workers deliver to our beneficiaries, and I make sure that our standards are correctly enforced. We have a professional structure, and so ensure that our procedural guidelines and manuals are respected. 

All our visits to our beneficiary families are based on love and support, but they also have specific targets. I cross-fertilise best practices across the six regions we operate in, and I make sure that we provide flawless service to these families in need. When a person is employed as a social worker here at Lovebridge, we train him/her so that he/she understands the way we work, our structure; we blend the efficiency of an enterprise with the heart and knowledge of an NGO, and our operations are long term. This is why we make sure that there are standards. We also organise workshops on poverty, on the role of the social worker, on the different types of relationships that exist (among beneficiaries, sidekicks/volunteers, social workers, regional teams and so forth). We hold sessions on how to listen properly, how to detect child abuse, domestic abuse - observing the signs, dealing with these situations properly.

We evaluate each family we accompany at the end of the year. We always ask our beneficiaries to tell us about their Lovebridge experience. It’s always a very poignant moment - I remember a man who told us that he was in a very dark place, before, and that when we came to help he found some light in this darkness. A beautiful relationship forms; a bridge between different religions, ethnicities, lifestyles. And that relationship is what motivates me.