Abstract:
ABSTRACT
The world is confronted with different social ills that have
exacerbated the situation of categories of people already living in
difficult circumstances, particularly those in developing countries. A
typical example is that of the people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV)
in poverty-stricken families in Rwanda.
While undertaking my PhD research, I chose to deal with the
poverty phenomenon among these people. My contribution, albeit
small, was to explore the impact of social work on empowering the
poor PLHIV organised in the form of associations in Huye district to
alleviate poverty so as to improve their living conditions.
The research was conducted in direct partnership with 13
Social Welfare Workforce (SWW) including 8 Professional Social
Workers (PSW) and 13 representatives of 12 targeted cooperative
associations. The direct research team worked with 266 associations’
members during 3 consecutive years. Throughout this research,
iterative empowerment activities – integrated in a three-stage recurrent
process consisting of ‘reflection, data collection and action’– were
performed.
Overall, the key research findings of this study revealed
that poverty combines economic, structural and psychosocial traits
and manifests itself in the form of insufficient incomes for family
survival and absence of basic needs. In the face of this situation,
empowerment and evidence-based social work practice were found
to be suitable strategies in tapping the potential and talents of PLHIV
for the sustainable improvement of their incomes in the future. It was
also found that the placement of the People in Need (PIN) at the helm
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of the battle against poverty is equally fundamental. Hence, PLHIV
should not be considered as passive recipients of aid. Instead, they
should be empowered to play a caretaker role for themselves. Social
work professionals should also be cognisant of their limitations while
engaging in almost all aspects associated with PIN.
. Ultimately, it was found and this is recommended that
a participatory inspiring model privileging the bridging role of
the Intermediary Social Work Actors (ISWA) and favoring the
involvement of PIN in the problem-solving process may be adopted
to mitigate adequately poverty. The model referred to is named
EIPPARD: Enlightening and Involving People in Participatory
Action Research for Development.
