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Monday, February 10, 2025

Dr Radica Mahase shares 10 lessons from 10 years of advocacy

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22 days ago
20250123

Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase has been a his­to­ri­an and an ed­u­ca­tor for 29 years. Cur­rent­ly, she is a se­nior lec­tur­er in his­to­ry at the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Over the last few years, Ma­hase has emerged as a so­cial ad­vo­cate with a strong voice. This month, her NGO, Sup­port Autism T&T (SATT), is cel­e­brat­ing its tenth an­niver­sary. As a main care­giv­er to her autis­tic nephew, Rahul, she was dis­tressed over the chal­lenges faced in di­ag­nos­ing him and ac­cess­ing ed­u­ca­tion and ther­a­py ser­vices. She could not find op­por­tu­ni­ties for her nephew, so she de­cid­ed to cre­ate them her­self, and out of des­per­a­tion, she start­ed SATT.

For the past ten years, she cre­at­ed a team that host­ed more than 1,500 autis­tic chil­dren and adults at sen­so­ry-friend­ly events. They have fa­cil­i­tat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 600 work­shops and sen­si­ti­sa­tion ses­sions for par­ents/ed­u­ca­tors, cor­po­rate en­ti­ties, and com­mu­ni­ty groups. The NGO trained more than 3,000 youth vol­un­teers and ad­vo­cates. So far, 165 autis­tic chil­dren and adults ac­cessed pro­grammes at Rahul’s Club­house, an autism cen­tre in south Trinidad.

In 2023, Ma­hase was award­ed the Cha­co­nia Medal Sil­ver for her work in ed­u­ca­tion, ad­vo­ca­cy, and vol­un­teerism. Ma­hase shares some of the lessons she has learnt in her ten years as a so­cial ad­vo­cate.

Here are the ten lessons I have learnt in my ten years as a so­cial ad­vo­cate.

1. Le­gal and fi­nan­cial poli­cies make it dif­fi­cult for small NGOs to op­er­ate and sur­vive.

Our poli­cies make it dif­fi­cult for NGOs to op­er­ate. It took eight months to reg­is­ter the NGO be­cause of bu­reau­cra­cy. In SATT’s case, I did every­thing my­self, sim­ply be­cause we could not af­ford to pay a lawyer, etc, and it took five trips to the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs in Port-of-Spain be­fore we were suc­cess­ful­ly reg­is­tered. Small­er NGOs can­not af­ford to pay for fi­nan­cial au­dits. Get­ting NGO sta­tus is an ex­treme­ly long wait. It seems as if the sys­tem is meant to sti­fle small­er NGOs.

2. You have to be clear about what you want to get where you are go­ing.

If you de­cide to pur­sue some­thing, you have to be very clear about what you want. It is easy to get dis­tract­ed and lose fo­cus on your ob­jec­tives. When I start­ed SATT, I knew that I want­ed to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for our autis­tic chil­dren and adults to so­cialise and en­gage in ac­tiv­i­ties. Then COVID struck, and we were tak­en up with dis­trib­ut­ing ham­pers and de­vices. Soon, par­ents were ex­pect­ing us to do this, and al­though we con­tin­ued as much as we could, I quick­ly re­alised that we were los­ing our fo­cus, and we need­ed to get back to our main goals.

3. NGOs are like a mafia.

This whole NGO world in T&T is based on who you know and who knows you. If you are a ‘no­body’, then don’t ex­pect to get funds from large cor­po­ra­tions, banks, etc. The NGO world is all about so­cial and po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions, which in­flu­ence fund­ing and fundrais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. Sad­ly, there are NGOs that get fund­ing be­cause of their con­nec­tions, but the funds are not re­flect­ed in the work they do. Many use funds to pay their di­rec­tors high salaries rather than help peo­ple. At the same time, there are many small­er NGOs that are im­pact­ing change but do not get funds from the Gov­ern­ment or larg­er cor­po­ra­tions be­cause they are not con­nect­ed to the ‘right peo­ple.’

4. The biggest help comes from the ‘small man.’

I can em­phat­i­cal­ly state that the on­ly rea­son we have sur­vived, grown, and ac­com­plished all that we have done in ten years is be­cause of sup­port from or­di­nary in­di­vid­u­als and small/medi­um busi­ness­es. Nev­er un­der­es­ti­mate how much can be done with in­di­vid­ual sup­port, not on­ly fi­nan­cial­ly but al­so sup­port in the form of time and tal­ent. All our events are suc­cess­ful be­cause cit­i­zens vol­un­teer their time and en­er­gy. All the lit­tle bits add up to big ex­pe­ri­ences for peo­ple on the autism spec­trum.

5. A child’s biggest sup­port­er can be a child’s biggest ob­sta­cle to de­vel­op­ment. While I ful­ly un­der­stand that par­ents and care­givers want to pro­tect their chil­dren, this can of­ten hin­der them. Many par­ents don’t let their chil­dren en­gage in dif­fer­ent ac­tiv­i­ties be­cause they are wor­ried about them. You have to al­low them in new spaces, let them try new things so they will know their lim­it. Some­times they might sur­prise you. On­ly when you ex­pose them, you will know what they can and can­not han­dle.

6. You need to sur­round your­self with peo­ple who en­cour­age you to be great! There are many peo­ple who just don’t like to see oth­ers suc­ceed. No mat­ter how much good you are do­ing, there are al­ways peo­ple who will try to cut you down. That’s why it is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant to sur­round your­self with peo­ple who want you to ac­com­plish great things. I am in­cred­i­bly lucky to find that in my close friends, es­pe­cial­ly Ali­cia Maraj, who has been a di­rec­tor of Sup­port Autism T&T from the very be­gin­ning. I found that sup­port in my men­tor, Prof Brins­ley Sama­roo, who sup­port­ed my ad­vo­ca­cy work with the same en­thu­si­asm he had for my aca­d­e­m­ic ca­reer. Nev­er un­der­es­ti­mate the pow­er of pos­i­tive role mod­els and peo­ple who be­lieve in you.

7. It re­al­ly takes a vil­lage.

Be­ing an in­di­vid­ual pas­sion­ate about a cause is one thing; be­ing an in­di­vid­ual im­pact­ing change at a na­tion­al lev­el is a whole dif­fer­ent ball­game. Col­lab­o­ra­tions with in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ty groups can go a long way in ad­vo­cat­ing for a cause. We keep say­ing it takes a vil­lage to raise a child; in the case of SATT, it took a vil­lage to ac­com­plish all that we have done. The peo­ple that we have brought to­geth­er have helped us to make a big im­pact.

8. Adult bul­ly­ing is a re­al thing.

A few years ago, I was bul­lied on so­cial me­dia with com­ments such as, “She does not have an autis­tic child; it is just her nephew,” in­sin­u­at­ing that I did not un­der­stand the chal­lenges of rais­ing an autis­tic child as I was not a par­ent. The bul­lies sought to dis­cred­it my ad­vo­ca­cy, not­ing that I was “just some­body from South.” These adults bashed my youth vol­un­teers be­cause they were “be­ing trained in the wrong way” by me. When we speak about bul­ly­ing, we think about chil­dren, but adults can be mean, and the more you ig­nore them, the more vi­cious they can be­come. Ig­nore them any­way.

9. Not every­one will un­der­stand or sup­port your work.

While you might be en­thu­si­as­tic about your cause, not every­one is go­ing to share that in­ter­est. I ac­tu­al­ly met peo­ple who said that peo­ple with autism should not be out in pub­lic; they are ‘dan­ger­ous’. I was told by ed­u­cat­ed adults that I was wast­ing my time ad­vo­cat­ing for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. You can’t change peo­ple’s minds, so you just have to ig­nore them and con­tin­ue with your work. My phi­los­o­phy is, ‘Join me or get out of my way.’

10. Ed­u­cate the younger gen­er­a­tions if you want to change so­ci­ety.

It is ex­ceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to break some of our su­per­sti­tions and be­liefs of old­er gen­er­a­tions, for ex­am­ple, get­ting a grand­moth­er to un­der­stand that her grand­son’s speech de­lay is not be­cause ‘boys take longer to talk.’ If we want an in­clu­sive so­ci­ety, we need to ed­u­cate younger ones and give them op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­ter­act and so­cialise with per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. That is the on­ly way we can break down stereo­types and build a more in­clu­sive so­ci­ety.


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