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Friday, July 18, 2025

Your Sto­ries

Building bridges to the elderly

by

20160619

Sasha Bernard, 23, has adopt­ed a grand­fa­ther–a res­i­dent at the Dat­ta Home for the Aged who she said has a "hot mouth."

De­scrib­ing their first en­counter, she re­called: "When we first went to the home about two years ago I saw one of the res­i­dents, some­where be­tween 70 and 80, sit­ting kind of qui­et.

"I went up to him and said my name is Sasha. He said, 'Eh heh? You is a pret­ty one. You want to go on a date with me tonight?' I thought he was fun­ny. He had a hot mouth.

"On oth­er vis­its, I would ask him how he was go­ing and he would say, 'I go­ing good. But not as good as you'.

"I re­alised he was a hot boy in his days. He even had a tat­too on his arm. When I asked him about it, he raised his shirt sleeve and showed me and said all the girls used to like it."

Bernard is founder of Bridges to the Heart, a group formed to re­store bro­ken re­la­tion­ships be­tween var­i­ous groups in T&T. A grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Caribbean, she is do­ing her Mas­ters de­gree in glob­al pub­lic health at Lo­ma Lin­da Uni­ver­si­ty in Cal­i­for­nia, Unit­ed States. She adopt­ed Ron as her grand­fa­ther when Bridges to the Heart launched its first project, Adopt a Grand­par­ent, two years ago in an at­tempt to break down the walls be­tween the younger and old­er gen­er­a­tions.

"I found out he was a foot­baller when he was younger dur­ing play dough ther­a­py. We in­tro­duced this ther­a­py to help res­i­dents of the home with their cog­ni­tive func­tions. We let them cre­ate what they want with the dough," Bernard said.

"With his dough, Ron made a goal­post and a foot­ball. He would tell us about the days when he played foot­ball. His face lights up when he talks about his past."

Bernard said Ron was from up north and does not seem to have Alzheimer's but she has nev­er seen any­one vis­it him at the home dur­ing the times she has been there.

When she got to­geth­er with Es­ther Bur­rowes, Crys­ton Lewis and Justin Matthew, all grad­u­ates of USC in dif­fer­ent ar­eas of study, to form Bridges to the Heart, the el­der­ly was not their fo­cus.

"But af­ter we start­ed work­ing with them we couldn't leave. We got at­tached," she said.

Bernard said she and oth­er mem­bers of the group were shocked to dis­cov­er just how ne­glect­ed the el­der­ly are.

"One of God's com­mand­ments is to ho­n­our thy fa­ther and moth­er. We are not sup­posed to cast off our par­ents when they get old­er but they just van­ish from our minds," she said.

"In all the time we were at Dat­ta, we on­ly saw peo­ple vis­it­ing two res­i­dents."

Bernard, the on­ly child of psy­chi­a­trist Dr San­dra Reid and Mar­cus Bernard of Champs Fleurs, plans to stay on the Lo­ma Lin­da cam­pus to com­plete her stud­ies next year. She comes back home as of­ten as she can and when she is not here "tries to man­age" Bridges to the Heart from afar. She last saw Ron in Ju­ly 2015 be­fore she went away.

Like she does with Ron, Bernard and her group try to stim­u­late the res­i­dents men­tal­ly and so­cial­ly.

"Some­times we do this through craft, the use of play dough, or some­times we just bring mu­sic. Justin, one of the di­rec­tors of Bridges, can play the gui­tar and we ask the res­i­dents what they want to sing.

"They would name a hymn, or an old song. We would find it on You Tube and some would sing along, some would get up and dance and oth­ers would just sit and lis­ten."

Bernard said Bridges to the Heart stayed with the Adopt a Grand­par­ent project for two years be­cause "we didn't want to do some­thing half-heart­ed and leave with­out mak­ing a big change."

They are de­ter­mined to fix the way se­nior cit­i­zens are treat­ed and Bernard plans to launch new project which will bring even greater aware­ness of this prob­lem and ben­e­fit T&T.She said: "I am wait­ing un­til af­ter I grad­u­ate next year to launch it."

"I think my par­ents showed me so much com­pas­sion and love, I have a lot to give out. Bridges start­ed when I saw the el­der­ly be­ing ne­glect­ed. I al­ways had a pas­sion for help­ing peo­ple. It was the rea­son I got in­to pub­lic health stud­ies. My en­tire life is based on try­ing to help oth­er peo­ple," she said.


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