The Faculty for Social Wellbeing is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month. It was exactly 19 July 2012 that this new community was set up and took its first infant steps. Now 10 years later, it is a thriving faculty of academics, research support officers, adminstrators and students, a Faculty that is committed to live up to the values it has espoused – honesty, respect, democracy, solidarity and sustainability.

One way in which we are celebrating this milestone anniversary is through the publication of a book, Vjagg – towards social connectedness – a project that I have worked on during this last year and which has come to completion in the final edited book that will be published this month. Deciding to name this book Vjagg – the Maltese word for journey – came about through a process of reflection on myself, on the Faculty and on the journey I watched myself travelling as I worked on the book.

As I say in my editor’s note “this book represents many different journeys to me”. It primarily represents the journey that the Faculty for Social Wellbeing has travelled over its first 10 years; the journey that I myself, and each one of us travels in our personal and professional lives; the journey that we are travelling as a society, a journey that we keep hoping will lead to the wellbeing of every single person.

Vjagg comprises narratives – stories – of five people, renowned in their respective professional fields, whom I interviewed during the month of February. Each of these persons, whom I thank for their generosity with their time, in my eyes are closely linked to one of the five core values of the Faculty.

I interviewed Stephania Dimech Sant, CEO of the Richmond Foundation on the value of Respect, with special reference to the principle of service-user involvement; Claudia Taylor-East, CEO of SOS Malta on the value of Solidarity, focusing on the principles of recognition of interdependence and cooperation in the pursuit of social justice; Peppi Azzopardi, journalist and broadcaster, on the value of Democracy, with special reference to the principles of participation and advocacy; Joseph M. Camilleri, former chairperson of KNPD, on the value of Honesty, focusing on personal and professional integrity and Danielle Vella, Global Reconciliation Programme manager, Jesuit Refugee Service, on the value of Sustainability for the benefit of current and future generations. I asked them to share with me what the respective value means to them, and how they have lived it in their personal and professional lives. The interviews were a beautiful experience in themselves. It was a moment of reflection and self-understanding for the interviewees and a moment of discovery for me as I unearthed more deeply how these five persons have impacted our society and its wellbeing through the way they embraced and lived the respective value.

As I travelled through the interviewing process I discovered a connectedness between these five values; a connectedness between the ways of thinking and acting of the five persons I interviewed; a connectedness between their work in the field and our work as a Faculty; a connectedness between us as members of this academic community. But above all, as the story-telling unfolded, I could grasp the unmistakable connectedness that exists between us all as human beings, as members of a society so inextricably linked to one another, as people whose choices and actions invariably impact others.

I chose to write up the chapters in the interviewees’ own voice – their personality and way of putting things come through and as I read and re-read the chapters I can undeniably hear our conversation again; I can see their faces light up as they remembered and re-experienced the fervour with which they recounted their stories.

I also invited academics from the different departments of our Faculty to write up reflections: for each narrative we have a reflection on the story being told and a reflection on the value it represents. These academics’ contribution is valued beyond measure. This to me means that this book brings so many voices together and results in a journey of discovery and understanding that I hope the reader will enjoy travelling with us as we celebrate 10 years of hard work and look forward to the next 10.

The stories that I present in this book are accompanied by lovely photographs by James Bianchi who brilliantly captured the personalities of the five interviewees. Danielle Sant also illustrated these stories and in her own journey to come to the final product she discovered that “the simplicity of line [...] would best illustrate the complexity of being human”. And for this I thank them both.

I must also thank Prof. Andrew Azzopardi, dean of the Faculty for Social Wellbeing for entrusting this project to me; Joanne Cremona who supported me during the interviews, for her writing assistance, technical editing, language editing and proofreading; Gordon Pisani and Sarah Galea at Kite Publications for seeing this book with my eyes and giving it the shape I imagined it would take, patiently walking through the design process with me.

I hope you enjoy leafing through the pages of our Vjagg.

Please contact us on [email protected]

 Dr Natalie Kenely

Faculty for Social Wellbeing, University of Malta