Speaker gives social workers advice

When several social work students gathered for a recent brown bag lunch they heard Randi Buerlin, assistant director of field instruction for graduate students, offered advice for conducting social work in other countries. Graduate social-work students also offered their firsthand experience.

“You need an in-depth understanding of the foreign culture and an understanding of what you want to do. Language proficiency or a specific skill is also helpful,” Buerlin told the students attending the session.

“I think there is going to be an increase in international social work because of increases in refugees, AIDS and the poverty crisis.”

She then cited the four main types of international social work:

* problems within the U.S. and other countries

* professional exchanges, with universities and educational institutions

* international social work in another country

* model social work development and developing.

After Buerlin showed pictures of her trip, two graduate social-work students described their overseas work.

“I liked it because it helped me find my focus in social work. The numbers on the page became more than just numbers,” said Gary Jenkins, who traveled to Latin America, mainly because he wanted to practice his Spanish as well as practice his social work skills. He recounted his foreign internship experience, where he worked with children and families in the Alps who were exposed to HIV.

“They became children with faces – a reality,” he said.

Another second-year student, Jamie Bennett, visited the Gaza Strip for four weeks during the summer.

“The first thing I remember noticing were the huge injustices because the area is so impoverished over there,” she said, adding that she visited the Middle East because she previously had lived there.

After the meeting, Jason Sawyer, a part-time, first-year graduate student who attended the luncheon, described the School of Social Work’s upcoming trip to Ghana.

“I think the meeting was good,” Sawyer said. “I only wish it could have been longer.”

Another graduate-student attendee, Lotti Wayson, said she also wants to travel on the social work school’s trip to Ghana.

“I think the meeting was really good and had a lot of really useful information and handouts,” Wayson said.

Buerlin recommended that students not only perform volunteer work in other countries, but suggested that they also network to find foreign contacts and fieldwork.