Formative Practical Experiences
Just prior to entering the MSW program, I was working for the Moose Jaw Multicultural Council after completing my BSW practicum with the Cape Town Refugee Centre. My time with these two organizations provided me with rich learning and valuable practical experiences which served to further encourage me to travel further down the path of international social work.
Moose Jaw Multicultural Council The Moose Jaw Multicultural Council (MJMC) is a non-profit organization in Moose Jaw, SK that provides settlement and integration services to refugees and immigrants. With MJMC, I worked with refugee and immigrant youth and their families from a host of countries including Myanmar, Kosovo, Philippines, Somalia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Siera Leone, Guinea, South Sudan, and Uganda as a SWIS Worker (Settlement Worker in Schools). The SWIS program is a partnership between MJMC, Citizenship Immigration Canada, and the local school boards that focuses on supporting the adaptation and integration of newcomer children, youth and families in Canada. The SWIS program had just been initiated in Moose Jaw for the first time in 2011 and I was the first to take on the role of SWIS Worker in high schools in the community. This was a really challenging but exciting opportunity as I was to contribute a lot to the overall formation of what the role would entail. Other than some guidance from fellow MJMC staff and a bit of information on other SWIS programs in the country, I was basically starting from scratch and had to be very open to the unexpected. For example, I was even live on a local radio station to discuss my work and to promote a large Cultural Fair that I organized. While I worked for MJMC, I was physically located in Central Collegiate high school and this proved to be a very interesting aspect of my role. This arrangement was challenging as I had to negotiate between the concerns of the school and those of MJMC, but also rewarding as I had the opportunity to collaborate with teachers, school administrators and the school counsellor. I had the opportunity to be a part of two multidisciplinary teams simultaneously, which was difficult at times, but also taught me how to better deal with conflict and work collaboratively as a team member. My time at MJMC also gave me the freedom to put into motion my own initiatives and test my self-motivation, flexibility and adaptability. Also, I am grateful to have been able to form trusting relationships with a lot of the youth that I was more than happy to see every day in my office. Cape Town Refugee Centre The Cape Town Refugee Centre (CTRC) is a non-profit organization and implementing partner for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that assists refugees and asylum seekers in the Western Cape, South Africa. As a Social Worker Intern in the Psycho-Social Intervention Programme department, I worked with refugees and asylum seekers, mostly from Congo, the DRC, Somalia, Burundi, Zimbabwe, and Rwanda, on a case-by-case basis. The objective of this programme is to assist the most vulnerable with material assistance and provide psycho-social support through counselling and referrals. My time with CTRC was full of different responsibilities as on certain days, I would be doing intake and assessment interviews and other days would be designated for home visits. This was my first role in which I can definitively say that I felt that I was practicing social work and also led me to truly understand the value of self-reliance and sustainable change. I had a difficult time with the services I was providing as on intake days, there would be a massive queue of people well outside of the office waiting to come in and then many more people who were already crammed into our waiting room. With the sheer number of clients, which definitely did not match the amount of resources we had, I felt that I was definitely not sustainably helping clients and not fostering any positive change. For example, if I assessed that a family could not meet their most basic needs, then I could provide only minimal assistance in either the form of food stamps or assistance for one month's rent. All I could truly offer was short-term assistance that would not create any real difference in the clients lives and this was a difficult reality for me. I soon found myself referring a lot of clients to the CTRC Empowerment and Self-Reliance Programme, which aimed to equip clients with employable skills and to foster economic self-reliance, as my way of addressing the issue. This experience prompted me to really reflect upon and question what would truly create change for people and what my role could be in supporting such change. Overall, with my experiences at MJMC and CTRC, I became much more appreciative of the significance of person-centred social work and how my practice will always involve working with not just individuals, but families and even entire communities. I learned how to work effectively independently while also collaborating as a multidisciplinary team member. And most notably, I gained better understanding of the immense importance of promoting sustainable change and self-reliance. |
“All journeys have
secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” -Martin Buber |