Practice in International Social Work

SW701, Section 001

This course is intended to prepare social work students for involvement in social development interventions in an international arena. This course will focus selectively on the challenges developing countries face in improving the lives of their citizens and the roles social workers can play in solving or successfully addressing them. Among the issues, some of the following are included: provision of basic life necessities, hunger and nutritional insufficiency, education, economic development, the strains related to urbanization and modernization, ethnic conflict, child protection, community and familial violence, environment and community health, organization and administration of human services, and citizen empowerment. Students will learn about strategies used by service providers, institutions, and self-help groups for the purposes of social transformation, community development, and enhancement of individual well-being. Central to the discourse will be an idiographic-nomothetic dialectic which counter-poses what is universal and what is culturally specific about social welfare issues and interventions across countries and regions. Course readings and discussion will begin with a focus on the globalization of selected social problems. An array of skills will be drawn from the traditional practice armamentarium of micro and macro social work methods to communicate to take collective action. Discourse will also focus on ways that these classic approaches must be adapted to increase their relevance for work in developing regions of the world, in international aid or relief organizations, and in programs for immigrants or refugees in this and other more technically developed countries. This course will also teach about newer models of social development and the opportunities these countries have and may offer to social workers working with their people.