The New Social Worker Vol. 19, No. 3, Summer 2012 | Page 14

education settings. It has been translated into Russian and adopted by child welfare organizations in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The four-volume Field Guide to Child Welfare, circa 1998, is an internationally recognized practice resource. This social work bible-of-sorts authored by Judith S. Rycus and Ronald C. Hughes, Child Welfare League of America, serves as an essential companion to the core curriculum. The field guides have also been translated into Russian and are being shared in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania with much success. My role was to help the university learn how best to teach the teachers and, most importantly, to do this within Kyrgyzstan’s educational and cultural contexts. I had a lot of learning to do myself. Maps and guidebooks were helpful in fixing my global bearings. But for me, the dream truly came alive when I came to this country to meet at length with faculty, students, NGO partners, and the Kyrgyz Association of Social Workers. Students and teachers helped me craft a program that would truly meet their learning needs and professional goals. Together, we determined that a one-year specialized course series with supervised work out in the real world best fit the needs of all. Many students studying social work at BHU, pronounced in Russian “B’gu,” have made life choices with serious consequences. One of the 20 third-year students selected for the new Children and Families specialization in social work says that her family was very concerned when she chose this profession, because there is a general perception that “social workers are servants.” “We have to prove how valuable our job is,” says this young woman, who like her peers has entered the profession because of a central belief that family is the foundation and the purpose of life. “The difficult social situations in the country bother me a lot. I want to take my part in changing it,” says Nurgul. These eloquent, sincere, fledgling do-gooders told me that they wanted to be a part of something that might help to change their country in a way that makes lives better for all families. Several expressed a desire to maintain the unique culture of Kyrgyzstan while encouraging open and honest societal dialogue about real problems in Kyrgyz society—alcoholism, poverty, domestic violence, and mental illness. And they saw the specialization at BHU, “as a way to increase the prestige of the social work profession.” These students, and students to come, are ready to check out of the “pity party” that plagues the social work profession and claim respect for the work they do. When asked whether child abuse occurs in Kyrgyzstan, all the students I spoke with agree that it does and that few are open and willing to discuss why it occurs. It’s a universal travesty deeply felt here. One female social work student from Osh, in a sharing session, admitted that the c