The New Social Worker Vol. 19, No. 4, Fall 2012 | Page 26

International

A

ABCD in Practice: A Practical Lesson
From the Field Placement
by Mukerem Mifta Shafi, MSW

sset Based Community Development (ABCD), has most recently
been well cherished by academia
and practitioners alike. As most of its
proponents argue, it is a radical shift
from the needs/deficit based community
development, to an asset based community development (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993; Phillips & Pittman, 2009).

Even though we took almost half
a dozen courses for the MSW first-year
first semester, it was in the Integrated Social Work Methods I course that we dealt
extensively with ABCD as an alternative
model of community development. At
the end of this semester, as part of the
MSW first-year field placement, I was
assigned to do my first social work field
education at an agency. The field placement agency was called BLEA (Beza
Lehiwot Ethiopia Association). It is an
NGO—a charity organization that works
with orphans and vulnerable children
(OVC), persons living with HIV/AIDS
(PLWHA), and the needy in the center of
Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia.
It was in this particular field placement
agency that I had the opportunity to see
how the ABCD model of community
development actually worked in practice.

In this field placement, which lasted
for a month, we were expected to go
through the first two major goals of social
work field education, according to the
school of social work at Addis Ababa
University. These are direct field visits/
observations and carrying out assessments in the field placement agency. For
this purpose, I had to undertake direct
field visits, observations, and assessments. I took notes on the overall service
provision patterns of the agency, challenges and opportunities associated with
agency beneficiaries, local arrangements
with which the agency works to address
problems and challenges of the community where the agency operates, and the
like.

It was in the middle of an interview,
a kind of unstructured key informant
interview with a local Idir (an indigenous self help arrangement/institution)

representative that I came to realize that
the agency was actually, in fact, subconsciously working under the mainstream
ABCD framework of community development. As I moved on interviewing
additional representatives, it became
clear that not only did the agency use
local resources and means to reach out to
those in need, but I was also able to unveil the structure under which the agency
organized itself along the community.
Although the program manager of the
agency never heard of the presence of
ABCD as an alternative model of community development, local resources,
assets, human power, and local social
institutions were mobilized and used as
a springboard to bring about changes in
the beneficiaries and client system. That
would make the organization a community based organization, or CBO.

When we look at the overall
structure of the agency—that is, the
means it uses to reach out to its potential
beneficiaries and address their causes
of concern—the following arrangement
emerges. First, the agency organized a
community dialogue or conversation as
to how the agency works with the local
community. Following this dialogue, a
decision has been made on how beneficiaries are selected; by whom they would
be selected; who would be willing to give
psychosocial support; how the indigenous social institutions (such as the Idir)
work with the agency, how volunteers
work with the beneficiaries, the Idir and
the agency; and so forth.

Second, with the help of the agency,
the local self help arrangement called
Idir selected volunteers from the community neighborhood who would be
willing to provide care and support for
OVC and PLWHA. Third, the agency
provided these recommended volunteers
from the community a comprehensive
psychosocial care and support training
that would enable them become “parasocial workers.”

When it comes to the actual selection of potential beneficiaries, the Idir,
as a union of local community members,

24

Fall 2012

The New Social Worker

knows all the members of the community. This enables it to effectively
identify major serious causes of concern
in the community, including OVC cases,
PLWHA, and the needy. Then, the Idir
recommends “para-social workers” for
these identified potential beneficiaries,
and they undertake a comprehensive
needs assessment and report to the
agency. This way, the agency extends
certain material help and support to
these beneficiaries.

In spite of this minimal support, the
actual care and support is provided by
local residents of the community, the
“para-social workers.” As most of them
are adult women, they know the needs
and challenges of the OVCs and treat
them as their children. In fact, as I have
seen the practice directly through the
field visit, they visit daily to check on
the progress of the overall conditions of
these children, especially their health
condition and education.

The most astonishing part of this
psychosocial care and support is that
these children, the OVC, are known to
have been born and grown up alongside
with their own children, the “para-social
workers’” children, in one village, playing and learning at the same school. The
presence of this emotional proximity
between the “para-social workers” and
the beneficiaries enabled the agency to
effectively carry out its principal goal of
providing comprehensive psychosocial
care and support to OVC and PLWHA
in the community. I think this idea of
trained “para-social workers” was, by far,
succcessful, given that the training of social workers in Ethiopia is a very recent
phenomenon.

The first direct social work field
education was quite an eye opening
experience. In fact, not only did it assure
the efficient integration of theory and
practice, but it also made it possible for
students like me to capture the actual
lived experiences of local communities to respond to local challenges and
problems drawing on local community
assets. Theory and practice integration