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