Social Work Goes International
From 10th-15th of April ten students of Social Work and professor Angelika Weber had the opportunity to join the 18th International University Week in St. Pölten, Austria (https://www.fhstp.ac.at/de/newsroom/news/18th-socnet98-international-university-week). The SocNet 98 is a network of European Social Work Faculties and we were very thankful for this special one time opportunity to meet fellow students and professors from all over Europe and learn about Social Work in other countries. Participants came from Norway, Danmark, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria and Germany. We were welcomed very warm and friendly by Veronika Aumann and Peter Fabritz, two students from the organisational team of FH St. Pölten who brought all of us to the Lilienhof Mary Ward House, where we were accommodated. We made ourselfs comfortable in our 12 person dormitory and then joined the other students in the clubroom for a first meeting and our host students provided us with pizza and beverages.
Monday started after the official welcome at 8:00 o´clock with a very interesting and intriguing speech of Kevin Brown from IFSW (http://ifsw.org). We plan to invite him to speak at our Human Rights Week in November this year. Throughout the day every University presented itself with samples of voices for and about Social Work. The first day was completed with a Welcome event that provided a homemade buffet and the live band „Stereo Bullets“.
The following days were filled with a lot of workshops and field trips such as the radio workshop where we learned how to record an interview, the basic questions of journalism and got the opportunity to speak actually on air. All workshops were held by the professors from the network faculties. For an impression of the very interesting program: Belgium offered „listen to your inner voice“, two professors from Norway spoke about parents with intellectual disabilities and how they can be „given a voice“. Denmark held a very popular workshop about theater as a method in social work. All together, we could choose from eight workshops only on Tuesday, the radio workshop throughout the morning not included.
For the field trips we were able to choose from a variety such as the psd – the psychosocial service from Caritas, the City Farm, a gardening working reintegration project, Neustart, a probationary service, Steppenwolf a youth center and GESA a working reintegration project.
We were also given the opportunity for a cultural experience at Monastery Stift Melk where we attended a silence workshop and were shown the famous library which contains originals of Emmanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller and many more.
Holger Kühl from Bremen offered the workshop „a voice for the profession + radio“ where we discussed why and how social work should empower itself as a profession. The results were broadcastet at Campus and City Radio 94.4 (http://cba.fro.at/313458; from Minute 58 on you can listen to it).
To sum it up one can say that this week was a full success both, in learning a lot about social work in other countries and improving our skills as well as in making new international friends. We hope that we will be able to take part again!
