THE CHRONICLES - A NEW PARADIGM: AN INTEGRATION OF ONLINE SOCIAL WORK & INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL: Who Would’ve Thought That An Online Course Could Travel to Jamaica?

The focus of this course was to look at the challenges the Caribbean faces and improving the lives of their citizens given their current economic and social circumstances. The course identified numerous strategies and skills social workers have used to collaboratively build interventions within the social welfare, education, healthcare and sustainable community development arenas in the Caribbean. The overarching goal of the course was to expose class participants to alternative views of professional and personal transformation processes via the method of social development as it relates to individuals, interpersonal, family, community, organizational, societal and international changes while in Jamaica. With this will come an awareness of the similarity of social challenges faced by nations throughout the world. 

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL WORK IN THE CARIBBEAN 
Stacy Foster went on the UNE international Social Work study-abroad experience in 2015. She is currently a Licensed Social Worker in the State of Ohio. She currently works with the mentally ill and chemically dependent populations. Stacy has experience working with the homeless population, child welfare and doing outreach and advocacy work. She hopes to continue her work in the social work field at the macro level with a role in policy change, legislative advocacy and helping to establish better systems locally or even internationally that will have a larger-scale impact on the lives of many. She also hopes to pursue her PhD in the future. She hopes to return to Jamaica in the future to continue her passion for international social work. For more information on the International Social Work in the Caribbean course, please contact Professor Leslie Yaffa.

I had the incredible opportunity to complete my MSW field placement in Kingston, Jamaica beginning earlier this year. I split my time between Kingston College, a prestigious all boy high school, and Grace and Staff Community Development Foundation, an agency building bridges in education, unemployment, and poverty with the communities in downtown Kingston. I worked primarily with teenagers and their parents addressing issues such as poverty, violence, trauma, abuse, and development in individual and group counseling settings...