World News

By Jean H Charles

President Barack Obama built his career as a lawyer and as a constitutional law professor; yet, his short credential as a social work/cum community organizer was his preferred ticket on the road to the White House.

The world has labeled prostitution as the first profession yet the Bible sets social work as the original profession. It all started when God asked Cain, “Did you take care of your brother?”

Jean H Charles MSW, JD is Executive Director of AINDOH Inc a non profit organization dedicated to building a kinder and gentle Caribbean zone for all. He can be reached at: jeanhcharles@aol.

The same admonition was given by Jesus the Christ to his followers when he told his disciples that the first commandment is to love thy God but the second is to love thy neighbor as thyself.

This is the mission of social work – teaching and practicing the concept of loving thyself and loving thy neighbor as thyself!

It is also the critical ingredient for nation building: a territory where the boundaries have been established with clarity, with people glowing in the glory of the past and dreaming a future where moving solidarity will leave no one behind. It is the missing link of the failed states with people of the same nation having very little in common with each other.

I am pained, though, to observe that social work theory and practice has not kept pace with its main mission of nation building. Reviewing the literature and the work of practitioners in the business of nation building I have found a paucity of social workers in the field.

Ron Dellums, now the mayor of Oakland, California, was the last known social worker in the Congress of the United States. The City of New York has no social workers in high policy making in its administration. The United Nations has none. The White House has none.

In one of my conversation with the Dean of a leading social work school of the country, Columbia University, I was told the business of social work was not the province of the social work profession alone. Lawyers, business men, psychologists, and religious ministers occupy also the practice.

While lawyers are focused on legal business, doctors on medical care, it is the job of the social worker to make the whole seem well integrated.

I am inspired by the tradition of giant social workers such as Dean Mitchell Ginsberg, Frances Piven, George Bragger who transformed New York City in the 70s to make it a cosmopolitan metropolis that is different, let’s say, from any city in New Jersey or Arizona. The culture of hospitality, fair play and decency was established then and built upon now.

I am disappointed to find out that, in the last forty years, the concept of social work as a pioneer and a tool for nation building has been in regression, yielding its place to personal therapy. The leading question of engagement for the social worker has been: can I fit into the reimbursement plan of the Medicare guidelines, instead of can I transform my community to make it a better place to educate and grow the children?

A growing number of economists such as Paul Collier, Paul Wolfowitz, Peter Galbraith and Mats Lunhal are stepping up in the front line to lead in roles that social workers should have undertaken. Write, agitate and take a stand against the bad guys who incubate the business of failed states.

I have argued with an influential United States policymaker that a contingent of social workers should be embedded with the military in the deployment to Iraq and to Afghanistan. Such novel idea has been received with a cold shoulder. In fact, only the social worker could help the Iraqis and the Afghans understand that the business of transforming their country into a haven for their inhabitants is the quickest way to weed out the extremists, the Taliban and the Al Qaeda.

The New York Times, in a leading essay this week by Nicholas Kristof, put it bluntly: one soldier or 20 schools? Should America continue to spend 37 billion for Afghanistan and for Iraq with no earmark funding for the soft work of the social workers who will ensure sustainability and viability of the nation building process in both countries?

Greg Mortenson, an American with no experience in social work and the author of “Three cups of tea”, wanted the social work profession and the United States built up by building and maintaining without destruction by the Taliban some 145 schools.

According to the New York Times, Mr Mortenson “lamented that for the cost of just 246 soldiers posted for one year in Afghanistan, America could pay for a higher education plan for all Afghanistan. That would help build an afghan economy, civil society and future for one percent of what the militarily spending this year.”

The international crisis group has characterized the Afghan army as a “fragmented force serving disparate interests and far from attaining the united national character needed to confront numerous security threats.”

The Dean of the School of Social Work of Columbia University Dr Jeanette Takamura, who developed a cozy relationship with the Obama administration — she hails from Hawaii as does the President, may have to convince the Commander in Chief, a former social worker, to earmark one percent of the Defense Department budget for the training and the deployment of social workers along with the military to initiate the nation building process of the failed countries.

The letter V (for Victory) will be higher in the alphabet line up of the final outcome of the war against terrorism.

Source: Caribbean Net News