J O A N N E L O
I had hopes to be a school teacher since I was a small girl. Yet, with my first experience as a “relief” teacher for a week, I felt disappointed as the students always request for notes only, but not knowledge. It came to my mind, “what can I do for the young generation to make them better apart from being a teacher?”
I got to know the social work profession when I joined an activity organized by a youth center. It seemed to provide an alternative for me to help the young generation. Such experience navigated my social work journey, departing from my History major. Although I had studied different disciplines – such as History, Psychology, and Law – I discovered that I am passionate about youth work all along. Now, I have really become a teacher – to teach social work in the University. This prior knowledge and experience inspired me, along with the synergy of various disciplinary knowledge on my youth work practice and teaching. Creativity and flexibility are significant in facing our ever-changing society.
I chose One Hundred Cabinet (for Chinese herbal medicine) because …
… social work is a multi-faceted discipline, just like a “one Hundred Cabinet”. This Cabinet is a big storage space with over a hundred small boxes inside. Each box contains two to four types of Chinese dry herbs for medicinal purposes. These boxes have clear herb labels. The practitioner will pick up the required herbs according to the prescription by the doctor to create the mixture of Chinese herbs dosage (usually more than ten ingredients). After boiling over an hours with water, these herbs will become a bowl of black and bitter herbal tea.
Similarly, I think social work involves knowledge from social science disciplines such as psychology, sociology, etc. We do the work from remedial, developmental to advocacy. The intervention approach from individual casework, group work and the macro perspective to social policy change. The target groups are multiple and diverse in cultures and ages. All these variations create hundreds of combinations for the nature of our work, like the magic of the “One Hundred Cabinet”. Different ingredients are put into this cabinet systematically. It all depends on how the practitioners pick up the necessary elements they need to synergize their unique social work practice. We do not know what the outcome will be. Social work is hard to be defined by a single format or approach. After all, it is for the betterment of our service users.
social work in 40 objects 