Bringing the History of African Social Work Home
Linda Kreitzer has been thinking about Africa for many years. The assistant professor of Social Work at the University of Calgary's Central and Northern Region campus first got interested in the continent and its peoples when her father worked on water development projects there and would share photos of his experiences when he returned home to his family. And Kreitzer's personal connection began 17 years ago, when she decided to go to Ghana for a teaching position at the University of Ghana at Legon.
"I first taught social work at the University of Ghana, as a volunteer with Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO). I returned to Ghana the following year while conducting research for my master's degree at Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana, "Kreitzer explains, "and then, I went back again to facilitate a research project for my PhD in 2004. My research concerned the issue of culturally relevant social work curriculum in Africa, and in particular, Ghana."
In her work there and in her attendance at African social work conferences, she often heard that, for many Africans, learning about their own continent took second place to learning about North America and Europe. This also seemed to be the case when teaching social work history. "That just doesn't make sense," she thought.
Kreitzer identified some critical gaps, which she believed created barriers to more culturally relevant social work throughout Africa. These included a lack of local case studies, which fostered a dependence on western case studies for the classroom; a lack of a knowledge of social work history in Africa, as again, most classes taught American and British social work history; a dependence upon western social work curriculum, therefore creating a vacuum of culturally relevant African curriculum being taught; and a lack of resources to fill all these gaps.
People listening to Linda Kreitzer's seminar in Johannesburg
During her PhD research, Kreitzer had guest speakers come and talk about how social work evolved in Ghana and Africa. During one of these sessions, Dr. Ebenezer Q. Blavo, a pioneer of social work in Africa and an advocate for social work at the international level, spoke about important African social work documents that were a record of the Association of Social Work Education in Africa (ASWEA) conferences, which took place from the early 1970s through the late 1980s.
Following Blavo's talk, Kreitzer came to the realization that these documents were critically important to her own work as well as to the practice of social work in Africa. "One of the issues was the fact that there were no indigenous case studies that students could learn from as most teachers use western textbooks for case study examples," she explains, "and although Dr. Blavo knew about the documents, he didn't have a copy of them and didn't know where to find them. In, fact, no one seemed to know where they were." Apparently there were two volumes of African case studies that ASWEA had produced along with the conference proceedings.
When Kreitzer returned to Canada, she decided to look for them. She found references to them in James Midgley's book "Professional Imperialism: Social Work in the Third world"; in "Social development in Africa 1950-1985" written by Dr. Arega Yimam; and in Yvonne Asamoah's chapter on Africa in the "International Handbook on Social Work Education".
So she set to work to find them.
Somehow these documents had reached libraries in North America. They were at Stanford, Yale, Northwestern, and Michigan State. She found them in Boston, North Carolina, and Los Angeles. There were more in the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library. Some, it seemed, had only one copy in existence; others were found in pieces. All in all, Kreitzer was able to round up 18 of the 22 documents.
"When I examined the documents, I realized how important they were to the evolution of social work in Africa and how important it would be for African and non-African academics, students and practitioners to have access to these documents, "she says, "and I realized that they should be made available to Africans and that copies should be sent to Africa as soon as possible, for research and teaching. I believe that few African social workers know anything about how social work evolved in Africa. These documents give the historical evolution of social work in Africa from the 1970's to 1990, and I knew they needed to be shared."
To start this process, Kreitzer approached the executive of the Association of Schools of Social Work in Africa (ASSWA) (the replacement organization for the now defunct ASWEA) for support to bring the documents back to Africa to be put in appropriate libraries in institutions where social work is taught. She was able to secure funding from the International Association of Schools of Social Work to print 14 hard copies and 100 DVD's of these documents.
For six months, Kreitzer laboured over the documents, accounting for all the pages, cleaning the master copies, then making more than 3,500 individual page copies. In April 2010, 14 sets (6 volumes per set) of documents were bound and 100 DVD's made for distribution. Through ASSWA contacts, the opportunity to put the documents on-line became a reality when the South African University of Whitwatersand made them available on their archival website. (Today, the documents can be found at
http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/?inventory/U/Collections&c=AG3303...)
The volumes give Africans the opportunity to analyze the documents and use them in the classroom. They also add to the history of the profession of social work in the world, and demonstrate that Africa has an important contribution to make to the evolution of social work worldwide.
Linda Kreitzer giving one of the books to the dean in Ethiopia
Kreitzer chose a social work conference in South Africa in September of 2010 to present the volumes in person to different countries. Some of the nations who participated in ASWEA conferences were invited to send representatives to collect the documents, and four-- Botswana, Mauritius, Kenya and Uganda-attended and were presented with the hard copy volumes and a DVD. Kreitzer addressed the conference and explained what the documents were, how the project had been completed and how the volumes could be used in research, teaching and practice.
" It was a thrilling experience to give those first 4 sets to these countries" she says, smiling. "The next step is to distribute the remaining 10 sets to countries involved in these conferences. I will be travelling around Africa giving speeches about the documents and giving hard copies to those countries who still need to receive them. This will always be in collaboration with ASSWA. Then, the next step is having these documents analyzed by appropriate African scholars."
The documents are also briefly explained in Kreitzer's forthcoming book on social work in Africa called " Exploring the issue of culturally relevant social work in Africa: Ideas from Ghana concerning education and practice". This and the analysis of the documents will be my future contribution to social work in Africa. Of course, I want to continue collaborative projects with my African colleagues when the opportunity arises."
The rationale and purpose of this project is clear: to preserve important African social work documents that could be housed in five regions of Africa, the Association of Schools of Social Work in Africa (ASSWA), the ASWEA archives in South Africa and in the archives of the International Association of Schools of Social Work in the USA.
Kreitzer's project has implications for Canada as well. "While this project will allow African academics, practitioners and teachers the opportunity to use indigenous historical documents concerning the evolution of social work in Africa for teaching and research instead of relying solely on western documents and articles," Kreitzer explains, "it also furthers the knowledge base already begun concerning appropriate social work curriculum for Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Social work history in Canada, like Africa, tends to reflect a Eurocentric perspective and Aboriginal social work curriculum should reflect Aboriginal history of social caring and social issues. Understanding one's own history is important in the process of developing theories and practice appropriate to Indigenous cultures".
Kreitzer believes that the U of C's Faculty of Social Work provides the atmosphere for continuing this work, both at home and abroad. "As an associate professor at the University of Calgary, my job is to not only teach but to do research and writing, so this project has been part of my job at the university. To be able to have the freedom to do the research that is needed and in which I have passion for is very important indeed and this has been supported by the Faculty of Social Work. In the classroom, I am able to talk to my students about this project and to instill excitement and possibilities for collaborative research and practice cross-culturally.
A fitting quote from an African scholar sums up the importance of this project: " What a great service you have done to Africa and to the course of social work in particular. Surely, if put to good use, this initiative will revolutionise social work in Africa. The challenge is now on us - how to put these volumes to good use: teaching, research and practice".
