Remark at the Opening Ceremony of ISUSW 2021

Binoy Joseph
President of the ISUSW Consortium and
Principal of Rajagiri College of Social Sciences in India

The general secretary for the international Consortium, Professor Gao from the Shandong University, who is a host, my fellow partners and colleagues who we have worked with the previous 2019 international summer University in Social Work back in college of social Sciences in India, faculty, colleagues and dear students.

As the president of the international summer University of social work consortium, I am indeed very glad that the Shandong University has taken the initiative to host this year's consortium with the theme on online social work, practice and practitioners. Almost all consortium members are participating in this online deliberations and discussions, around nine lecturers, and also workshops. So I think all these are new paradigms in teaching -learning in social work.

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, we never thought that social work education had to face challenges for online teaching learning .So we understand that this is right theme for discussion about online social work practice and practitioners. Back in India, we are facing many new challenges teaching theory through online.

Recently, our school of social work has conducted many practices online, especially field work, and this was a novel experience for us back in Kochi, Kerala, India. However the practice of social work caused the challenges at the begining, we were able to manage it by course of time.

The online telephone befriending practice that we had back in Rajagiri cater to those facing stress, especially to the students as well as for the client in social work was a phenomenal success, and this is treated as a best practice by the various Government Departments and our national Institute of rural development has adopted this telephone different practices in providing online micro support to the needy. 18 other States in the country adopted this practice and I congratulate Department of Social Work who were the pioneers in initiating this as a very big scheme.

I wanted to mention that our telecounselling project for extending psychosocial support to the needy in times of pandemic has made a huge impact. And this was widely recognized by the partnering institutions in our country. I would like to say that this is just one area for the practice. Social work has many more dimensions, and how these things are being practiced across countries will be quite interesting.

So I congratulate the organizers, especially Prof. Sophie, for having come up with a beautiful theme for online social work practice and practitioners, and also Professor Gao of Shandong University for having such a wonderful Summer University for 10 days and also having nine lectures and workshops.

I am very glad to see you all even though not in person, face to face, but online. I remember most of my colleagues who are part of this consortium for years and on behalf of Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, India and the entire team, and also as the president of international summer University of social work consortium, I thank everyone, especially Prof. Sophie and Professor Gao for having taken this initiative to overcome the challenges by meeting face to face and making it online. Thank you very much.