Remark at the Opening Ceremony of ISUSW 2021

Steven Sek-yum Ngai
Chairperson and Professor of the Department of Social Work
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Hello, everyone. On behalf of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, I’d like to send our warmest greetings to all partners of the International Summer University Program in Social Work (ISUSW).

First of all, I’d like to thank, actually everyone has already said that, but I think I should say it again. I’d like to thank the Organizer, Shandong University, especially Prof. Jianguo Gao, and our General Secretariat, especially Dr. Sophie Tapparel of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, for providing such a good opportunity to our faculty members and students to teach and learn together in this amazing international summer university program.

Owing to the pandemic, we cannot meet face-to-face and we now have an online ISUSW. As our University had organized the 2017 edition of the international summer university program in Hong Kong, we know how challenging it is in organizing a big event, not to mention that this year we need to go online. So I heartily thank the Shandong University team and also the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, you must have done a lot of testing work to ensure a smooth implementation of the ISUSW. Thank you for all the hard work and coordination to make this event so meaningful and that we have the chance to meet one another again.

The topic of ISUSW 2021 on “Online Social Work: Practice and Practitioners” is really meaningful and we look forward to numerous enlightening presentations by different faculty members. We truly hope that our participating students, who come from different cultural contexts, will have wonderful learning from one another and benefit from the stimulating lectures provided by all faculty members from diverse social contexts.

Finally, with the pandemic, we don’t know when we can see one another in person. I hope that all of us can stay healthy and safe and I wish every one of us would enjoy this marvelous international summer university program. Thank you.