Sunday, March 25, 2012

Masters of Social Work: Changing the World

Social work seeks to improve the quality of life within the context of community. The quality of life is that subject being improved upon here, and inequity and social wrongs the villains. Students of Masters of Social Work courses are better equipped to handle such issues than others.

There are various functions associated with people majoring in such a topic. There are countless circumstances that can severely cripple a person's enjoyment of his life, and these often become communal problems that have to be addressed by people in social work. Of course, this would mean that the focus is going to be on countries that are none too well-off, since a failing economy and social inequity often come hand in hand.

The African, Asian, and South American areas are often mentioned here. The peoples of such countries suffer from things like starvation, malnourishment, and the like. While the rest of the world experiences modern comforts and convenience in life, millions are dying from hunger and preventable diseases in other parts of the globe.

The problem is that the riches of the globe are being hoarded or truly enjoyed by the few, instead of the many. The problem has to do with the wealthy and their refusal to give up their ascendancy (and riches) simply for the sake of others. These matters beg consideration and resolution.

It is not known to all that a good percentage of the globe's population only has USD2 to spend every day. With that little income, living is reduced to merely existing. While there is relative poverty in many parts of the United States (which deserve the attention of government and social work practitioners), developing countries experience extreme poverty; that kind of poverty that bites hard and deep.

Masters in Social Work courses tend to emphasize the need to address this deep poverty. The classes for social work also help students understand what injustice is and how to rectify it. There are a lot of areas of social study that are packaged in such programs, from political science to even behavioral science.

The MSW student is also trained in practical skills such as research and teaching methods. The professions in this field generally demand those abilities. Social workers thrive in both areas of interest – searching for ways to provide the most appropriate solutions to societal problems (research) and being with people (teaching).

Developing people skills is a definite must for social work professionals. Social work only has meaning if it achieves its goal of improving someone's life, and to know that, you need to actually be able to communicate with the person. Social workers must be comfortable in talking with people from different backgrounds and suffering from a variety of concerns, and listening to their needs.

A worldwide organization for people in the discipline recently talked about the matters taken up by those in this line of work. The organization said that social work demanded that its professionals keep in mind the setting of a particular issue, and the need to discover as much about its environment as possible. The social web was noted for its immense complication and for the connectedness of people to one another.

You cannot be successful in this discipline if you are unaware of the many interconnections and complex relations that form our social framework. You have to have the ability to look at a knot in the social fabric and unravel it. Many of the tools and concepts that can assist you there would be in a Masters Social Work program.