Social Worker - As a career option

Nobody knows them. And perhaps nobody ever will, because they don’t really want to be known. They’re not rich; they have little to take, and a lot to give. They don’t believe in paperwork, don’t believe in the supremacy of jurisdiction. They don’t judge: people do what they have to do to survive. They see the world in flesh and blood and sweat and tears and make it a better place with her bare hands.

“Suzanne takes your hand and she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers from salvation army counters
And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love, and they will lean that way forever…
While Suzanne holds the mirror.”

- Leonard Cohen, Suzanne.

Would you like to be Suzanne?

We live in a society that has crossed the limits of pestilence to a point where the average human being is numbed to human suffering. They see it in the news – children are starving; their parents are committing suicide, unable to find food. The diseased are dying for the want of healthcare, the disabled are living in abject misery.

In some obscure corner of our heads, many of us have somehow accepted that the poor will always suffer. There is nothing that I can possibly put down on paper that can match the horror of our times, so I won’t even try. But you – would you like to dedicate your one wild and precious life to make a handful of other lives just a little brighter?

Eligibility Criteria To Become a Social Worker

• +2: No restrictions. Students from all three streams (Science, Commerce, Arts) are eligible.
• Bachelor’s Degree: No restrictions. Students from all disciplines are eligible. However, a Bachelor’s degree BA in Social Work is available and preferred.
• Master’s Degree: No Restrictions. Students from all disciplines are eligible. However, a Bachelor’s degree MA in Social Work is available and preferred.

All You Need To Do For Becoming a Social Worker

It doesn’t take much, and there is no single dedicated course or discipline that you have to pursue in college. While BSW (Bachelor of Social Work) and MSW (Master of Social Work) are degrees that you can do both online and offline at a number of universities in India and abroad, it’s not a prerequisite.

Social workers hail from a plethora of academic and professional backgrounds and it’s primarily their inner calling for the aid of humanity that drives them there – there’s very little channelized knowledge involved, and the little that it takes cannot be taught in classrooms.

Before you get into the profession at a position of responsibility in India, the organization you work for would require you to demonstrate your affinity for the job. Hence, most successful social workers start small, with minuscule endeavors in course of their college years, into relatively scale able sectors in want of development.

Others gather the experience halfway down their career when they make the shift. You can’t really pass or fail in your career as a social worker, because you can’t pass or fail at being a human being.

A Day in the Life of a Social Worker

Hey, pleased to meet you! I’m X. I’m a busy bee. I try to improve each shining hour. Come, walk a day in my shoes. I’m on my way to work now. It’s 7:00 AM on a Friday morning. The school where I volunteer starts really early, and I don’t want to be late.

I work for one of the largest organizations in India that reaches out to underprivileged children. I have a master’s degree in mathematics. The world is my oyster, but my heart lies here. This year, I became a senior fellow; my responsibilities have increased, as has my desire to make a dent in the unforgiving poverty and illiteracy with which I battle.

7:30 AM: I reach school. Children have gathered for the morning assembly, but I don’t participate. Much as I would like to, there are a handful of logistics to take care of before my classes begin.

9:00 AM: I start with a class of 10-year-olds.  Class VI. Being a math major, I drew a normal distribution of students of this class according to their performance in their coursework over a three month period – the average kid is at least three classes below the national average. With academics growing progressively difficult, if I don’t pull a miracle in the next few months, these kids will be unemployable in the future. I stay positive. “We are on the way!”, I tell my kids. They reiterate in booming enthusiasm.

11:00 AM: My second class is of a batch of high school kids. They have their board exams in a few months, but they don’t look like they’re worried. These kids are a nuisance to handle, but they love me. Over the past two years, the performance of this class has increased by over 50%. I see these smiling faces as my reward, the fruits of my labour. Being with them is one of the most rewarding moments of my day, and I bask in it.

1:00 PM: Quick trip down to the institute’s headquarters. It’s at the other end of the city and I don’t have a car, so it’s kind of exhausting with the sun at the zenith. I don’t care; I’m used to the strain. In fact, I’ll go through a lot worse to get my kids to the future I envision for them.

3:00 PM: At my office, I have to sit through a presentation on a recent report published by the UNICEF on the status of literacy in my city. Things have improved in the past two years since I and the rest of my organization took up the reins, but some of the facts are still disturbing. Long way to go, long way behind.

5:00 PM: I attend a meeting to decide the allocation and expenditure of the annual school budget next session. It’s a poor school, but it’s receiving our funding. There are a number of new ideas – renovating the school prayer room, buying new sports equipment and games, replacing broken furniture. I want a better stocked library. I manage to bag a few thousand bucks. “This isn’t enough… but you can’t get everything”, I muse.

7:00 PM: Seminar on child psychology conducted by the CRY. I was nominated by my boss, and I view the organization as a potential future workplace. I have a presentation on the role of positive reinforcement in changing the perspective of troubled teenagers.

9:00 PM: Needless to say, I am exhausted. I’ll crawl into my bed with a handful of performance reports from junior fellows to assess, but it’s likely that I’ll barely be into my second page before I’m fast asleep.

My alarm is set at 4:00 AM tomorrow.

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