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 Discovering the depths of compassion
It’s Saturday morning at the Don Bosco offices in Monrovia and there is a great noise of chairs being moved and paper rustling. Nothing unusual in that surely in an office. But on closer examination it becomes clear that this is not the Don Bosco Social Work Team, or the health team or even the janitors. This a group of young people, ten boys and two girls aged between 16 and 19, who are engaged in what we call our Junior Social Workers Skills Training.
Signs of the times
Almost one year ago some of the staff of the “Don Bosco Homes” were swapping notes and stories with their colleagues at Save the Children Fund and in the course of this exchange both groups realised that in the two projects there was a common thread. Some of the young people from the most challenging backgrounds (ex-soldiers, street children) seemed to be able to turn those negative experiences into positive life-skills.
Matthew
There was the story of Matthew, aged 17, who had gone to the police station after his two friends were arrested and had pleaded, threatened, begged, quoted the Convention on the Rights of a Child – all the time insisting he was a social worker – until the police gave the two children back into his custody and he brought them home.
Flomo
And Flomo, aged 16, who woke in the middle of the night and rushed from his room because he could hear cries. When he got outside he found two men bundling one of the street kids into a car. He ran behind them right down to the beach where they were pouring kerosene over the boy prior to setting light to him because he had stolen from them and couldn’t return the goods, Right there on the beach in the half light before dawn he pleaded with these two very dangerous men for the life of the boy. Eventually, for whatever reason, they threw the boy at him and drove off. Flomo then carried the now-terrified child to the “protective custody” of the Save The Children Fund Office, cleaned him up and then handed him over to the “professional” social worker in the morning.
Elizabeth
Or Elizabeth, aged 17, who sat day and night with one of our younger children in the last stages of his illness and soothed and comforted him. She stayed with him right to the end and was with him when he died. She had no professional training to equip her for a task that many older people would have found so daunting.
The experiences of Life
Stories from "The Lives of the Saints”? No, simply the real experiences of young people who in their own sufferings and failures have discovered depths of compassion and understanding which they were not aware of before.
To build on their strengths
Based on these experiences we decided with Save The Children Fund (UK) to put together a training course to actually give some basic social work skills to these young people to help them in their work. The first course was put together by the Save The Children staff who were already teaching at the Don Bosco polytechnic. For nine months this group met every Saturday and studied and discussed issues such as The Convention of the Rights of the Child, tracing and reunification procedures, family life, children and the law etc. Their enthusiasm quickly overcame any deficiencies in their academic ability and the staff who were giving up their Saturday mornings to teach them were also enthused by the experience. Of the original group of 16, 12 finished the course and were given a certificate. But it was not to end there. Just before the end of the course the group began to ask for more, making it clear that they had learned a lot but knew that there was so much more to learn especially on the practical side of things. The result was that in March of this year we started phase 2 of the training with the twelve successful members of the first course. Phase 2, which again was put together by the Save The Children staff, concentrates on the practical aspects of interviewing children, talking with families and communities, writing reports etc. Each Saturday there is a two hour session with input and a task set, this is followed by a three hour on-the-street assignment to put those skills into practice and then a two hour assessment of the assignment.
Success at last
The real breakthrough came when the dean of the Mother Patern college of Health Sciences which teaches the Social Work Skills program agreed that if the young people finish the second part of the training then they will be accepted onto the “proper” course despite their lack of academic qualifications. This would give them a certificate from the Don Bosco Polytechnic, an achievement most of them would have thought way beyond their reach. Who would have thought that a child who a year or two ago was carrying a gun or working on the streets would be discovering a real purpose in life. Some achievement!
Fr Joe Glackin SDB
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