Thabede, D. (2008). The African Worldview as the Basis of Practice in the Helping Professions. Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk 2008:44(3), pp. 233-245.
Thabede, in The African Worldview as the Basis of Practice in the Helping Professions puts into perspective some of the factors that each social work requires to know when offering services to African clients. According to this article, the African worldviews plays an important role for all professionals and organizations that provide counselling and other social work services. The author presents different aspects of the African worldview that all professionals must understand in order to affect in handling African clients. Other issues that the article brings into perspective include certain beliefs on God, death, ancestors, rites of passage and healing.
This is an important article because it provides the required knowledge on some of the factors that makes social work easy, especially when dealing with the Africans. Our agency, Community College, offers counselling and other social work needs of the African students. This article helps in understanding the different cultural perspectives held by the Africans. Therefore, it offers information that can make our agency effective in dealing with the African student issues. Some of the problems faced by the students require a proper understanding of the cultural background, especially on the cultural context, something that Thabede (2008) excellently does in this article.
Information from this article will make my work easy because of the proper research on the certain African worldviews that I had not known before. This work has equipped me with the background understanding of the African traditional beliefs on certain issues that affect them. as shown in this article, it turns out that Africans’ beliefs on supreme beings, ancestors and other cultural aspects affect their daily lives. A proper knowledge on these are tools towards effective social work to the African students.
Swigonski, M. E. (1996). Challenging privilege through Afrocentric social work practice. Social Work, 41(2):153-162
Afrocentricity is a term used in order to put African culture at the center in the process of dealing with Africans. Swigonski (1996) looks at the Afrocentricity as the main aspect of understanding different aspects of the daily interactions of the Africans. According to this article, Swigonski notes that historical experiences are major components that determine African attitude towards life. Therefore, a proper analysis of the African experiences must be made in a manner that entails the experiences, traditions and the cultural image in the African context.
This important article gives more information on certain aspects of understanding the African social and psychosocial aspects of life. The information in this text is important because it brings the best perspective into some of the traditional aspects of life. Our organization handles different issues that affect the African students, majority of the issues require analysis on the context of culture. It is true that these students are already in a foreign country, where they access education and other social services. On the same note, most of these students may want to adopt the new foreign culture; however, it remains that dealing with their social issues require Afrocentric social work as brought forward by Swigonski in Challenging privilege through Afrocentric social work practice.
Community College, as an agency stands to gain from this article as it plans to organize relevant social events that interest African students in the United States. Everything will be organized putting in place certain cultural perspectives that define psychosocial and social aspects of the students.
References
Swigonski, M. E. (1996). Challenging privilege through Afrocentric social work practice. Social
Work, 41(2):153-162
Thabede, D. (2008). The African Worldview as the Basis of Practice in the Helping Professions.
Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk 44(3): 233-245.