World Social Work Day

Today I attended a national social work day event, this years theme was ‘Promoting the Importance of Human Relationships’. A topic so relevant today in our current climate of fear, hostility and political turbulence. The keynote speaker was founder and CEO of the ASRC, distinguished social worker and human rights advocate Kon Karapanagiotidis. This quote I scribbled down during Kon’s speech stood out to me. His speech was moving and inspiring, calling us into action, to systematically advocate for structural change and to challenge the political and social frameworks that keep people ‘small’. He acknowledged the challenges we may face as social workers advocating for clients and the systematic barriers and the fear we must overcome and encouraged us to work together to survive the broken system , that has tried to keep up small and quiet. He remind me of my social work values and idealistic dreams that got me into the profession. I echo his sentiments of wishing the world was a place where my job didn’t have to exist