Social Work Education in Nepal: Major Opportunities and Abundant Challenges

Abstract

This paper discusses the evolution of social work education in Nepal. The history of social work education and training in Nepal is rather nascent. Imparting social work education and training is a challenging task in Nepal due to the ongoing political instability, multi-cultural issues and lack of social work educators, and the lack of a professional association, in addition to the lack of government recognition for the social work profession in the country. The paper is divided into four sections. After a general introduction, Section 2 discusses the evolution of social work education in the context of the development of higher education in Nepal. The paper describes Nepal and its changing social context, the challenges for social work and how social work education is meeting these challenges. Nepal's efforts to realize indigenous and international practices of social work education are discussed in the third section. The paper indentifies these gaps and a Nepalese model of social work is presented in Section 4. The paper is written on the basis of the author's personal narrative of many years' work in Nepal in order to start a discussion on indigenous and international social work perspectives along with challenges for social work education in the context of the current global climate of social, political and economic changes in order to draw lessons for Nepal and South Asia.

Keywords:

• Social Work Education
• Nepal
• South Asia
• Indigenous Social Work
• International Social Work

Acknowledgements

This paper is a revised version of the paper presented at the National Conference on Professional Social Work in India: Contributions to Welfare and Development, organized by the Department of Social Work, Bharathidasan University, Khajamalai, Tamil Nadu, India on 11–12 February 2010.

Notes

^[1] The Department of Social Work at Kadambari College submitted a proposal in 2009 to include a course on social work under the higher secondary (10+2) system managed by the Higher Secondary Education Board of Nepal. The Higher Secondary Education Board (HSEB) was established in 1989 under the Higher Secondary Education Act. The report of the Nepal National Commission of Education (1992) reiterated the earlier recommendation to include the 10+2 program in the education system, and also viewed it as the first step towards specialization.