Student volunteerism as a thread of community engagement: its salience to social work education

ABSTRACT

The advancement of community engagement as an interrelated aspect of teaching and research compels social work education to consider how it may create opportunities to strengthen notions of social responsibility amongst its students. Volunteerism offers one promising pathway whereby students can appreciate societal problems and learn a diverse range of skills in community organizations or spaces that are relevant to the profession. This paper presents data from a qualitative inquiry with child and youth care students (N = 14), who spent time doing voluntary work in vulnerable communities, organizations and in vulnerable community areas, in South Africa. Semi structured in depth interviews and a reflective group discussion was used to understand the student volunteer experience more closely and the opportunities it brings to advance learning in a social work context. The study found through these objectives, enhanced opportunities for acquiring discipline specific knowledge and the acquisition of important values and principles to support their professional journey. Most importantly it exemplified the need for partnerships between disciplinary departments in universities and communities to be strengthened as part of social responsiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Community engagement
• student volunteerism
• social work practice
• social responsibility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kimberly Chetty

Kimberly Chetty is a Masters graduate within the Health Sciences faculty at the Durban University of Technology. She currently works for the Centre of General Education as a facilitator at the Durban University of Technology. Her research focus is on community engagement and student volunteerism.

Raisuyah Bhagwan

Raisuyah Bhagwan, is a full Professor in the Department of Community Health Studies at Durban University of Technology. She is also a National Research Foundation, C@ rated researcher. She completed her Doctoral study at UKZN, in 2002 and used her research to guide how spirituality and indigenous knowledge may be embedded within social work education. She is passionate about issues of social justice, community development, spirituality and indigenous knowledge systems and has published extensively on these topics.