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looking for work experience/volunteer/internship in oz!!

  • 10-03-2009 12:46pm
    #1
    toxic-cherry
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3 ✭


    Hi Everyone!

    My name is Aine and I am currently living here in Dublin. I have recently finished my B.A. in Social Science from UCD and I am taking a few years out before I go back to do my masters in social work. The idea behind this is to gain the relevant experience within the social work/care field. As the moment I am working full time here in the university in an unrelated field and doing some voluntary work 2evenings per week and every saturday. The voluntary work is in a women's project that facilitates women whom on release from the prison systems are at risk of re-offending and becoming homeless. I had also done three months in residential care last summer for teenage boys.

    Unfortunately I have been unable to find a full time paid position here in Ireland since Iv left college in the social work/care field, partly to do with my lack of experience and also to do with the cuts in public spending that has effected all of us in the last couple of months. I have come to the conclusion that I may need to do an internship/ work experience and have decided that it would be much better to do one in Australia, to gain my experience while seeing a different country. The masters I would love to get into is in Trinity and they require 6months experience, roughly 1,500hrs working in the field


    I am writing to you guys to see if you could point me in the right direction. I have done some research on the internet, but all the internship programmes are aimed at American students, it has been turned into a commodity and a lucrative business for the firms who organize them(up to $3000 for 6months). I sure that if a person like myself who has the basis in the social care field (by next september I'll have almost a years experience) and three years theoretical background in social science and is willing to work full time for free, many organization would jump at the idea without expecting me to pay them as well!I forgot to mention, the position is all i would be looking for, I will organise my own accommodation, flight and visa...

    Maybe someone who was in the same position as me in the past has some advice or better still has any contacts or knowledge of orgainisations in oz, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear from you! been pestering millions of other people over the net but I haven't gotten much of a response!

    many kind regards

    Áine:D:D:D

    kind regards!


Comments

  • #2
    CamillaRhodes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 505 ✭✭✭CamillaRhodes


    Hi Aine,
    I can't give you any specific advice related to your field, I'm afraid, as it's different to my own, but I think the best site for you to start doing research is www.idealist.org.

    Keep in mind that there may be volunteering opportunities which do not classify themselves strictly as 'social work', i.e. they don't require people with formal qualifications in social work, but the work you'll be doing will, in essence, be informal social work. For example, the work I did in Peru, and what some friends did in Thailand was officially English teaching, but the teaching was used as an opportunity to build relationships with communities who would otherwise not have access to social support services, and once that link was established, we were able to operate as sorta 'ad hoc' social workers. Whether this is formalised enough experience to get you into your masters programme, I really can't tell you (although I knew some english guys who were using their work in Thailand to contribute to their MAs in social work...)

    FYI, the volunteering I did in Oz wasn't in this field at all, it was WWOOFing, which generally involves environmental work, but you could check them out as well. (just google WWOOF Australia).

    I don't know much about the social work field, but I imagine there must be an oversight body in each country? Perhaps you can find out who that is, and contact them for a list of organisations who might accept an intern?

    Finally, if I were you I would consider going to a less developed country than Australia. Often, the needs of communities in developing countries are greater in that there simply are not formalised social protection mechanisms in place, and there are more often societal issues such as the prevalence of orphanages, street children, neglect of persons with disabilities, etc. You might find wider options for volunteering, and the work may be even more rewarding in the long run!


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