For many Somalis, daily life in their homeland is complicated and, at times, dangerous. The country in East Africa has experienced an ongoing civil war since the 1980s. Drought frequently devastates crops and more than six million people currently face extreme levels of hunger. There have also been reports of an increase in sexual and gender-based violence, including domestic violence and child abuse.
Beyond the struggle for basic necessities such as food and safety, people experience trauma resulting from these humanitarian crises. In Somaliland, an autonomous but internationally unrecognized region in northern Somalia, limited resources, including a lack of mental health services, make this challenge more acute.
That’s why a small group of Somali-Canadian graduates from Carleton University’s School of Social Work helped Somaliland’s University Of Hargeisa create the country’s first social work program more than a decade ago.
Since then, about 550 students have earned bachelor’s degrees and gone on to provide trauma-informed psychological care. At the same time, they are breaking the stigma around seeking mental health support.
With a new master’s degree in social work set to launch, the University of Hargeisa aims to graduate researchers, mental health professionals and social policy specialists who can provide advanced counselling and inform government policies, a way to help some of the region’s most vulnerable people on an even broader scale.
“There is a lot of social injustice in Somalia, especially among women and children, and no strong support system,” says Nimo Bokore, an Ethiopian-Somali social work professor at Carleton who chairs the committee responsible for the university’s continued support of the Hargeisa program.
“Social work and Somali culture are a match made in heaven because caring for your community is something that comes naturally. There just wasn’t a formal training structure in place.”
Financial Support for Social Work in Somalia
Between 1988 and 1996, more than 55,000 Somali refugees came to Canada to escape the conflict at home, with over 7,000 settling in Ottawa. By 2011, the capital’s Somali community included about 20,000 people, many of whom were born in Canada.
The challenge of adjusting to life in a new country and a desire to give back prompted several Somali-Canadian students to study social work at Carleton. One of them, Asha Roble, joined up with four other students to start a conversation with university officials in Hargeisa, the capital and largest city in Somaliland.
Carleton’s School of Social Work provided financial and fundraising support, donated textbooks and helped the University of Hargeisa develop a social work curriculum. Fifty students enrolled in the first cohort, about three-quarters of them women, and like most of the graduates since the program started, they now work for local and government agencies as well as civil society and international organizations.
Providing counselling in hospitals, orphanages, schools and clinics, Somalia’s first generation of social workers are helping a wide range of clients, including people living with mental illness and other disabilities, youth experiencing homelessness, internally displaced people and survivors of sexual violence.
Teaching Social Work in Somalia
“We teach social workers how to sit with and listen to people, how to ask questions about the problems they are facing,” says Hargeisa professor Keltun Abyan.
“They learn how to provide talk therapy and tackle these problems. Now, there is more recognition of the roles that social workers can play. We are overcoming the social taboo.”
“People who are impacted by violence are often silenced by the culture in Somalia, but our new master’s program will help give them a voice,” adds Mukhtar Mohamed Abby, dean of the university’s College of Social Sciences and Humanities. “As government institutions create policies about issues like child protection, our master’s graduates will be able to provide recommendations. We can help the country develop regulations.”
Bokore’s latest research in the region identifies an urgent need for mental health services to address depression, anxiety and traumatic stress disorders. It also shows that social work is becoming more accepted, and she says the new master’s program could expand services even further.
“Carleton’s social work program has a clinical stream and a policy stream,” explains Bokore, who plans to teach a master’s course in Hargeisa, as will a Carleton PhD student.
“I want to help because that’s where I’m from. But I also want to help because social workers are flexible and wear different hats, no matter what country we’re in.”
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Lead image by Vadim_Nefedov / iStock