There is no end to the need for social workers in our world. Luckily for students in the School of Social Welfare, opportunities abound to blend their education with practice. Fieldwork gives them an unparalleled chance to test their skills in real-life situations and help the most vulnerable people.
Allison Ruby Reid-Cunningham, for one, received her M.S.W. in 2006 at Berkeley and is working toward a Ph.D. Having been raised in a family that holds justice and service as its core values, social work is not just a job.
“To me, it is a way of life, a faith, and a daily practice,” she says.
Master’s students are required to complete 1,120 hours of fieldwork over a two-year period. Each year, 180 students contribute more than 102,000 hours of combined service to more than 85 Bay Area organizations. Reid-Cunningham did an extended stint with the Child Trauma Research Project at San Francisco General Hospital.
Today she is interested in how women recover from the trauma of war. She traveled to Bosnia-Herzegovina last summer, where the ravages of last decade’s war are still painfully palpable, to interview women who had survived rape or concentration camps or had lost the men in their families. She is going back this summer.
Among many moving stories, Reid-Cunningham said that her guide, Lejla Camdzic, was playing in a park as a child when an exploding shell hit her leg. Had it not been for the soldier who rescued her, “Lejla might not have been sitting with me,” she says.
Reid-Cunningham has faced the darkest parts of human nature, but is continuously amazed by the resilience of the spirit.
“Recovery is possible,” she says. “People can learn to trust, love, forgive, heal, and move on.”
