A one day program on Human values at work was delivered  in collaboration with University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba, on Saturday 12 August 2006 for a group of 20 by Venkat Pulla, Rita Kugler, Chartered Accountant and Management Consultant) & Coralie Graham, Psychologist centrelink and PhD candidate. The workshop addresses questions such as how do you work? How do you view your career and your contribution to the world? Does something require change? Human Values at Work focuses on how you can work in accord with your own spiritual view of life and five Human Values that are found cross-culturally in all spiritual traditions: Truth, Righteousness, Peace, Love and Non-violence.

The Brisbane Institute of Strengths based Practices and Indian-based NGO Sanghamitra held this inaugural International Conference. It aimed to create a global interconnectedness between people seeking solutions for their local problems. This major activity in the year has been the first Australian organised international Strengths based strategies 2006 Conference in Hyderabad India in November of 2006. Principal collaboration was with Sanghamitra a rural development organisation in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh. Generous funding was made available to fly two resource persons from the pacific region, Papua New Guinea and Australia by AUSAID ISSS scheme. Equally generous assistance was made to cover partial costs of three speakers by Australia India Society.

 A number of small but genuine fund raising events have boosted our strengths and bonded our managing committee members in more than one event. Credit for such planning goes to Ms Christine Radke. From Pie runs, dine for development nites to wine sales- all of them demonstrated one thing – that there was deep sincerity in rasing much needed bucks for developmental activities. The International conference in India was also supported by other generous donations of Rs 50000.00 by UAE Foreign Exchange principally initiated and recommended for us in Australia by Ram- (Mr Karuppiah Ramanathan), the State Manager of the UAE Foreign Exchange, and handtowels, pens and bags by Family of Mr Sunil and Rajeshwari Gurram of Ipswich. The handtowels are hand loomed in Solapur by entrepreneur weaver families.  The Australian Association of Social Work gave a grant towards the preparation do CD ROMs and the Rural Social Workers Action Group of Victoria gave three scholarships for students attending the conference. The AASW several government agencies websites, Australian Institute of Families and several NGOs hosted the conference publicity free of cost.  We were also awarded website from Charity focus for our use and during the conference year it received some of their highest ranking on Google hits.

Mariam HI from Malaysia now a permanent resident of Australia assisted in managing the websites and for 5 months worked with me as a Conference Associate based in Malaysia dealing with Public Relations and advice to me on the Asian region. The website was also attended by Amanda Vos.

Duncan Williams donated his painting which was later fabulously digitised by our Informatics and Graphic design member Dragan Bombek. Dragan designed the conference volume and the CD ROM and negotiated with printers overseas. Mr Palani Thevar donated T Shirts with Brisbane Institute’s logo.

We had an American Auction of  art works and culturally significant items that were brought by delegates of the conference coordinated by Christine Radke and the collections were given away to purchase Christmas gifts for children in Sanghmitra villages. The Conference had a large contingent of Australian delegates. More on this conference through its site at www.strengthsbasedpractice.com

The Conference management was provided by Chris Montgomery and the key note speakers from Australia were Dr Bob Lone President, AASW, Mr John Armstrong, SRV Guru from Sydney, Mr Wayne McCashen, Author and strengths based practitioner, Dr Irena Yashin Shaw from the cutting edge party. The Co- convenor of the Conference in India was father John Vattamottom of the Sanghmitra rural development organisation.

Consortium to Assist Sri Lanka School of Social Work

As part of the Conference two delegates from the School of Social Work of the National Institute of Social Development, Sri Lanka were invited. Professor Ranavera Amaravamsa and Mrs Shamini Attanayaka presented an overview of the training and faculty development needs of the School of Social Work.

This meeting was attended by Professor Parasuraman, Director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Professor Lesley Chenoweth, of Griffith University, Amanda Vos of AASW, heads of the Departments of Indian Schools of social Work such as Professor Uma vennam from Tirupathi Mahila Vidyalayam University, Professor Hazel  Lima Director Roshini Nilaya, Mangalore University, Dr Mrs Miriam Samuel Madras Christian College, Professor Janki Andharia, and several other academics. The meeting was convened by Venkat Pulla and a number of immediate action plans to assist the Sri lanka school of Social Work were drawn up. 

15 Hours with Wayne McCashen

 A two day workshop was held on introduction to strengths based practice with Brisbane Institute’s Consultant Mr Wayne McCashen on 31st March and 1^st April 2007 Wayne is author of the books The Strengths Approach: a strengths-based.

Resource for sharing power and creating change and Communities of hope: a Strengths-based resource for building community and co-author of the card-based resource Name the frame: reminders for building respectful socially just decisions. Wayne was also a keynote speaker at the inaugural international “Strength-Based Strategies 2006” Conference in Hyderabad, India in November 2006. Brisbane Institute of Strength Based Practice is delighted to be collaborating with Wayne on these workshops which aim to provide all community practitioners with an introduction to Strength Based Practice, as well as concrete strategies for planning and goal-setting with clients and communities from a Strength-Based perspective.

Dinner in honour of Wayne at Coal Falls: Wayne, Christine, Venkat, Amanda, Bart, Hahn and Chris Montgomery

As a recent Australian Partner Organisation of the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development program we sought AASW accredited Social Workers, Social Work Graduates and Post Graduates to work with us in our Projects in Sri Lanka as well as and also in our future projects with local counterparts in partner host organisations in the developing countries to achieve sustainable development outcomes through capacity building, skills transfer and institutional strengthening and make a difference in the Asia pacific region.

Three outstanding candidates with leadership, public speaking, tutoring and lecturing skills, child protection and community development skills and one candidate, a practising Bank Manager, with business acumen and interest in human values educational and micro enterprises were chosen. Kat Oglive and Katherine Burke will form our team in Sri Lanka project to assist a School of Social Work to partake in core competencies teaching and field work curriculum, Abbie Catterall and Hahn Nguyen will form the Vietnam team.

Kat Oglive sees herself as a competent, motivated, adaptable fast learner who would love to work in international setting. Kat sees this as a chance to be involved in this program would allow her to explore and build on her passion and interest in international social work, community development and community capacity building.  Kat enjoys immensely interacting with other people, sharing knowledge, learning both from and with them. 

 

 Katherine Burke Social work graduate from New Castle University has previously undertaken three months volunteer work with Youth Challenge Australia in Costa Rica and was part of a team of ten that engaged in community development and capacity building work. Katherine believes that she is apt for the Sri Lankan position as she has experience in both working overseas in a different community and culture, and also with working with strengths based practice which is required by Brisbane Institute and its partners. Katherine has strong personal belief that strengths-based practice is effective in all settings of social work practice and that it contributes to social justice.

Abbie Catterall is a graduated from a Bachelor of Business Management and Human Resources with minor studies in Human Rights in 2005 and is completing a Bachelor of Social Work 2007. Abbie majored in Community Development and has travelled to Costa Rica in 2005 as part of a Community Development project which focussed on sustainable development for local communities. This was a volunteer position and involved great amounts of hard work. Abbie is accustomed to working within a team environment but also have excellent interpersonal skills through my work with children in child protection and as the President of the Social Work Students Association at the University of Queensland. Abbie works with strengths based frameworks and has been chosen for Vietnam projects of Brisbane Institute.

Hahn Nguyen is a Vietnamese born Australian Citizen and a graduate of Business Management from the University of Queensland. She holds a branch management position in the Commonwealth Bank. Hahn is positively passionate about using educational means to bring about change. For years and years she has dreamt of starting schools in Vietnam. Friends advised her that for that to happen she needs to become a millionaire first. This dream apart, integrating human values in to development, the micro finance strategies for enterprise development and working within strengths based strategies with local governments, NGOs, stake holder groups interests her very much. Hahn and Abbie make a great strengths based partnership for the Vietnam project of Brisbane Institute.

 

 An AusAID initiative, the Australian Youth Ambassadors program (AYAD) aims to strengthen mutual understanding between Australia and the countries of the Asia-Pacific region and make a positive contribution to development. AYAD assignments cover a diverse range of sectors including Education, Environment, Gender, Governance, Health, Infrastructure, Rural Development and Trades. Besides Irene’ –

On 23 May 2007 at the BTP Technology & Conference Centre a one day training program has been specially designed for Anam Cara-Centacare and was exclusively made available to Anam Cara team of ‘Irene’; Team Essence (Centacare) relief staff and Alpha Community Agency relief staff. Venkat Pulla was assisted by Chris Montgomery in this training and also by Fraser- from Evolve- Centacare

 

In Collaboration with

 

A panel discussion on ‘what is international social work all about?’ led by Venkat Pulla, Chris Montgomery, Nicholas Haines, Professor Lesley Chenoweth  and other Queensland participants at the Strengths based strategies 2006 conference, was held under the auspices of Australian Association of  Social Work , Queensland Branch.  This was organised by the International Special Interest Group of AASW. On Friday 23 March 2007.  Wine Cheese and Nibbles and soft drinks were provided to an audience of over 60 interested participants.

 

11 February 2007

Bart van Beukering, a practising Project Manager who works with public sector in Queensland as a Consultant facilitated a strategic focus discussion with the members of the managing committee with a view for Brisbane Institute members to gain a   better understanding of the direction of the institute.

Members took away assignments to write some very important Policy re Roles and Responsibilities.

Bart’s facilitation let us identify the skills matrix present within the institute and consolidated the shared values and common vision of institute’s members.  Venkat Pulla as the initiator of the Brisbane Institute of strengths based practice shared his vision as follows:

Training-

Learning

Conferences in the Asia-Pacific region

 Transfer of learning through and by being involved in grass-roots projects

Publications

Pamphlets

Literature publications

 Venkat Pulla was a key note speaker at the 8th Biennial  Rural Social Workers Action group Conference this

year and addressed issues relating to strength based strategies to lead a social work life and living up to our inner strengths. Martin Butler, the Convenor of the RSWAG Victoria has been a firm supporter of Brisbane Institute of Strengths based practice and at his behest the RSWAG made a cheque towards three scholarships for SBS 2006 Conference. These scholarships were awarded to three Post Graduate students in India.

The Conference was held on 12 and 13^th of July 2007 at Echuca, in Rural Victoria.  

 We gratefully thank the following for their involvement in 2006-2007 foundation years.           

President Dr Venkat Pulla, Vice President Peter Binyon, Secretary Chris Montgomery, Treasurer Rita Kugler Committee Members Chris Radke, Amanda Vas, Palani Thevar, Dragan Bombek, Duncan Williams