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Students’ summer work spans the globe

Doctoral student Sarah Dababnah, MPH, MSW, LCSWA, had two articles recently accepted for publication. One is a paper written with former UNC School of Social Work faculty member Susan Parish on issues facing Palestinian families with kids with autism in the West Bank. It was funded partially through School of Social Work by Anne-Linda Furstenberg Award for Qualitative Research and the Sam and Betsy Reeves Doctoral Fellowship, as well as the Center for Global Initiatives, and is entitled, “At a moment, you could collapse: Raising children with autism in the West Bank,” in Children and Youth Services Review.

She spent time in the West Bank while doing this research, conducting the qualitative interview and focus group study with Palestinian Arab parents of children ages 18 and under with autism spectrum disorders who live in the West Bank.

Dababnah co-authored another recent paper, related to work she did in Portugal through Irene Zipper‘s early childhood consortium in Europe. It is entitled, “Linking autism measures with the ICF-CY: Functionality beyond the borders of diagnosis and interrater agreement issues,” in Developmental Neurorehabilitation.

MSW student Natasha Holt, a Rotary Peace Fellow, spent May 13-July 25 in Bangkok, Thailand, for a summer internship at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Regional headquarters. As a Peace Fellow, her concentration is trauma healing. She is also a sexual health provider and sex educator, and did outreach with sex workers in Bangkok during this time. Her MSW concentration is macro, and she is also interested in both direct practice and community engagement with a focus on gender-based and sexual violence. Her aim is to work on sexual violence in emergency and post-conflict settings.

MSW student Kai Schwartz traveled to Kibera, Kenya, to assist the program manager at Carolina for Kibera to complete a program assessment of their education program. Schwartz received an International Internship Award from the Center for Global Initiatives. This year the Center awarded $134,927 in financial support to 36 students to complete global internships, independent research and self-designed projects during the summer of 2013. These awards, funded by private gifts to the UNC Global Education Fund and the University, give students the opportunity for deep engagement with a global community through work, experiential education, teaching or research.

MSW students Mark Smith, Elyse Keefe, Charissa Gray and Ginny Lewis participated with faculty member Irene Zipper in the Global Education and Developmental Studies (GEDS) program this summer. They each spent eight weeks in Europe before the group gathered in Porto, Portugal in July. Smith spent the earlier weeks in Porto; Keefe in Munich, Germany; Gray in Sweden, and Lewis in Portugal. The attended a summer institute at the University of Porto, and culminated the experience with a two-day symposium. Nicole Pertl, a GEDS student from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich who spent the fall 2012 semester at the UNC School of Social Work, attended the institute as well.

Also see:

The School of Social Work’s international map