Social Work Spotlight - International Episode 1: Santa (Laos)

Episode Date: August 30, 2025

In this episode I speak with Santa, an early career social worker from Laos with paid and volunteer experience for the Red Cross, and the UN, as well as working with migrants to support them to build their skills and experience to gain meaningful employment. Santa has a passion for human rights, humanitarian aid, social protection and research.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:STELLA social enterprise - https://launchthestella.wordpress.com/what-we-do/UNFPA (United Nations Sexual and Reproductive Health Agency) - https://lao.unfpa.org/enLao Civil Society Organizations Platform - https://laocso.org/This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vyx-g3-Q60mZz0UiL1gf-WpFr9E1pXaCyf02FNFPv04/edit?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

Before beginning, I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the countries of guests featured in this podcast and acknowledge their continuing connection to land, waters and community. I pay my respects to the First Nations people, the cultures and the elders, past, present and emerging. Hi and welcome to Social Work Spotlight, where I showcase different areas of the profession each episode, with a 12-month focus on social workers around the world as of August 2025. I'm your host, Yasmin Lupus, and today's guest is Santa, an early career social worker from Laos, with paid and volunteer experience for the Red Cross and the UN, as well as working with migrants to support them to build their skills and experience to gain meaningful employment. Santa has a passion for human rights, humanitarian aid, social protection and research. Thank you so much, Santa for joining me on the podcast today.

I'm looking forward to talking to you about your own. experience so far. Can you tell me firstly when you started in social work and what brought you to the profession? What got you interested in it? Actually the beginning of the stories start from when I work as a volunteer with records in 2014. On that time I helped the record on the blood donation campaign and we're giving the kind of like the counseling for the donor to come and donate the blood on that time so I promote the Red Cross. After that I jumped a little bit deeply to the opportunity with Red Cross that gave me the peer educator. We do a training for the school. Most of the training we train is like school safety, just as the management and we do. We do,

counseling for the student to come and asking about if this risk happened, what can I do? And what is a mechanism, something in a school that I can use to solve this problem. So kind of like being volunteer on that time lead me to have kind of like this passion to become something that I don't know on that time what job I, will be work in the future or what kind of things I would dream about. But when I graduate in high school, actually I applied two major. I want to become a doctor. And second one is I apply is I want to become social work.

Yeah, and I got social work in 2018 at National University of Laos. is a new picture for me, new perspective, you know. The first year is like you study a theory, you jump deeply to understanding the human problem, human history, and you learn about psychology, how to deal with people, how to giving the right advice when you found something difficulty during your services for other people. The first year is okay. The second year is quite a hard of it because I kind of like move out from the comfort zone, have to work with the real workplace.

So I work with the Disability Center in Laos. So we're providing the activity that developed their physical and mentally. I work as a volunteer there for six months. on the second year, giving me the other way now, like what kind of social work I should be in the future. Generally, I learn only about, okay, this is a social work slide, and we learn about ethics, we learn about rule, we learn about principle. That second year is like open my eyes a lot on what kind of social world I want to be. And on the third year, we do the practice So the professor just sent us to the workplace.

Yeah, it's bring more opportunities at that time because I can narrow down what kind of job I want to achieve on that time. So I start work as an intern with Stella. It's a social enterprise company. They provide a job and education concerting. So I was one there work as the day. the data person. And after data persons, I provide the services for the student in the high school and the graduate student from university who want to find the place of work to do. Yeah, and after

that, my last year in 2022, actually the COVID come. Yeah, it's like your dream's gone already. Well, the same time is like very dark, cannot see anything. But fortunately, the previous intern class I do, they offer me a job. So I get a job on my fourth year as the project coordinator. So actually, we train my grind worker and the student in the southern part on job training. We're providing the small grind for them to do business. And during that time, I see the community level is quite opportunity a lot. They might not access to the health services.

They might not access to the convenient things like the city people live. So after that end of contract, I start work as the consultant with the UNAPA to support the sexual and reproductive health services to the youth in Vienchan and also providing the family planning services for them. Actually, most of my work is doing this data. So kind of like I have to track the client a lot. Mostly, I have to monitor them after they use the services. I would say support the consulting center. So it's this really challenging job, but in the same time,

I understand the data is very relevant a lot. UNAPA gives me many opportunities. I also open to the new knowledge on the supply change management, why it's very important, why some of the services need the, equipment, need the food, need the tools. This is also the things that I learned and I got the experience from the UNAPA. As the consultant on that time, I built the data tracking system for them as the main

task I was hired to do. And I built an M&E system for them too. It is quite short-term contract and I have to move forward. for another place again. So I go back to work with the Red Cross. On that time, they opened the job opportunity for me to support the province office. So I was hired as a project management assistant

to help the health services and the hospital in Lohobang to provide primary health care. On my part, I support all the staff. We have midwife, we have social work, we have engineering. We have an engineer person too. And we have the community health voluntary community help service persons. I would say the first responder if you might hear in the community level. My main task is deliver the work to them, coordinate with the government sector.

We do a change about the challenge thing we have and waste a further plan, solutions. All that time is quite, the job is quite multiple, my role, not only thinking about the services we have to give, but internally for our staff itself, we have to manage it as much as we can to ensure that they have the

preparations, good preparations of a good ability to giving the work to the, to the community. I worked there for a year. And my last task when I worked in Laudeau that course last year was I helped the World Food Program to deliver the rice. I would say the emergency food responded

to the people in the southern part of Lao. And during that time, it's a lean season so they cannot grow anything. It's quite near to flood season, I would say. And it's flood on that time, too. I work in a few, and unpredictable situations also happen. We were cut out from the team, and Kai's broke down in the middle of our mission there. And yeah, it's also the things I have experience working with.

every cost. It's a lot. There's so much in that and that really only covers the very first part of going through university and trying to figure out what is social work in the first place, right? But it sounds as though you do four years full time before you then graduate and can start working and getting paid for it rather than just the internships, right? Yeah. So actually in social in Laos, we study four years. Our professor will send us to do an intern and volunteer on the second year. So we do two times second year, two times, third year, and the last internship will be also the first year.

So I would say five. But actually, professor is not going to give us much lecturing. Not like that. They will send us to do a job, do an internship, to get the credit for the university. But in the same practice, this is the things that I would say, like if you want to be a good social worker you need to practice but practice without recording that's meaningless that's why i do data i want to support the student i would say the junior person

to understand like okay if you do something in the past this is a lesson that you have so you have to keep it as a case study it's not about you know okay so so every day forgot now you kind of like have this, I would say, mental working. It's like you have to have this systemmatic thinking in yourself when you're giving the people the services. I think this is also a really important part. Yeah. And I think everything that you've done as part of both, you had some frontline and then you had some back-end policy program things really helped you develop an understanding of how the service needs are determined in order to guide funding. So you can kind of see the forward bit, the backward bit,

and you'd have to have a really good understanding how the different pieces of the puzzle work together in order to help with those referral points and make sure things are working in a coordinated way, yeah? Yeah. As the graduate social work person, I would say the social work allows why not that diverse, but what I promote and what I keep myself

to support the, social work in love. I think in the future it will be more important for our society. As I see today, we kind of like jump to the globalization and many things come a lot, come to our country a lot. So for the new generation, this thing is very important that we have this job continuing in our society. But hopefully, there will be more specific social worker. Yeah. That's generally, I would say, because we graduate and then some of our students miserable,

so they don't know what type of work they want to do. And in the same time, our country is quite small. And I think in the future, if it come bigger, myself as a case study record, present, they can support the other generations to develop this social work in love. Yeah. It sounds as though, you mentioned that the southern part is a bit more disadvantage or a lot more migration, a lot more movement. Is that the case? Is that why some of those services were centered in that area? Yeah. You know, on a terrorist of COVID, and they come back from the nearby country like Thailand, they talk less. I would say myself, I have a lot of, I have

I haven't started working since I end the contract with the Red Cross now. Regarding to the funding we have and I feel them because compared to me, like I still have food to eat in the morning and I still don't have that much for them to not have a job and have an earning and they have come back to their house and they just stay there not doing anything and their money that they have for their saving. This is gone day by day. And that's why I made that decision to work with that. I would say thematic issue on that time, these are my questions.

So that's what I see that you're just giving people hope, you know, like giving people a choice. I think that's a core part. like it can't change them a lot. One of our participants who, when I was, I trained them. They come today, they are also my best friend. Also, we have a good connection with them. The skill we train, they can apply for other jobs. They work in a farm at a time and now they start as the staff of the bank company

and some of the private company. Yeah. Yeah, for me, the answer on that time, as a social worker, is like, you're giving people a choice to cross that problem, to have a solution. Like, you kind of like guide them too. And I automatically become their personal advisor person. So sometimes they have their family issue, some like that problem issue, they come and ask me about how should I feel. what should I do to cross this problem? So it's like the skill for university is answer me a lot

because I can't provide them the right choice. But not 100%, but it's a choice to guide them, to guide them to help themselves. Of course. And I think the fact that you've had experience in so many different agencies just as part of the study in Australia, just to give you an idea,

we have two placements usually, only and they're long placements. So some universities might break it up and do three placements, but usually it's two long placements and it's altogether a thousand hours. So we do the four years, same as you, but the first two years are just theory. And then the third and the fourth year are long placements. So I would imagine in those people graduating would have more experience over a larger amount of things or areas of practice. So you can if someone comes to you and asks for advice for something, you might not have all the answers, but you've probably heard from someone who's worked there or if you've worked in one of these agencies and you can at least help to guide them

in the right way. Whereas if someone came to me and asked for something very specific in an area that I hadn't done a placement in or haven't worked in, I'm probably not going to know the answer. So I think it's really good that they give you a really strong foundation before you even leave university. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that was the journey until today. And you said you're studying as well now? Before nearly my end of contract, I was acknowledged that I will not be continued. And, you know, I'm not sure if I can say this to you, but because of the the funding, we have no choice. Just, I would say. yeah, we have no choice, just to find choice.

My choice is I should study in Laos for master. The lesson from the COVID-19 period is that I see people lost a job a lot. And this is also the lesson I passed. So, chosen to study master degree, I choose the major of development study. I want to become a future researcher in Laos. We just ended our class last week, so I can't have time for the podcast today. And now we are currently doing,

develop the proposal for thesis paper. I would say this subject, we have also international students come to study. mostly we will focus on the context of our country we have many area of students they might confirm the environment conform the social conform the agriculture health also the children and nutrition they have many students there i do exchange of with them, quite the youngest person in the class. So my head must bow and be humble to study with them because they are like very experienced person. Some of them also the main nature. And the funny part

is like most of them is form the same area as the community development presence. So we kind of like exchange many things, very creative, very fun, a lot in the class. Somehow in my case happened in the past, it's also answered randomly by them. Like they might change something and can give me a guiding thought that I can use in the work. Yeah. So this course, aside from the the student, the professor, they provide us the journal, the report to practicing on reading, and we quite take a lot on researching doing the paper for professor. Next two weeks, we will go to the field placement in the northern part. So we will visit the house most that have the local alcohol product we call La vodka and it's quite giving the job opportunity in the

people in the village and also we have the hospital that do services for the youth and the family planning also then we'll visit one of the environmental zone yeah so this is a update from my master class and having now. That sounds fascinating. So you'll stay with a host family while you're kind of getting to know that area and the people and what the concerns are for them. I think it will be something like that, kind of like that, because the professor again, they're giving us a task to stay with the people, feel their culture, feel their life,

environment, what they do, what they leave. So it's kind of like you observation and sometimes you have your participation with them. And yeah, it's brought, I would say it will be brought the knowledge and in the same time we brought a relationship with the community. Sure. So important. Do you know what you want to research yet or is this part of the process of trying to see what the problems are that you'd like to solve? Not 100%. 90%, I would say, because I worked with Red Cross for many years as a volunteer. I think this is very important that I want to write the thesis paper about the quality of the rescue services in Inving Chan Capital. Inside the thesis, it would be a quality assessment

for the rescue team. Most of them are the volunteer and most of them graduate social work. one of my senior social work class person, they also work there. And I also start to know the Red Cross because of him. So he has this bachelor degree thesis. And I want to develop that thesis for him. I think not just for him, but I think it's also for all the rescue team. that the policy level might hear something for my thesis and they can develop something to support the rescue team in Vienchan because the city is quite bigger now. We meet a lot of

road accident every day and kind of like trying the best to promote the low safety too in this thesis paper because Leskewarrantia they work very hard. Some of them have to study and go back to the unit, work across midnight, and somehow they have to, they are treated well, I would say. But what they contribute to the community to us is like very thing we have to give them. For example, like maybe the policy level might hear like maybe giving them the scholarship or giving them the equipment more. Kind of like the things about my chises want to having their voice for the policy level to hear. Yeah. Not 100%.

Sure, you still have to flesh it out a bit. Yeah. Did you think going into social work, I know you said you had the minimum. understanding of what the profession could be or what you might do to help people. Did you think that there would be such a focus for you on policy and consultation? I just know for me when I was studying, I always thought front line, I want to work with the people, I want to do the direct work. And it wasn't until I did my second placement in community development and policy and research that I really understood.

Social work can be so many things and we have so many skills. And yes, you need to understand the front line. you do the policy work because they inform each other so much. But yeah, I'm just wondering if you saw yourself or you imagined that social work could be so many things for you or if you had a real clear idea as to what you thought you would be doing. After the graduation, I would say I have a plan to apply for one program. It's an international humanitarian program. I want to be the humanitarian person. Focus on disaster, I would say.

Emergency cases, disaster. Something like a big thing that happened immediately and we cannot control. So this is things that I want to develop in Lao because we kind of like new. We have a team. We have operations. We have community. But in the same time, we need to be developed. So I want to be social work who will serve on.

on the humanitarian event. Like, I would say kind of like you support the same migrations, for example, or you support on the health crises, something like this. This is the answer I still finding. But this is the scope I have now. Because of social work course is not directly in some part. As I know, like in some colleagues,

country, many countries, they have critical social work. But compared to other countries, they might have different social style. I will say, I hope that after I graduate these classes, I might have a clear idea what type of social work I want to go through as my long-term career as a professional too. Because you have to go at one thing for me now. Yeah, I think as experience I share with you, it's kind of like abroad, experience is quite diverse. So I hope that I can narrow down a bit in the future here. And it depends on availability and funding and so many other things it sounds like

because you've got this passion and interest in things. But if there's no funding or there are no, you might have a clear idea of what you want to be doing. But if the opportunity isn't there or the funding isn't there for a program, then there's no way of pursuing that and that's really difficult. You ask me, I think actually the things like job or variable and the situations we are having now, it's also teaching me. As a social worker, you have to be social worker for yourself too. Can I share this moment?

Of course. Because of these situations now, this is quite tough for me too, to choose about, okay, tomorrow. I still have hoped to be social work or not, or I should change my job to other few. This is the questions, everyday questions I have, I would say. And there was a moment I have very huge depression. On that time, around April, I'm miserable. I don't know what to do. I would say I have a bit of tea out at that time because it stirs me a lot.

As I can say, it's like I got a job. I was starting soon on May. And then they said the funding just terminate. So everything I prepare is like, it's all gone. And yeah, it is quite a difficulty moment I have to live on that time. I don't know, is just like the desire or not. But on that time, I also made. one of my social work friends who graduate the same area like me.

We met, we drink, we talk. And then I share a lot of things with him and he said just two sentences. He said that, Santa, you can be social work. But social work is not just only working, only giving people services or or something like develop people, how to cross their solutions, so like that. But you can be a business person, you can open your shop, you can file a job, and then you give people a job availability, or you're giving people knowledge you have, you're giving people the experience you have. I think that's already a social work.

So to survive, I think that's different thing. But to be social work, I think you can do anything. But giving people hope, giving people the guiding, you already do your job every day. So, yeah, that changed my perspective in a different way. I quite not stress that much now. So focus on study and hopefully that if I get a job or things, it will be better. It will be better. So this is the things I keep talking to myself, yeah, on some difficult part that I almost leave this social work from my chest and my hand.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and when you don't have that momentum, it's so destroying and you've spent so much time to learn the profession and to get the experience and to make the connections. And then to have that ripped away from you, not for any fault of your own. That's really unfair. And, yeah, it must have been really hard. But it sounds as though you heard that advice at the time that you needed it most.

So that's a good friend. You need to hold on to that person. Yeah. I would say it's a miracle or not. But on the difficulty moment, you find a moment to have this answer that you church for many months. On that I believe that my time will come, my time will come one day, my opportunity will come one day. So this time, be patience and cheers yourself a lot. to have a good mental health.

Yeah. So. With Laos being a developing country, is there much of a, we would call it a safety net for people who are disadvantaged or have come across a crisis or having difficulty, even just, you know, finding food or paying rent or being able to put clothes on their back? Is there some sort of coordinated government approach to help those people? or does it all end up being NGOs and non-government support? No, we work with the government and government also support us too.

Okay. So because of the, I will say not just the funding, but in the last 20 years, we don't have this kind of things in our country. We don't have mass center, we don't have that type of services. But now we have many foundations. We have many services for the people with different problems, different situations they're facing now. So we work with the government a lot to support in this part. I say this because I passed this work directly.

But in some provinces, I think they might not. not have this full services. So I think in the wrong land, Laos will have these services are lost in the future. That's great. Yeah. But we not only rely on the NGO part. Government will be worked directly, but as the NGO and all the organizations, we will be the government and also support the government to help this issue. Now that's really good to hear. But I imagine there are a lot of social workers working in those government roles as well. Even if they're not designated social work roles, there are still people who are social work background working in those areas.

Because the social work is quite diverse, some of them might not work in the same area. They might work in the different areas. I will say 100%. They can have a choice to have different job, I would say. But as the context we have, we're having now, we are working on it. So it's not going to be that fast, but it will be a long long long. I think that's what I see in the context of the social work here.

Are there any resources, anything that you've read or watched or come across, either in your study or in your practice that you think other people might benefit from? and I can kind of find the links or find resources for people to share. I am not sure, but we have the CSO platform in Laos, and they share many case study things, work in the field. So they have a civic society organizations, some also the foundations also share their learning things in that platform. I will ask my friend who work as the CSO coordinator can share you a link if they want to know more about community development job in Lao, I would say.

But for myself, I don't have the paper released yet. So soon if I graduate this one, I might have a paper release from myself. I will register some of the Google Scots. or the script scorpion for, yeah, publish the paper, also in the future for myself. But yeah, for other people who want to know about the Lurlopement or social media, they can have this platform from my side. Yeah, great. Thank you for that.

Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? I know you've got a lot of things planned, a lot of things that you'd love to do, and it's just a matter of finding the opportunity and finding the time because you want to do everything at once and you only have so much time available. And also you're trying to finish your studies and you've got the placement coming up. But is there anything else that you wanted to talk about, whether it's just about what your experience has been like or what you love about social work?

I still believe that social work is a core bone for the community development. I think aside from the volunteer I'm doing, then I have the motivations to apply these educations and having jobs in this field. It's because of my father. So he inspired me a lot because he worked as the village committee. He helped people have job. He helped his His house didn't have the choice to live. And as the kid on that time, I have this communication skill with many people in the village. And it's built a strong boundary for me that until today, I can support my village itself as a volunteer social worker. I would say not their social worker.

Yeah. For me, only one word that I can give you is that you can start again. If you lose today, if you don't have hope today, if you don't know what to go today, you can start again tomorrow. You can start to like do things again. We still have a hope. So that's a word I can't give for you. I love that. That's so good. And thank you so, so much for sharing all of that. And just for giving us an idea of how things have progressed with you right from that volunteer support that you did at the beginning. And as you said now, that was inspired by your father and what he's done for your village and trying to understand what your passion might be or what area of work. Who knows, you might have ended up being a doctor if you'd gone into medicine. But I feel like you would have still very much been helping people regardless of what you do because that's in your bones, it's in your

genetics it sounds like. So just being able to do those volunteer services, interviewing people even is a good way to understand their context or what their situation is or what they might be having difficulty with or even what their strengths are, you know, what has worked for them in the past and then helping them to harness those strengths to use in future with whatever difficulty is coming up for them. So it's been a very clear journey that I can see that has had a lot of hurdles on the way and a lot of things that have gotten in the way of you progressing as quickly as you'd like to. But I feel like also in such a short time, you've done so much.

So anything that you do from now, you'll take that experience and you'll build on that. Yeah. I think that should be the starting point. So for my side of experience, this will be like this, but hopefully they will have more people allows to share about their works. So this will be a spotlight, I would say. Yeah. No, I'd love that.

I'd love to know more people and get a sense of how things work in different countries. And it's been interesting for me to see the similarities as well between the two countries because so much of your starting point and your training has been very similar to how we do things. So it is interesting to see how across the board there's a lot of consistency. But the specific work that you're doing and how you do is going to be very unique to Laos. So yeah, thank you again so much for doing this and for sharing your experience. And I hope to continue following what you do because whatever it is, I think you're just going to continue helping more people.

Yeah. Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Santa, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky, or you can email SW Spotlight Podcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Next episode's guest is Matt, who in addition to being a registered social worker,

is also a certified mental performance consultant, podcast host, and co-founder of Southwest Counseling Services in Ontario, Canada. He is passionate about utilizing a variety of tools, including EMDR, emotion-focused therapy, sports psychology, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to help individuals, couples, and families lead healthy and fulfilling lives. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you're notified when this is. next episode is available. See you then.